Women and girls who were not accompanied by a close male relative were barred from entering coffee shops in Afghanistan's Herat province. According to Sheikh Azizi ur Rahman Al-Mohajer, the head of virtue and vice at the Taliban office in Herat, playing music and women and girls without a'mahram' (relative) are now prohibited. He also stated that criminals are not permitted in coffee shops. Most insecurities, kidnappings, robberies, and destructive actions, he claims, can be planned in such coffee shops. "The coffee shop owners are warned if any instruction violations are reported, they will be faced with legal actions," Al-Mohajer said, adding that coffee shops can be remain open till 9.30 p.m. According to him, these coffee shops serve as a convenient place for most of the moral corruption something has misled the youths in Herat. Any edict ordering the closure of all coffee shops in Herat could be issued from Kabul, he said. This comes after the Taliban regime ordered all mannequins to be decapitated because they resembled idols, a decision that sparked widespread outrage. The Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has recovered its role as enforcer of the group's hardline interpretation of Islamic law, RFE/RL reported, nearly five months after regaining control.
The Ministry has imposed limitations on people' behavior, movement, and appearances, particularly those of women and girls, in a series of decrees issued in recent weeks.
While the militants claim the decrees are only recommendations, Taliban religious police have enforced the new laws in many areas, sometimes violently. Many Afghans have expressed their displeasure with the Taliban's religious policing, claiming that it is a tool for humiliating citizens and controlling every aspect of their lives.
The decrees remind Afghans of the draconian rules imposed by the Taliban during its brutal rule from 1996 to 2001. According to Obaidullah Baheer, a Kabul-based academic, the Taliban is "locking out the population from decision-making" and exposing its "tyrannical tendencies" by imposing its own interpretation of Sharia law on Afghans. According to Baheer, the Taliban sees "any challenge to (its) policies as a challenge to the faith itself." Last month, the Taliban ordered mannequin heads to be chopped off in the western city of Herat, claiming they were un-Islamic. Local businesses were enraged by the edict, which came on the heels of an economic catastrophe created by the Taliban's takeover and the abrupt cessation of international aid.