By Rukhshana Media
The Taliban ordered shopkeepers in the western city of Herat to use headless mannequins to display clothes in their stores on Sunday, a Taliban official confirmed to Rukhshana Media.
“Mannequins are idols. They should be beheaded. Their usage is haram in Islam,” said a Taliban official at the provincial office of Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Herat who spoke on condition of anonymity.
On Sunday, December 26, shopkeepers in Herat received a notice with the Taliban’s stamp and signature, ordering them to not use “any advertisement instruments and methods that are against Islam.”
“Those shopkeepers who use mannequins, banners and posters to advertise and sell their products should be informed from the stated date [December 26] they don’t have the right to use advertisement instruments which are against Islmic Sharia. All the statues and mannequins in your stores must be headless,” the notice sent to the shopkeepers reads.
“No one worships these mannequins, but the Taliban call them idols,” Ayoub, a shopkeeper who sells women’s clothes in Herat city, told Rukhshana Media.
Ayoub worries about the future when the Taliban continue imposing new restrictions. “If we accept this restriction, there is a possibility they would order us to remove some other part of the mannequins and might even ask to not use them at all,” the shopkeeper said, adding it would further damage his business in an already collapsing economy.
Last week, the Taliban municipality in the Afghan capital, Kabul began a new campaign to whitewash “un-Islamic” images of women’s faces and bodies from billboards and store windows across the city.
