By: Rukhshana media
Taliban morality police have closed four shops in Mazar-e-Sharif’s City Walk Market for selling goods to women who did not observe the hijab in the way prescribed by the Taliban, according to City Walk shopkeepers.
City Walk shopkeepers said that officers at the Mazar directorate of the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice have urged them not to sell to women who do not observe the hijab in the way preferred by the Taliban, and to remove advertising pictures of women on the shops.
According to the shopkeepers, who did not want to be identified for fear of repercussions, they were told by the morality police that if they do not comply with these conditions, their shops will be closed down and they will be punished.
“Several Taliban morality police gathered all the male shopkeepers in the market in the middle corridor today and told them not to sell anything to any woman without a proper hijab,” one of the shopkeepers told Rukhshana Media.
The shopkeepers say the morality police monitor the market closely and have behaved abusively towards women who do not wear the full hijab.
“Today, three women came to shop in the Punjabi store, two of them were wearing full hijab, and one of them was wearing only a scarf and a mask,” a shopkeeper said. “The Taliban guards treated them very violently and used ugly words as they kicked them out of the shop and sealed it shut.”
The shopkeeper said that when these three women went to a curtain store for shopping, the morality police did not allow them to shop there either.
After August 15 last year when the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, they imposed many restrictions on women’s lives, including requiring women to wear the burqa or a fitted black hijab that covers all the hair and around the face.
