Since its re-establishment in 2021, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has implemented a number of policies with far-reaching consequences for the country’s cultural life. They include a ban on all musical performances (AAN), severe limitations on poetry (Hasht-e Subh) and, most notably, the exclusion of girls from education beyond the sixth grade (BBC). Thousands of educated Afghans, including writers, artists and musicians, have left the country fearing reprisals or having found it impossible to continue working and living there.
In 2025, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan intensified its efforts to circumscribe the information available to Afghan citizens, following its October 2024 order to libraries and bookstores to remove books that were now prohibited. In July 2025, a special committee was set up to scrutinise university curricula. It subsequently abolished whole courses and removed hundreds of textbooks deemed contrary to Emirate beliefs and policies. The Afghan book market had already been at a standstill, for various reasons, since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. In this report, AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini examines the known lists of banned books to understand which titles they contain and why the IEA may have decided to prohibit them.
In this context, the banning of books may appear a lesser step. However, as is often the case, censorship of this type is an important tool for governments seeking to exert greater control over their citizens. The prohibition of specific items serves a dual purpose: restricting access makes it more difficult, expensive and risky for people to obtain banned items, while at the same time making it easier for the authorities to punish violators by transforming transgressions from the abstract into concrete, enforceable violations. Moreover, as is often the case with political movements that ground their authority in moral and religious assertions, such actions reinforce their claims to superiority over the masses and the consequent need to guide them. They may also endow supporters with a sense of purpose by unleashing a ‘witch hunt’ against those perceived to be violating the rules. History abounds with such examples. It was, after all, only in the latter part of the 20th century (1966) that the Catholic Church ceased to uphold what was possibly the largest and longest-lasting of such lists, its Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books).
Against this backdrop, few were surprised when it emerged that the Emirate had issued a list of banned books to libraries and bookstores in October 2024 (Amu TV). While it is unclear how high a priority the implementation of the censorship rules represents for the IEA, reports indicate that pressure has been exerted on booksellers to comply with the directives. Even before the circulation of the list of more than 400 titles, a significant number of books had already been confiscated – some 50,000 in Kabul alone during the first week of January 2024 – and inspections had been carried out in bookshops and libraries across Afghanistan (Radio Azadi, Kabul Now).
October 2024, however, would not be the last time a list of banned books was circulated. In fact, another major list of banned books was announced in mid-September 2025. This time, it included university textbooks and was followed by the cancellation of a number of academic courses, and then by additional blacklists related to the curricula of particular universities in mid-November 2025.
The rationale for the control of culture
Since the mass diffusion of printed books, censorship of publications has constituted a primary field of action for autocratic governments. Where political power has been coupled with religious authority, this has often made it easier to prohibit specific texts by labelling them as blasphemous or claiming they would corrupt people’s minds. Since the movement’s inception, part of the Taliban’s ideological baggage has revolved around the rejection of many secular notions of education and culture, often labelled as ‘modern’ or ‘Western’. Although this aspect was initially less prominent than in other Islamist movements – such as Boko Haram in West Africa – it became increasingly relevant for the Taliban during the years leading to their second ascent to power as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
This shift is closely linked to the transformations in Afghan society and culture during the two decades of foreign intervention (2001-2021). During the First Emirate (1996-2001), there was relatively little to ban. The Taliban assumed power from an already conservative Islamic government formed by mujahedin parties, which, alongside fighting each other and plunging the country into civil war, had already implemented restrictions on education and culture in the wake of their victory over the ‘infidel’ communist government in 1992. In a country that had experienced limited modernisation – mainly in the cities – and had been laid to waste by invasion and internecine fighting, there was relatively little written material for the Taliban censors to ban.
They did, nevertheless, act against a number of perceived threats. For example, footage of the public destruction of televisions, VHS tapes and music cassettes went viral in the outside world, contributing to shaping the image of the Taliban abroad during this period.
If the prohibition of books and printed material did not feature prominently in news reporting during the first Emirate, this was due both to the powerful visual impact of these other forms of cultural censorship and to the limited availability of books, especially as new publications and translations of foreign authors were scarce, given the previous decade and a half of war and restrictions on the free publishing and circulation of books imposed by previous regimes, first under the PDPA and later under the mujahedin.
By contrast, Afghanistan in 2021 offered a far wider range of potential targets for censorship. Over the previous two decades, book publishing had blossomed in Afghanistan, with the emergence of numerous Afghan authors across fields ranging from political science to fiction and poetry. Additionally, a large number of foreign works had become available in translation in both national languages, Dari and Pashto, while previously unavailable books from Iran and Pakistan had been widely distributed. Meanwhile, partially as a reaction to the unprecedented development of higher education in the country, the Taliban discourse had come to include, as a major component of their ideology, the rejection of what they saw as the incipient ‘Westernisation’ of Afghan society, exposed as it had been to modern curricula and the circulation of foreign ideas and texts. Such distrust lies behind much of the intent to ban certain books. In this report, we examine which books and topics the IEA has objected to and how it has justified outlawing them, first by looking at the list of now-banned university textbooks and amended curricula, before turning to the more general ban affecting libraries and the wider book market.
Reshaping university teaching
Changing university curricula has often been the prerogative of governments that come to power after a period of turmoil, when disruption has affected a country’s higher education system. This was the case for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which was established after two decades of high-intensity conflict, territorial fragmentation and lack of government capacity had all but destroyed Afghanistan’s university system. However, such reform is rarely easy or smooth.
The author recalls, for example, the lengthy process that led to the creation of new curricula for the faculties of law and sharia at Kabul University in 2004-05, during which Ashraf Ghani was serving as chancellor. Extensive research and consultations across the Muslim world – and at times heated debate – accompanied the quest for the textbooks that would forge a new generation of Afghan jurists. The subsequent failure of the Republic’s judicial system and the comparative success of the Taliban courts can hardly be attributed to faulty curricula, however. Rather, they were the inevitable outcomes of the corruption and abuse of power by influential people during the Republic.
By contrast, the IEA’s efforts to reshape university curricula have been sudden, swift and opaque. At a 13 July 2025 meeting of the Ministries of Religious Affairs, Information and Culture, Education, and Higher Education, it was announced that a committee had been formed, composed of their respective representatives, who were tasked with reviewing books and referring “suspicious contents to clerics for further scrutiny” (The Independent). At the origin of this initiative lies, arguably, an order by Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada urging the removal of books deemed liable to mislead and corrupt society.
The outcome of the newly formed committee’s activities did not take long to materialise. In mid-September 2025, a list containing 679 banned textbooks – described as “conflicting with Sharia and the IEA policies” – was issued to all universities in Afghanistan (BBC). At the same time, the committee also issued lists of university subjects that were now banned (18 courses), or that should be handled with caution and taught only within certain parameters (201 courses). The committee has remained active, however, releasing additional lists of textbooks to be excluded from teaching at various Afghan universities, including one listing 96 titles at Kabul University in mid-November 2025 (Hasht-e Subh).
The eighteen university subjects banned by the committee in mid-September were:
- Fundamental Laws of Afghanistan;
- Islamic political movements;
- Good governance;
- Electoral systems;
- Afghanistan’s political system;
- Political sociology of Afghanistan;
- Gender and development;
- Human Rights and democracy;
- Analysis of the Constitution of Afghanistan;
- Globalisation and development;
- History of religions;
- Sociology of women;
- Moral philosophy;
- Sexual harassment;
- Employment diversity in relation to gender;
- Small group leadership;
- Gender relations;
- Role of women in mass communications.
Six of these subjects relate directly to women or gender studies. The IEA may assume that, given women’s exclusion from universities, there are no prospective students for such courses, or that they are neither relevant nor appropriate for male students. Other subjects may have been considered redundant, such as studying a political system or constitution that no longer exist. Finally, subjects such as the History of Religions, Human Rights and Democracy, and Moral Philosophy might have been considered too controversial and potentially dangerous to be taught at all.
Additionally, more than two hundred other subjects, while still permitted, are subject to limitations and further scrutiny. Among them, one can find a much wider range of topics, from the somewhat expected, such as the History of Western Political Thought and Child Psychology, to the seemingly non-controversial, such as Consumer Protection Rights and the Solar System. Peace and Conflict Resolution is also included in this list.
The list of banned textbooks features a high proportion of titles by Iranian authors or published in Iran (310) and by women (140). Most of the banned books pertain to the curricula of the faculties of Law and Political Sciences, Administration and Public Policy, Sociology, Communication Sciences and Journalism, Educational and Professional Sciences and Psychology. The latter has been particularly affected, with its curriculum severely curtailed due to the elimination of a large number of subjects. Other faculties that have seen the elimination of a number of relevant textbooks include Sharia, Languages and Literature, History, Geography, and Economics. The Arts have also seen some titles banned, especially those on the history and critique of theatre and cinema – subjects that hold little appeal for IEA ideologues.
The sciences fare only slightly better, with a high proportion of excluded texts by Iranian authors, particularly in the faculties of Engineering and Physics. In the scientific fields, banned titles tend either to have been written by women or Iranians, or deal with issues the Taliban view as controversial, either because they are ideologically or politically sensitive, such as evolution by natural selection in Biology, or mining laws and international labour rights in Geology.
However, when it comes to sensitive topics, even if addressed by male Afghan authors, the same pattern applies in all faculties. Such topics include those concerned with fundamental rights, electoral systems, penal jurisprudence, Islamic philosophy – and even the history of Sufism. This means that writing about evolution is objectionable, even if by a Pashtun man. At the same time, the work of authors from Iran is rejected even when the subject is relatively innocuous, such as Techniques of Gilding. It seems it is unacceptable to read a book, even on a topic such as topographic drawing, if it has been written by a woman, whether Afghan or foreign. This cannot be due to concerns that the feminine gaze could alter the proper perception of landscape. IEA officials have acknowledged that there is a general ban in Afghan universities on teaching any book written by a woman (BBC). A similarly categorical justification has been offered for the ban on books by Iranian authors, which was motivated, in the words of a member of the committee to the BBC, by the need “to prevent the infiltration of Iranian content in the Afghan curriculum.” This, however, ignores the fact that even some Afghan authors writing in Dari are better able to publish in Iran, and that Persian has long served as the medium through which global knowledge and literature reach the Afghan public.
Besides the mostly Afghan and Iranian women and men, the translations of Western books, some by outstanding scholars writing well before the Taliban, are also banned. One such example is History of Afghanistan’s Political Relations by the doyen of Afghan Studies, the late Ludwig Adamec (see AAN’s obituary). The works of many other foreign scholars of Afghanistan, as well as those of Afghan authors, had already been targeted in a previous proscription list issued by the IEA in October 2024 and aimed at the general book market and libraries, which is the subject of the next section of this report.
A somewhat random Index Librorum Prohibitorum
One could say that the state of the book market after the fall of the Republic was too bleak to justify the state seeking to exert intellectual control over what gets published and read. The Afghan book market had already largely gone cold after the Taliban’s ascent to power, owing to the flight of many intellectuals and educated youth and to the economic crisis, which rendered the purchase of books a relative luxury (Al Jazeera). Many potential readers still in Afghanistan have grown reluctant to spend money on books, given the reduced value of education and cultural capital in the job market, or the lack of access to education altogether. Many publishing houses have shut down and the country’s declining literary output has been only partially compensated for by various new publications tolerated or even promoted by the IEA (AAN). Despite this, in October 2024, Emirate officials informed libraries and booksellers that 433 books (though a couple of titles are repeated) were now subject to bans or restricted circulation.
The titles included both non-fiction and fiction by Afghan and international authors. Overall, the list is neither comprehensive nor fully representative of what is available to Afghan readers on bookshop shelves, in terms of world literature. It is, however, sufficiently varied to prompt one to describe it as somewhat random and therefore warrants a closer look to make sense of the reasons behind the selection of titles.
Roughly three-quarters of the books on the list are by Afghan authors, the rest by foreigners, including a substantial number of Iranians and Western writers, as well as some from Pakistan and a small number from other countries. Most of the books are simply banned, while ten titles on the list can be consulted, with authorisation, for research purposes only. Some of the latter are well-known works such as Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Freedom; acclaimed Albanian writer Ismail Kadare’s novel The Twilight of the Eastern Gods; and essays on postmodernity by David Lyon and Francis Fukuyama.
Most of the banned titles are about Afghanistan’s recent history and are written by both Afghan and foreign authors. Several prominent international scholars of United States foreign policy and of Afghanistan appear on the list, including Steve Coll, Bruce Riedel, Peter Marsden, Ahmad Rashid, Antonio Giustozzi, Christine Fair, Anand Gopal and Bette Dam. Notably, some of these authors explored a wide range of perspectives on the Afghan conflict, including Taliban viewpoints, during the insurgency and well before the Taliban had made their spectacular comeback.
The choice to ban these authors reflects one of the IEA’s clear concerns: rewriting Afghanistan’s recent history according to its own narratives. While effacing the large body of publications produced over two decades by Afghan and foreign authors might prove too monumental a task even for the IEA’s zealous censors, removing texts that extensively explore aspects of the Taliban’s insurgent modus operandi, leadership structures and regional links is more feasible. Notably, those titles that explore highly controversial issues, such as the use of suicide bombers against both military and civilian targets during the conflict or the movement’s relationship with Pakistan, have been earmarked for prohibition.
The issue of suicide bombers appears to be particularly sensitive for the IEA. A number of the relatively few titles devoted to the phenomenon appear on the banned list, including those by Afghan as well as foreign authors. So much so that even a dystopian black-comedy novel – The Suicide Shop by Jean Teulé – is included even though it does not deal with religiously or politically motivated suicide bombers, possibly because of the connection with suicide itself, which is clear from the title (retained in Dari), rather than because of its broader mockingly nihilist undertones.
Books on the Islamic State and Afghan-Pakistani relations are also forbidden, including those by former Pakistani officials and titles dealing with issues such as the Durand Line. More generally, some books on the countries of the region, whether or not they specifically focus on their role in the Afghan conflict, are also banned.
Also featured are several books by prominent Republic-era figures and members of the intelligentsia. Of particular concern seem to have been the various biographies or memoirs devoted to slain anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massud, both the more serious and informative ones by historians and the hagiographic pamphlets produced by admirers across the globe. Works by, or related to, other notable military and political adversaries of the Taliban, such as Burhanuddin Rabbani, Qasim Fahim, Rashid Dostum, Abdul Ali Mazari, Muhammad Mohaqiq and Karim Khalili, all prominent members of the United Front (commonly known as Northern Alliance) and most also of the later Republican establishment, are also banned.
The same fate has befallen books about former communist president Najibullah or his policies, such as his national reconciliation programme. This seems a logical attitude towards a political figure whom the Taliban killed – and whose body they desecrated – when they first took Kabul in 1996. Other books by Najibullah’s biographer, the investigative journalist-turned-historian, Razaq Mamun, are also banned, as are works by members of the previous communist governments, such as Sulayman Layeq (see AAN’s obituary).
Another category comprises books on religion, whether on Islam or, more broadly, on religious or existential themes. Books on Shia theology – especially those on the Ahl al-Bait (the family of the Prophet) are targeted, not least because many of them come from Iran. For example, many titles by Iranian religious thinker Abdul Karim Soroush are banned as being against national interests and, at times, even against belief. Research on Afghan Shia communities is sometimes disqualified under the label of “disputed issues,” such as in the case of the volumes entitled A Profile of the Ashura Incident, by a research centre, and Hazaras by Hassan Poladi.
Books by Sunni theologians, however, have not been spared either. Some works on Sufism, including ancient and well-known Sufi treatises such as the Kashf al-Asrar [The Unveiling of Secrets], an 11th century spiritual Quranic exegesis by Herat’s most revered Sufi saint, Khwaja Abdullah Ansari, are also banned.
The Emirate appears to be taking a cautious attitude towards any debate over issues of theology or Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). In some cases, there is an ‘even-handed banning’, such as books that defend and support both sides of a dispute, such as in the case of Wahhabism. The IEA officially adheres to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence and rejects Wahabi doctrines, which are derived from the Hanbali school. The banning of its principal text, by Muhammad ibn al-Wahab, is, therefore, no surprise. However, the list also bans a refutation of Wahabism by two muftis, motivated by “research problems.”
Several other titles are banned on grounds that they proselytise Christianity. These also form a motley list, ranging from the 15th century devotional manual, The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, to the 1926 collection of aphorisms, Sand and Foam, by Lebanese-American writer, Khalil Gibran Khalil, who is also accused of blasphemy for his The Madman, the Forerunner and the Wanderer (1918). Other books by Christian thinkers or closely connected to Christian theology, such as the 5th century The City of God by Saint Augustine, Dante’s 14th century poem The Divine Comedy,and the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith (1830), are also on the list.
Then, predictably, there are books dealing with philosophical, socio-economic, and political systems opposed by the IEA, such as books by or about Karl Marx and titles about the Cuban Revolution.
As expected, a relatively large number of titles revolve around the condition of women in Afghanistan or feminism more broadly: from Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) by Simone de Beauvoir (published in 1949) to Kabul Beauty Schoolby hairdresser Deborah Rodriguez (2007), and Rachel Hollis’ self-help book Girl, Wash Your Face (2018). Titles by Afghan or Iranian female authors, from Women’s Political Participation by Fatima Jaffari to the Wives of the Prophet and Women with the Prophet by Marzieh Mohammadzadeh, are also banned, along with I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai. Again, no big surprise.
Alongside works by prominent Afghan novelists, the list includes a number of translations of Western fiction. Inexplicable, at least to the writer, is the seemingly random selection of some Western novels, especially as they hardly represent the full range of translated titles in Dari, if not Pashto, available to the Afghan public. The inclusion of Heinrich Boll’s The Clown (1963), a critique of Germany’s post-World War II society, its conformism, loss of values and the Protestant vs Catholic split, is one such. Even more puzzling is the appearance on the list of Renee Carlino’s novel, Swear on this Life (2016), which centres on “two childhood best friends who fall in love and dream of a better life beyond the long dirt road that winds through their impoverished town in rural Ohio.” Of all plots of potential concern to the IEA, these are hardly the first that one would single out – unless maybe the IEA censors are way subtler than assumed.
Against national interests
The list provides a range of reasons for banning titles. In most cases, the books are deemed to be “against national interests.” This designation may stand alone or be coupled with other alleged transgressions, such as being contrary to “beliefs,” “culture,” “policies,” “principles” or “values.” More rarely, two or more of these terms also appear in combination, without “national interests” being at stake.
Broadly speaking, the charge of being against national interests is applied to all books about Afghanistan’s recent history, political figures opposed to the Taliban, the Hazaras or Shia communities in general, neighbouring countries and women’s rights. However, many texts dealing with world history or the history of world religions also fall under this category, such as Hendrik Willem van Loon’s The Story of Mankind, a 1921 book originally intended to explain global history to children.
Justifications can be quite blunt: Islamic State: Digital Caliphate (2015) by Palestinian-British author Abdul Bari Atwan is dismissed as “mind-numbing.” Occasionally, less generic accusations are formulated against specific titles. For example, some essays by pro-Republic Afghan scholars, together with memoirs by (retired) Pakistani generals, are labelled “negative propaganda,” while An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion by Michael C Rea and Michael J Murray (2008) is seen as going against Islamic principles and mid-17th century Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan is considered to be against religion tout court.
Several books on Nawruz, the vernal equinox celebrated as the new year in many parts of Afghanistan and the wider region, are also banned. The text by an Afghan youth cultural association, Nawruz, a Celebration of Transformation and Insight, is denounced as “contrary to culture,” rather than being deemed against Islamic principles, as per the longstanding position of the Taliban and some conservative Afghan clerics. This designation substantiates the impression that, for the IEA, Afghan culture must totally overlap and coincide with a narrowly defined set of orthodox Islamic practices, leaving little room for anything else, created or perpetuated by the Afghan people over the centuries, or even, as in this case, millennia, to be considered culturally legitimate – or even allowed to exist. On a lighter note, “contrary to culture” is also the reason given for discarding The Rules of Love, a self-help manual for “happier, more fulfilling relationships” by Richard Templar (aka Richard Craze).
A story that is still unravelling
The published lists are by no means a definitive or exhaustive tool for deciding which books are allowed; booksellers have complained that individual IEA officials assess the permissibility of books according to their own judgement, both in shops and at customs checkpoints. According to these accounts, officials may decide on the spot to confiscate volumes that are not included on the list, based on their own understanding of the content or on the presence of images depicting living beings (The Independent).
Publishers have reported being instructed to contact the authorities and obtain permission from the Directorate of Information and Culture before printing new volumes (VoA) and have given accounts of the difficulties they have encountered in getting such approval.
Proscribing printed texts is not the only means through which the IEA has sought to circumscribe and control people’s access to information and knowledge. Since early October 2025, following a 48-hour nationwide internet shutdown, a number of filters have been applied to social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and X (BBC). Moreover, a set of rules for journalists and television and radio hosts had already been introduced (RSF); see also the 2024 Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which gives the ministry’s enforcers the power to ensure the media does not publish reports that “contradict Islamic law and religion,” “deride or humiliate Muslims,” or depict animate objects (article 17) (see AAN’s translation and commentary on the law).
During the past decade, some authors have argued that the recruitment of a new generation of Taliban, some of whom had received higher education and were exposed to the Republic’s education system, had increased the Taliban’s cultural sophistication (New Lines Magazine). Similar changes are apparent across Afghan society more broadly and the 2021 takeover was widely expected to enhance this phenomenon, as individuals from diverse backgrounds joined the ranks of the Taliban. Instead, taking control of the levers of power appears to have brought the more conservative elements of the leadership to the fore, revealing the comparatively limited influence of the younger members.
If the first list of banned books can be understood as an attempt to remove titles perceived as blasphemous, offensive or aberrant, or to erase rival narratives of Afghanistan’s recent history, the lists targeting university textbooks point to a more long-term and far-reaching objective. These later efforts seem to indicate that the IEA views book banning as part of the fight against cultural Westernisation, driven by the belief that modern education is part of an external political agenda aimed at promoting female emancipation and critical thinking as tools to weaken the fabric of the Afghan nation and its connection to Islam.
This viewpoint is outlined in a rare treatise on the juridical and political foundations of the IEA authored by one of its highest-ranking figures, The Islamic Emirate and its System of Governance, by Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the IEA’s Chief Justice, which was published in 2022 (read AAN’s review). While modern sciences and knowledge are discussed at length in three chapters of the book and acknowledged as necessary, their importance is downplayed. They are presented as subordinate to religious learning and as exposing Muslims to the risk of moral corruption. Studying them is permissible only to the extent necessary and in accordance with religious studies (Zan Times).
Even more than the theoretical principles expounded by Haqqani, recent IEA actions lend credence to the blunt words of one Afghan commentator: “The Taliban are staunch and uncompromising in their beliefs because they have always received a single-source education and they believe that diversity in the sources of knowledge leads to deviation and disbelief” (Hasht-e Subh).
After four years in power, the Taliban leadership has made clear that their vision of society and the world diverges from that of a significant segment of Afghanistan’s population – namely, those Afghans who benefited from higher education and exposure to global knowledge and culture prior to the takeover. They are, therefore, resolved to gradually reshape future Afghan generations by making sure that the youth who will be able to attend university, and indeed the wider reading public, are exposed only to those notions that align with the Taliban’s own beliefs. Whether these notions alone will provide future generations of Afghans with a sufficient foundation of knowledge to meet the challenges of rebuilding their war-ravaged country, only time will tell.
Edited by Jelena Bjelica and Roxanna Shapour
References
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
