Wedding parties are supposed to be jubilant events where relatives dance on the floor and the music blares through the loudspeakers as the bride and the groom watch gleefully.
But for Shakila, 28, who got married around four months ago, none of these wishes came true. She said her wedding reception was more like a dinner invitation.
“There was no dancing, and no music,” she said, “The guests left soon after they ate their meals.”
The Taliban’s Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice of Afghanistan, known as religious police, are barging into wedding parties to make sure no one is playing music or dancing.
In some cases people have been insulted, or even arrested by the religious police for allowing music in their parties.
This was exactly the reason, music wasn’t played in Shakila’s wedding. The wedding hall was very close to the Taliban’s police station. And it wasn’t worth taking any chances.
At one point, the music was played on the women’s side of the hall, then it went silent quickly after men protested.
“Why are you getting us killed?” Shakila recalled, men were saying, “turn off the music quickly.”
“We were all scared, and my hands and feet were trembling,” she said.
She added anytime she watches her wedding film, she has a feeling that the Taliban took away her happiness in her own wedding ceremony.
The Taliban have said music is haram. They banned it when they first ruled over Afghanistan in the 1990s. Anyone caught listening to music was severely punished.
When they came to power last August, the Taliban promised their approach would be different this time.
“Music is forbidden in Islam,” Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s top spokesman told the New York Times a few days after they siezed power.
“But we’re hoping that we can persuade people not to do such things, instead of pressuring them,” he said.
Nearly a year after the Taliban came to power, their approach has changed from persuasion to openly threatening, and even detaining Afghans for listening to music.
Niaz Mohammad, a resident of southern Kandahar who is an employee of a foreign NGO, said around three months ago, the Taliban’s director of Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice department in Kandahar and his colleagues came and disrupted his brother’s wedding because they had played music.
Music has been an inseparable part of the wedding culture in Afghanistan. Before the Taliban, some people would hire singers and musicians to play live music and entertain the guests. Some would pay for DJ services.
Niaz Mohammad’s family knew hiring musicians or DJ would be too risky, so they only played low volume music on the women’s side of the party.
But the Taliban still found out. They barged into the wedding hall, and detained one of his brothers for around two hours. He was released after local elders’ intervened, promising to the Taliban on behalf of the family that they wouldn’t play music again.
“They ruined our party,” he said.
Niaz Mohammad is a pseudonym. We don’t use his real name for safety reasons.
The Taliban haven’t officially banned music nationwide. But their fighters have insulted, humiliated musicians and singers publicly and in some cases they have broken music instruments.
Music has also gone silent on most radio stations and television networks.
In Kandahar, listening to music is completely banned in public places. Abdul Rahman Tayebi, the head of Taliban’s directorate of the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Kandahar, said banning music was the order of Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s Supreme Leader.
“Music is absolutely forbidden in public places including wedding halls, coffee shops, and hotels,” Tayebi told journalists last month.
Ahmad Nawid, a Kandahar resident whose wedding ceremony was held last month, said the Taliban forces came to his party, and insulted and humiliated everyone including his family and guests for listening to the music.
“You don’t know that music is haram,” he recalled a Taliban fighter telling his father in a disrespectful manner. “If we hear the music again, you know what will happen.”
“Our party was disrupted and more than a hundred of our relatives who were present at the party were upset,” he added. “And we turned off the music.”
The Taliban’s harassment didn’t end there, their fighters later came and detained Nawid’s brother and cousin because some kids had thrown firecrackers outside the bride’s home.
“The best night of my life turned into the worst one,” he added.
