A year of Propagating Virtue and Preventing Vice: Enforcers and ‘enforced’ speak about the Emirate’s morality law

This report is drawn from research which will be published in full as a thematic report. 

You can read AAN’s short translation of the law here and a full version, with footnotes, here.

One of the first actions of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) on regaining power in August 2021 was a profoundly symbolic one – turning the Ministry of Women’s Affairs into the Ministry for Propagating Virtue and Preventing Vice.^[1] Then, a year ago, on 21 August 2024, the power of the ministry was amplified by a decree from Supreme Leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada. It consolidated and codified many of the Emirate’s existing rules, repeating some of those he had already issued as decrees, orders or instructions, broadening others and adding new types of behaviour or actions that became obligatory or forbidden.

The articles of the 45,000-word-long law which are most heavily policed are: men must grow beards that are at least as long as their fists and wear loose-fitting clothes, and pray on time and in a mosque; and women must wear what the Emirate calls ‘sharia hijab’, ie be fully covered, except for their eyes, with their voices also considered to be awra (a term used usually to refer to parts of the body that should be hidden). The stated rationale for the strict rules on women’s dress is to prevent fitna, meaning temptation, or social disorder that facilitates sin. Worth noting here is that interviewees sometimes refer to women as “not wearing hijab” (bi-hijab). This does not mean they are not covering their heads, but that they are wearing less bulky or less covering clothes than the speaker thinks is ‘proper’ or ‘permissible’.^[2]

The law also laid out the duties and powers of those policing it, the enforcers (muhtasibin), who are charged with amr bil-maruf wa nahi an il-munkar, ‘propagating virtue and preventing vice’. In this report, we refer to both this type of policing and its enforcers by the shorthand used by Afghans, amr bil-maruf, as well as ‘vice and virtue’.

We interviewed nine members of the public, six women and three men, from a variety of urban locations: Bamyan, Mazar-e Sharif in Balkh, Ghazni, Herat, Qalat, provincial capital of Zabul, one of the urban centres in Loya Paktia and Kabul. Some had travelled and could compare their experiences of amr bil-maruf in different provinces. We also spoke to three male enforcers, from Panjshir, Wardak and Paktia, who all now work in the capital.^[3] The names of all the interviewees have been changed to safeguard their anonymity. Any details that might identify them have also been omitted.

A climate of fear

Almost all of our non-enforcer interviewees were frightened of amr bil-maruf and had taken steps to change their behaviour or dress so as to avoid confrontations. For women, the threat is felt deeply. For example, Pari, a midwife working in Kabul, described how after three encounters with amr bil-maruf when outside, she now felt forced to cover her face – they had not accepted her excuse that she had difficulty breathing. She described the third occasion they stopped her in the street:

I was near Pul-e Surkh when suddenly, I was surrounded from all sides by these amr bil-maruf officers – about six of them. All six grabbed my arms and said, “We warned you the other day not to wear these clothes or show your face like this again. Why didn’t you obey?” I was so terrified by this that I couldn’t even speak and was shaking. Eventually, with tears in my eyes, I said, “Mawlawi Sahib, I apologise. My clothes are fine, but I can’t wear a niqab because I have difficulty breathing; it feels like my heart is constricting.” He replied that, if you feel your heart constricting, then don’t go outside. Now, should I call the police to take you to the station? 

The men threatened to summon her family to the police station to guarantee she dressed ‘properly’ in the future. “Hearing their words,” Pari said, “my whole body began to tremble.” She said one of the enforcers took pity on her and let her go, but she was left in a state of “absolute terror,” and now either asks her father to walk her to work or takes a car. She also said that every time she leaves the house, her mother worries and calls her several times a day to check that she is OK, even when she is at work. This may seem like an overreaction, but, Pari said, amr bil-maruf also come to the hospital “two or three times a day” to make sure staff are segregated and that women are wearing full hijab, including covering their faces. If they do not, she said, they will be fired:

We are, thank God, Muslims, and we have always observed hijab in the past, but we did not wear long cloaks or Arabic-style hijab. … I’ve been working in hospitals for nearly eight years now and it’s impractical for [medical staff] to wear full hijab or traditional long dresses because [our] work environment differs from other workplaces.

Pari was not the only interviewee to be stopped on the street or at their place of work by the enforcers. Samira works as a teacher and a midwife – she switched careers after the Emirate stopped her progressing to her fifth year of medical training, when they banned women from higher education. She spoke about her experiences teaching in educational centres in Bamyan and Kabul:

In Bamyan, every Thursday, [the enforcers] would visit the centre to inspect the girls’ hijab. They’d train us on how to advise our students to wear niqab and hijab properly and how to comply with the amr bil-maruf law, instructing us to tell our students to wear long abayas, black scarves, black shoes, black socks, and, if possible, black gloves, and stressing that they should avoid white shoes and scarves.

Samira also described a raid on the Kabul educational institute where she taught:

Around 15 enforcers arrived in half a dozen vehicles. Suddenly, our institute’s guard started calling the girls to wear their scarves properly, warning that the enforcers would arrest anyone who didn’t comply. … There were 85 students in my class. When the enforcers arrived, they said our hijabs looked acceptable, but then they also stood near the gate, checking the girls’ hijabs again from head to toe. I witnessed girls fainting and some even hiding in the toilets out of fear. They did not have a single female enforcer with them. It was all men who checked our clothing. It was such a terrifying scene because they came in such force and with so many vehicles.

The first theme to emerge in these and other interviews, and the starkest, is the climate of fear engendered by amr bil-maruf. The threat to women of being spoken to, insulted or even arrested has had a strong deterrent effect. It ensures women not only keep to the Taliban’s dress code. Some of our interviewees also reported that they (or their female relatives) now rarely leave the house, or only with a man. The reason why the threats are so powerful was explained by Hasina, a worker with an NGO in Kabul, who relayed what her brothers had said: “They say that God doesn’t want any of us taken to the authorities, as it would bring shame on our family. If one of us were taken for not wearing hijab, people would not believe that was the actual reason. They would think of other, negative reasons for the arrest.” Parvez, a teacher from Ghazni, also explained: “In this traditional society, when amr bil-maruf arrests a woman or imprisons her, people will think badly of the woman. They don’t think she must have left her home because she had to.”

Families ‘self-policing’

The deterrent, then, goes beyond the individual. The threat of unrelated men admonishing or even arresting their wives, daughters or sisters has led many families to police their female relatives, even if they do not actually agree with the new rules. In Mazar-e Sharif, businesswoman Safira, for example, said she can no longer go out alone. Previously, her husband, “a broad-minded person,” was more relaxed, but since the new law, she said, “he has also become very conservative, meaning he doesn’t let me go out alone. He might accompany me or ask our son to do so. My husband has brought these restrictions as he’s frightened that the enforcers might stop, arrest and detain me. We heard they’d even arrested women who were wearing hijab. Even if you’re fully covered, they might still find a pretext to take you with them.”

The law thereby also infantilises women: Safira, who owns and runs a factory, has to rely on her husband or son when she goes out. Hasina, the NGO worker, who used to travel to different provinces for work, now has to take her brother or a 14-year-old nephew with her if she wants to leave the house.

Going beyond the law and a major paradox

Also emerging from our interviews is that enforcers go above and beyond even the tight restrictions of the current laws. Safira in Mazar, for example, was told she must wear a burqa and several women have been told to wear gloves. Many were told that they must have a mahram when they are outside. Yet, an earlier rule had specified that this is only obligatory if a woman is travelling more than 72 kilometres, while a law on women’s clothing issued in May 2022, as well as the vice and virtue law itself, acknowledges that women may have to leave the house if necessary. Neither specifies that this must be with a mahram.^[4]

What is striking as well is that although the law forbids unrelated men and women from looking at each other, amr bil-maruf are charged with just this task: scrutinising women, speaking to them and even detaining them. The three enforcers we interviewed (more from whom below) all said they were not comfortable dealing with unrelated women and would certainly rather not talk to them. Yet there appear to be enforcers who are not loathe to go into female-only classrooms or parts of a hospital.

Men’s experiences

One of the men we heard from, Parvez, the school teacher in Ghazni, when asked about the impact of the law, said restrictions on men were harsh, but far harsher for women. He described how his wife could no longer “go out freely due to fear of the enforcers.” A teacher herself, she is now unemployed because of Taliban restrictions and “can’t go out without a mahram and can’t dress how she wants to, but must wear black clothes, a niqab and even gloves: “This is what we don’t like,” he said. “We don’t want others to interfere in personal issues. We’re Muslim, so we know what sharia asks us to do, but the Taliban overdo it. They’re excessive [efrat mekonand].” Parvez had himself lost one job over beard and clothing violations, but managed to get another. He was still “very young,” he said, and liked to wear the latest fashions, but after being stopped twice, the second time with the threat of prison for trimming his beard a little, he now conformed to the demands of amr bil-maruf.

In Kandahar, businessman Ahmad Khan said he himself was not bothered by amr bil-maruf. His age, as well as his beard and clothes – similar to the enforcers’ – gave him some protection and in the upmarket part of Kandahar, “a civilised township,” where he lives, the enforcers were respectful. However, he said:

This law has robbed us of our freedom [as a family] to go to restaurants and eat a meal, or to an ice cream parlour. Women cannot go to restaurants even with a mahram. I can’t take my female family members with me on a picnic. I can’t even travel with my wife in my own car with my heart at ease. 

He said the enforcers do stop and question the young men in his family if they are out driving with female family members: “My sons and I no longer go out with our wives unless it’s necessary,” he said. “We’re afraid they’ll beat us or threaten us in front of our wives.”

Only one of our interviewees reported an easier experience, Zarghuna, the principal of a girls’ primary school in one of the urban centres of the southeast. She explained that, because her province was “traditional,” the new law had made no difference to what women there wore. She and her fellow teachers also still walked to work without mahrams: all of them “are from the same area,” she said, “and so we don’t need a mahram.” Families could also still go out to recreational areas together.

Local women, she said, rarely go shopping – men generally do that – but sometimes, women without a mahram or a man at home do have to go to the market. There never used to be a problem, she said. However, they had started to see a clampdown. Shopkeepers – including pharmacists – had been told not to serve unaccompanied women and warned that if they were caught doing so, their pharmacy or shop would be closed and sealed. She said some shopkeepers in the market, out of fear of the Taliban, would not now sell anything to female customers, not even medicine. Also, for the last two years, women had been required to be accompanied to government offices and hospitals. Even women in need, if unchaperoned, would now be turned away from hospitals. Women who don’t have a mahram at home,” she said, “are really facing problems.”

Most of the interviewees described being stopped and questioned at checkpoints if they travelled out of town, but Zarghuna said that, when travelling to and from Kabul, amr bil maruf had never stopped the car. She had also seen women on that road travelling without a mahram. A woman alone would not be allowed to board a bus or a shared taxi to a distant place, she said, but they could travel in a group of three or four.

Her comments shed some light on regional differences. Where amr bil-maruf rules on dress and behaviour are normal, there appears to be less friction between enforcers and the populace. Another interviewee, Rashid Khan in Zabul, for example, when asked about the impact of the law on his female family members, said it had not affected their freedom at all. They could “still go to the wedding parties of neighbours and relatives as in the past – they’re held in homes, not in wedding halls, which have been banned in other provinces^[5] – and there have never been parks or other entertainment places in Qalat city that women can go to.”

However, Zarghuna’s experience also points to possibly greater leeway in her ‘traditional’ province than a city like Kabul – or greater respect for the populace, or fear, if enforcers are concerned that male relatives might react badly if they challenge women over their behaviour, especially if it has always been deemed acceptable, such as the teachers walking to work unchaperoned. There are also fewer enforcers than in the major cities, like Kabul, Mazar and Herat, where, as well, women – and men – have had greater freedom, and the enforcers see more ‘wrongdoing’ that they want to correct – and come down more heavily. Our interviews with the three enforcers also shed some light on this. None are from Kabul, but all are now working there and they find it an alien and alienating city.

The enforcers’ experience

Mullah Hamdullah from Paktia and Mawlawi Niamatullah from Wardak both described joining amr bil-maruf in terms of getting a (well-paid) job. Our third enforcer interviewee, Qari Abdul Aziz from Panjshir, said he had always had a strong attraction to da’wa – inviting Muslims to strengthen their faith or non-believers to embrace Islam – and as a graduate of sharia, the job of amr bil-maruf was, for him, a calling. All three had found that the Afghan capital was rife with wrongdoing, as Mullah Hamdullah said:

It’s a hugely populated city, with people from all across Afghanistan and the amount of munkarat [wrongdoing] is high. Immorality is widespread. Hijab is a major issue, as many women don’t observe it. Many young people shave their beards, adopt Western-style haircuts and engage in drug use and other harmful behaviour. Extra-marital relationships are also a serious concern.

“The most common problem among men,” said Mawlawi Niamatullah, “is the use of drugs like tablet k.^[6] The other issue is flirting with girls. Among women, the major problems are not wearing proper hijab, and again, flirting with men.”

Qari Abdul Aziz said working in Kabul was far more difficult than in his home province, where he was familiar with the people and understood their culture:

It was easier to ‘invite’ women [in Panjshir] than in Kabul because I didn’t have to face women there. If a woman in the area was without hijab, I’d call her family, her father and brother, and the head of the village and tell them that she shouldn’t go outside without a hijab. Our job was easy there because I faced [only] the men and we knew the people. I’d convey my message to women through her family. 

In Kabul, there are many women without hijab, but we can’t find their families. Nor do we have the courage to speak directly to an unrelated woman. However, we try to guide them through various means. We make them understand, so they realise they should observe hijab. This is extremely difficult because we can’t stop an unrelated woman and have a conversation with her.

He said that, most of the time, it was good to seek help from the local elders, the wakil-e guzar (neighbourhood head) or the imam from the mosque, or they informed the residents of the area that women must observe “full sharia-compliant hijab.” However, in the markets, he said, they encountered all kinds of people, and sometimes a woman, asked politely to observe hijab or maintain her distance from men, would “respond rudely and we’re obliged to remain silent and leave the area because we don’t use force – we only speak to them gently.”

All three enforcers felt disrespected, even wary of the people they had to deal with, especially Kabuli women, as Mawlawi Niamatullah explained:

Women in Kabul are not like women. They’re actually men, or even more than men. When we ask them why they don’t wear hijab, they argue and behave very rudely. I personally try to avoid them as much as possible and tell others to deal with them.

In the past, I was in Logar. There was also wrongdoing there, but not as much. People there had some sense of shame. When you told or warned them once, they’d stop. Here, people don’t care about shame and do whatever they want. We therefore had a good time, as people would listen and cooperate. But not here. People neither listen to us nor respect us.

Mullah Hamdullah said they were instructed to deal with people respectfully and to try to persuade them in “a kind, convincing manner to abandon their wrongdoing,” as sharia instructs. He believes this approach is failing:

For the past four years, we’ve taken a soft approach, but we haven’t seen much change. To be honest, there’s very little difference compared to the time of the previous government. Markets are still full of women, men are clean-shaven and copying female styles, and hijab is barely observed. I believe this is the result of our soft approach. We just say, “Do this,” and “Don’t do that,” and that’s all. But it’s not enough. When we try to enforce something, or use a stricter method, people complain, and then we get questioned by the authorities about our actions.

Qari Abdul Aziz had a more balanced view of the populace:

The people’s attitude toward the enforcers isn’t very good. They view them quite negatively because they believe we disrupt their lives and that makes them bitter. The majority of the youth are dissatisfied with our work. But there are also good people in the community who regard us positively and treat us as the ulema. They’re satisfied with our efforts. Even so, in Kabul, we treat everyone equally. We don’t compromise with anyone, and no one has told us to compromise with the people. But because we’re all religious scholars, we enforcers are always gentle. Perhaps some enforcers sometimes deal with people seriously and harshly. But where I work and where my colleagues are, we haven’t been serious with anyone yet. We’ve always been gentle.

How the enforcers are viewed

The interviews reveal a mismatch between how the enforcers see their jobs and how the interviewees viewed them. For example, small businesswoman Aisha in Herat said: “They’re all the same, very cruel. At least, that’s the case in Herat. I haven’t seen any differences among them. Whenever I go out – out of necessity – I see them in different parts of the city and they all appear frightening.” Overall, she said, they do not consider women to be “human beings.” NGO worker Hasina also said she did not, in any way, trust the amr bil-maruf:

These morality enforcers undermine religion and present a distorted and inhumane image of Islam, which is unacceptable to me because our Islam is not defined in the way the Taliban portray it. They implement everything according to their own desires, not based on sharia or Afghan culture. … Essentially, they impose their own interpretation of Islam on people. Whatever they want, they force people to accept – sometimes by coercion, sometimes by persuasion. In my opinion, Islam is not what they claim it to be; Islam is not this harsh. After all, we’re all Muslims – whether they enforce it or not. Most women observe hijab. However, it must be said that, among them, there are good and bad. Some speak to people with kindness and gentle words, while others behave harshly, especially when dealing with what they consider a ‘crime’ – although we may not call it a crime. In our view, a crime is when someone commits a shameful act that harms society, not when a bit of hair is visible.

The one interviewee with a more favourable view of amr bil-maruf – although not of other aspects of Emirate rule – was Zarghuna, the school principal from Loya Paktia:

I trust the enforcers because they seem to be good people. Most of them are religious scholars and preach the truth. No one’s been bothered by them yet. The only thing that bothers me, and most people, is the restriction on girls’ education. Hijab is a religious requirement, whether the Taliban say it or not. We are, thank God, Muslims and we respect the hijab.

However, as she has travelled to Kabul, she could also comment on how different things were in the capital, including the many more enforcers. “I believe,” she said, “they act more strictly in Kabul than in [my province] because Kabul is home to diverse people with different cultures and women move around more freely than in rural areas. Their style of clothing is also different – many girls in Kabul wear Punjabi-style clothes^[7] or don’t observe hijab, which is why the enforcers are stricter in Kabul than in the provinces. Perhaps [the enforcers’] behaviour towards people also differs.”

A year of fear and deterrence

The Emirate’s law to propagate virtue and prevent vice has undoubtedly had a profound impact on the lives of many Afghans. It is the vehicle by which the state seeks to ensure compliance with its dress code and various aspects of behaviour, especially that men should pray in the mosque and women stay hidden at home. As Hasina said, this law is not so much about propagating virtue, as seeking outward conformity and compliance. It is explicitly aimed at public behaviour, not, as it says, “prying into people’s private sins” (article 10). Yet Hasina was not alone in feeling the state is now intruding into Afghans’ personal lives.

In a February 2023 AAN report about five Taliban who had come to live and work in Kabul, what was fascinating was how their view of the city and its people changed once they lived there. They had understood it to have been degraded by Western ways, but found men going to the mosque and “unlike villages where a lot of people go to the mosque to impress others,” said one, “[p]eople in Kabul go there just for the sake of Allah.” You could also see, he said, an Uzbek, a Pashtun and a Tajik going to the same mosque and living in a single building.” They were alarmed by the number of women outside and not ‘properly’ dressed, but one of the interviewees, enrolling on a computer course and finding one of his fellow students was female (when that was still allowed), discovered that all hell did not break loose. The five missed the freedom of the jihad and hated the nine-to-five routine of office work, but so much of what they encountered in the capital was positive that all but one planned to move his family there.

That report was somehow hopeful, suggesting that human interaction could increase knowledge and respect for ‘the other’. This research on amr bil-maruf has suggested otherwise, with both enforcers and enforced feeling alienated and uneasy, or even frightened. The law is certainly proving a success for the Emirate, forcing compliance directly or through deterrence, and for women, using their families and the fear of scandal to impel self-policing. Many Afghans have changed their behaviour and dress, albeit out of fear. However, that fear may actually be an additional benefit of the amr bil-maruf system for the Emirate, given its belief in the absolute authority of the leader and the necessity of obedience to him, a characteristic familiar in authoritarian states everywhere. Significantly, as well, the drive to further induce conformity has, as yet, no end in sight. Mullah Hamdullah, the enforcer from Paktia, summed up the continuing mission of amr bil-maruf – to reform Afghans, even if that takes time:

I believe that if someone is truly a Muslim, a real Afghan with dignity, they should support what we do. Amr bil-maruf is a central pillar of Islam and of any Islamic system. I understand there may be problems in how we implement it, but people’s resistance to it is mostly due to the moral decay in society. For twenty years, a secular government ruled with the direct support of non-believers. They tried to distance people from Islam and Afghan values. So now, when we try to reverse that, naturally, some people are offended. That’s to be expected, but in time, things will change.

Edited by Jelena Bjelica and Roxanna Shapour