Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

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   You get drivel about aliens, abduction etc from all sorts of people, not just Christians – there are atheists, agnostics…

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   […] last time I had had occasion to write about Rowan County clerk Kim Davis, above, was three years ago…

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   “The curriculum had already drawn tensions among the county’s religious parents, with some worrying about appropriateness and arguing the material…

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IN an interview last year, Afganistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Abdul Quaha Balkhi, above, insisted that women, under Taliban rule, enjoy full rights in accordance “with Islamic law.“

Which means that they practically have no rights at all.

Now its reported that beauty salons in the Islamic state have been banned, because beautification, apparently, is a hindrance to prayers.

In a video clip released Thursday, Sadiq Akif Mahjer, spokesman for the Taliban-run Virtue and Vice Ministry, listed a series of services salons offered that he said went against Islam.

Those included eyebrow shaping, the use of other people’s hair to augment a woman’s natural hair and the application of makeup, which would interfere with the ablutions required before offering prayers.

Furthermore, he claimed that the salons cause economic stress on grooms’ families, who are required by custom to pay for the pre-wedding salon visit by the bride and her close female relatives.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

The ban comes days after the Taliban Supreme Leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, above, claimed his government had taken steps for the betterment of women’s lives in Afghanistan.

Amena Sharifi, who owns a Kabul salon, said she was the only breadwinner in her family, since her husband, a former policeman, has been unemployed since the Taliban took power in August 2021.

The beauty salon was our only income, and now I don’t know what to do? How we should pay for our expenses?.

The families of three other women working for her will also lose their incomes, she said.

The BBC reported that shutting beauty salons was part of a wide range of measures imposed by the Taliban when they were last in power between 1996 and 2001. But they reopened in the years after the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Reacting to the new ban, an Afghan woman speaking anonymously told the BBC:

The Taliban are taking away the most basic human rights from Afghan women. They are violating women’s rights. By this decision, they are now depriving women from serving another women. When I heard the news, I was completely shocked.

It seems the Taliban do not have any political plan other than focusing on women’s bodies. They are trying to eliminate women at every level of public life.

Those salons that remained open were often covered up and images of women outside salons were spray painted to hide their faces.

Another Afghan woman who asked not to be named said her friends had confirmed the closure of hair salons in Kabul and elsewhere.

It’s more shocking news for Afghan women. I went out and saw all the salons in my locality were closed.

Hat tip: BarrieJohn

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