Afghan Taliban official calls photo taking a ‘big sin’: report

Images of humans and animals are generally avoided in Islamic art (File)

Kabul:

A Taliban official said journalists committed a “major crime” by taking photos, Afghan media reported on Wednesday.

Television and biopics were banned during the Taliban’s rule from 1996 to 2001, but similar decrees have so far not been implemented since Afghan authorities took back power in 2021.

According to videos broadcast by multiple media outlets, Mohammad Hashem Shaheed Wror, a senior official in the Ministry of Justice, said at a seminar for Ministry of Justice staff in the capital Kabul on Tuesday that “taking pictures is a A grave sin.”

“Our friends in the media, the Afghans, they are always busy with this evil and are always being pulled toward immorality.”

Officials in Kandahar, the Taliban’s birthplace, were ordered this week not to take any photos of the creatures, but the ban did not extend to the media or the public, a spokesman for Kandahar Governor Mahmoud Azam told AFP.

Images of humans and animals are generally avoided in Islamic art, causing some Muslims to abhor images of any living creature.

Since the Taliban returned to power more than two years ago, several media outlets have stopped using images of people and animals.

However, official departments of the central government frequently circulate and share photos of senior officials meeting with foreign dignitaries.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)