KABUL: Checking imported books, removing texts from libraries and distributing lists of banned titles — Taliban authorities are working to remove “un-Islamic” and anti-government literature from circulation.

The efforts are led by a commission established under the Ministry of Information and Culture soon after the Taliban swept to power in 2021 and implemented their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia.

In October, the ministry announced the commission had identified 400 books “that conflicted with Islamic and Afghan values, most of which have been collected from the markets”.

The ministry has not provided figures for the number of removed books, but two sources, a publisher in Kabul and a government employee, said texts had been collected in the first year of Taliban rule and again in recent months. “There is a lot of censorship. It is very difficult to work, and fear has spread everywhere,” the Kabul publisher said.

Books were also restricted under the previous foreign-backed government ousted by the Taliban when there was “a lot of corruption, pressures and other issues”, he said.

But “there was no fear, one could say whatever he or she wanted to say”, he added. “Whether or not we could make any change, we could raise our voices.”

‘Contradictory to religion’

This news agency received a list of five of the banned titles from an information ministry official. It includes “Jesus the Son of Man” by renowned Lebanese-American author Khalil Gibran, for containing “blasphemous expressions”, and the “counterculture” novel “Twilight of the Eastern Gods” by Albanian author Ismail Kadare.

“Afghanistan and the Region: A West Asian Perspective” by Mirwais Balkhi, an education minister under the former government, was also banned for “negative propaganda”.

During the Taliban’s previous rule from 1996 to 2001, there were comparatively few publishing houses and booksellers in Kabul, the country having already been wracked by decades of war.

Today, thousands of books are imported each week alone from neighbouring Iran — which shares the Persian language with Afghanistan — through the Islam Qala border crossing in western Herat province.

Taliban authorities rifled through boxes of a shipment at a customs warehouse in Herat city last week. One man flipped through a thick English-language title, as another, wearing a camouflage uniform with a man’s image on the shoulder patch, searched for pictures of people and animals in the books.

“We have not banned books from any specific country or person, but we study the books and we block those that are contradictory to religion, sharia or the government, or if they have photos of living things,” said Mohammad Sediq Khademi, an official with the Herat department for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV).

“Any books that are against religion, faith, sect, sharia … we will not allow them,” the 38-year-old said, adding the evaluations of imported books started some three months ago.

Some books have been removed from Herat libraries and Kabul bookstores, a bookseller told AFP, also asking for anonymity, including “The History of Jihadi Groups in Afghanistan” by Afghan author Yaqub Mashauf.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2024