RASC News Agency: On Sunday, February 23, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice initiated door-to-door inspections in Sar-e Pul province, targeting and confiscating women’s beauty products. This crackdown is part of the group’s broader agenda to enforce its rigid interpretation of Sharia law. Following the Taliban’s ban on women’s beauty salons in public markets, many women resorted to offering beauty services from their homes as a means of survival. However, these invasive home raids suggest a deeper motive one that extends beyond merely seizing cosmetic products and instead seeks to systematically dismantle women’s economic independence and personal freedoms.
Residents of Sar-e Pul report that, in addition to confiscating beauty supplies, the Taliban have summoned homeowners for questioning at security offices. In July 2023, acting on verbal orders from their supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban shut down all women’s beauty salons across Afghanistan, a move estimated to have cost nearly 60,000 women their livelihoods. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue has condemned certain beauty practices such as eyebrow shaping and hair extensions as “clear violations of Sharia.” The Taliban argue that anything not practiced in early Islam is forbidden in the modern era. However, this rigid ideology appears selectively applied. While imposing draconian restrictions on women, the Taliban leadership continues to receive an estimated $40 million weekly from U.S. intelligence agencies, travels in armored luxury vehicles, and resides in opulent palaces.
When faced with illness, they do not rely on prayer alone but seek advanced medical treatment in hospitals in Dubai, Turkey, and other foreign countries none of which existed during the time of early Islam.
