- The Taliban killed a famed Afghan folk singer on Saturday, a former interior minister said.
- Fawad Andarabi was reportedly dragged from his village haunt and shot dead.
- The killing follows an interview with a Taliban spokesperson who said, “music is forbidden in Islam.”
The Taliban killed a popular Afghan folk singer just days after the group spoke it hoped to ban music from being played in public in Afghanistan, according to a former minister.
Fawad Andarabi was “brutally killed” on Saturday, remarked Masoud Andarabi, who was the Interior Minister under former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in a Twitter post.
He was reportedly dragged from his village available in Andarab, near the Panjshir Valley, before being shot dead, according to LBC News.
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“Today they brutally defeated folkloric singer, Fawad Andarabi who was simply brining [sic] joy to the valley and its people,” Masoud Andarabi wrote in a post accompanying a video of the population singer performing.
—Masoud Andarabi (@andarabi) August 28, 2021
During an interview with The New York Times, published on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Taliban told that “music is forbidden in Islam.”
Zabihullah Mujahid, who is seen as a likely contender for the new government’s culture minister situation, told the paper that the Taliban is hoping to “persuade people” not to perform music.
Under the previous period of guide, the Taliban banned all music, apart from some religious chants, according to The Guardian. Cassette tapes were disabled, musical instruments were forbidden, and even captive songbirds were outlawed, the paper said.
It’s not only music that the Taliban resolves to crack down on. According to India Today, female voices on TV and radio channels have also been outlawed.