The Taliban regime has ordered this Thursday the withdrawal of all those books contrary to Islam and the alleged interests of Afghanistan, including those that promote secularism or "immorality" among young people.
As explained by the director of the Ministry of Information and Culture, Abdulhaq Hemad, to Tolo News, in the country "there are still hundreds of books on the market that are written against Islam, against Islamic principles or that promote other ideologies such as secularism. ".
Hemad has assured that "there are also some books that lead to the immorality of young people" and has thanked the publishers who have already delivered thousands of these books with supposedly harmful content for the Afghan people.
For its part, the Union of Publishers and Booksellers of Afghanistan has joined the wave of censorship decreed by the Taliban and has warned that "they will take all necessary measures to prevent the circulation of this type of content and thereby increase unnecessary tensions." in the country".
"If books are published that increase national tension, political problems and controversies, which lead the nation to a crisis, we will try not to publish them again," said the director of this organization, Sayed Ahmad Saeed.
With the arrival of the Taliban in Kabul in 2021, the scant progress in terms of rights and freedoms that Afghan civil society has achieved over the past two decades has come to an end. The hardest-hit group has been that of women, who have been subjected to the same restrictions they suffered in the 1990s, before the US invasion.
