Taliban bans all images of living things in Afghanistan

c’mon, man…
not cool.

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Later on they are likely to ban visual descriptions communicated orally.

Gentleman 1: “I am looking for the gentleman with the olive complexion, the one wearing the beige tunic and matching pants, green tunban, and dark, overgrown brown/black beard. He walks with a hobbling gait, without a cane, like an elder. Did you see him? Can you picture him?”

Gentleman 2: “Hmm….” To the horde “Someone, get a rope!”

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Bans on the depiction of living beings are fairly widespread in Islam. It’s not in the Quran, but the ban can be found among the hadith (accounts of the words and deeds of the Prophet, which many Muslims treat as a kind of subsidiary revelation: the Quran is the authoritative word of God, but if it doesn’t cover some topic, you look to the hadith for guidance). That’s why most Islamic art and decoration is based on geometric shapes, rather than figurative art.

It’s supposedly based in the prohibition against idolatry (which probably came to Islam out of Judaism). The idea is that if you make an image of something, next thing you know you’ll be worshiping it.

Of course, most Muslims aren’t as uncompromising on this point as the Taliban. The Taliban really seem to want to embrace every single “thou shalt not” to be found in either the religion or traditional Afghan culture.

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Plus, I’m willing to bet, a heap of new ones they’ve thought up themselves. Fundamentalists love themselves a “thou shalt not”.

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… dead things only then

michael jackson horror GIF

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In order to supercharge religious fundamentalism, one needs a set of additional texts full of killjoy rules and interpretations that their opportunistic and attention-seeking authors insist are as authoritative as the core text.

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Please remember that USA helped to put these guys in power in 1978, helping with guns, money and intelligence so they can take over a socialist government. Only after some months, the USSR intervened, and the Afghan War started. So, the Taliban horrible movement was started basically by USA. They even met and took official photos with Reagan in the White House in 1983 (Google Operation Cyclone).

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We get it. Few people here are ignorant of the U.S.'s role in elevating this pack of medieval-minded religious thugs to power. But despite campist claims to the contrary, the U.S. isn’t the only, or even the primary, villain of the piece.

[Also, copy-pasta spamming is not allowed on this BBS.]

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But that’s different, of course. This won’t apply to their photos of “societal disruptors” because… reasons.
:rage:

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I guess I will have to read a book sometimes that explains how and why the Afghan army folded so fast after our withdrawal. I really can’t imagine living under their control.

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… it’s a little late to go back and fix the foreign policy of two generations ago :confused:

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But it’s never too late to complain!

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… America is too supportive of the Taliban, if we just stopped propping them up they’d collapse like the American puppets they are :roll_eyes:

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If it were not for the young women and the children, I’d say let’s just shut the door on that Bronze Age hellpit and be done with it.

Let them build their theocratic paradise al by themselves.

Everyone is required to wear a clay tablet containing their personal information written in cuneiform.

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All kidding aside, depending on how far the law goes on “images”, the use of implants could end up on the table.

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The Afghan government sponsored and backed by the COTW was corrupt.

The army never managed to become independent of US and UK units and air support.

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are implants widely used on today’s Afghanistan? i am assuming you don’t mean cosmetic implants. are you suggesting that prosthetics like an arm or a leg blown off by invading empires would be disallowed?
am i missing something?
[i’m probably missing something]

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All true, but the Taliban didn’t have air support and at one point the Afghan army was well supplied. Anecdotally I know from some people who had trained Afghan regulars embedded with him, they said that most of them were just horribly undisciplined and didn’t want to be there. Which, ok, the army sucks. But at some point the Taliban would be back and it would suck much much worse. :confused:

It makes it even more messed up when you look at their secular government in the 70s and at least in places like Kabul seemed very progressive.

Nope. The founders of the Taliban weren’t even born at the time of the Reagan Presidency.

The Taliban did takeover the government from the chaos of the multiple warlords after the fall of the Soviet supported government.