Afghanistan: Taliban Bans Women's Beauty Salons

Facts

• On Tuesday, the Taliban-run Vice and Virtue Ministry confirmed an order requiring all hair and beauty salons in Afghanistan be shut down within a month.¹
• In a letter dated June 24, the ministry reportedly said it conveyed a verbal order – which mandates businesses to submit a report about their closure – from Afghanistan's supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada.²
• The order follows recent diktats barring Afghan women from public spaces, including parks and gyms, or working for the UN. Thousands of women have reportedly been fired from government jobs or are being paid to stay at home.³
• The Taliban — which says they respect women's rights in line with Islamic law and the customs of Afghanistan — closed a majority of girls' high schools and banned women from going to university in 2022.⁴
• Beauty salons surfaced in Afghanistan months after the Taliban were ousted in late 2001 following the 9/11 attacks in the US, and many remained open even after the group returned to power two years ago.⁵

Sources: ¹BBC News, ²The Hill, ³Al Jazeera, ⁴The Economic Times, and ⁵Reuters.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by NewsGram. What limited hope that existed when the Taliban returned to power has all but disintegrated as the group continues to repress women and their rights in an un-Islamic manner. Islam gives equal rights to both men and women, and if this had been respected by the Taliban, it could have been possible to avoid the growing isolation from the outside world.
• Narrative B, as provided by Bakhtar News Agency. Concerns and criticism by the UN and many Western states are baseless and simply propaganda. Like everyone else, the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan are based upon Islamic law and will continue to be so. Current international condemnation doesn't match the facts and the reality of life in the Islamic Emirate.

Predictions