Taliban to Afghan networks: stop airing shows with women actors

KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities on Sunday issued a new “religious guideline” that called on the country’s television channels to stop showing dramas and soap operas featuring women actors.

In the first such directive to Afghan media issued by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Taliban also called on women television journalists to wear Islamic hijabs while presenting their reports.

And the ministry asked the channels not to air films or programmes in which the Prophet Mohammed or other revered figures are shown.

It called for banning films or programmes that were against Islamic and Afghan values.

‘’These are not rules but a religious guideline’,” ministry spokesman Hakif Mohajir told AFP. The new directive was widely circulated late Sunday on social media networks.

Despite insisting they will rule more moderately this time around, the Taliban have already introduced rules for what women can wear at university, and beaten and harassed several Afghan journalists despite promising to uphold press freedoms.