RASC News Agency: The Taliban’s Directorate of Information and Culture in Daykundi has commenced a systematic campaign to confiscate “banned books” throughout the province. According to a press statement from the directorate, Sayed Mustafa Saleh, the head of the Taliban office in Daykundi, asserted that any literature deemed “inconsistent with the principles and policies of the Taliban regime” will be removed. Saleh claimed that over the past two decades, various books, allegedly published by “foreigners and their agents to influence the minds of Afghanistani youth and intellectuals,” run counter to Islam, Islamic culture, and Afghanistan traditions.
This is not the first instance of such actions by the Taliban, who have previously conducted similar inspections in other provinces, systematically combing through libraries and confiscating selected books. The group allows only religious publications, considering any other types of literature incompatible with what they define as “Islamic culture.” In earlier directives, the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education mandated the removal of books conflicting with the Hanafi school of Islamic thought from academic and educational libraries. The ministry stated that the Taliban intends to restrict access to certain literature at bookstores nationwide.
Just yesterday, booksellers in Kabul reported receiving instructions from the Taliban, advising them to cease the sale of specified titles. A list of “undesirable” books, leaked recently, revealed that the Taliban’s targeted themes include “Shiism, Shia communities, anti-Islamic Emirate sentiments, anti-Taliban views, democracy, republicanism, praise for Massoud (Ahmad Shah Massoud), secularism, and communism.” These titles were also removed from libraries in several schools in Herat.
