KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Students at Nangarhar University report that the Taliban’s morality police have expelled several students from classes for not having beards or wearing turbans, as the group enforces a morality law mandating men to grow beards.
A student from the university’s journalism faculty recounted that on Sunday morning (November 3), Taliban morality officers stood at the university entrance, barring entry to students without beards or turbans. He added that the officers monitored classrooms and expelled students not complying with these requirements.
The student mentioned that some students walked out of the university in protest of the Taliban’s actions. Another source at Nangarhar University, who requested anonymity, disclosed that the Taliban have also mandated that professors, staff, and students wear turbans.
According to the source, three days earlier, the Taliban’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice sent a letter to the university, prohibiting professors, students, and staff from trimming their beards and requiring them to wear turbans.
The source further noted that some Taliban inspectors have been stationed in the university dormitory, warning students to attend congregational prayers regularly or face punishment.
These developments come amid reports that the Taliban’s morality police have intensified their enforcement of a morality law ratified by the group’s supreme leader in August.
Since their return to power, the Taliban have imposed strict restrictions on personal conduct and freedoms, particularly targeting women and girls. Shortly after their takeover, they issued a decree banning barbershops from shaving or trimming beards, declaring such actions “prohibited” under Islamic law.
Violations of the decree can result in severe punishment. Many barbershops have since been forced to shut down, impacting livelihoods amid an escalating economic crisis.
Rights groups have warned that the new law deepens the Taliban’s already repressive control over daily life. It forbids men from shaving or trimming their beards to less than fist-length, prohibits hairstyles considered “un-Islamic,” and bans the wearing of ties and shorts.
The law places even harsher restrictions on women, requiring them to fully cover their bodies in public and branding their voices as instruments of vice, prohibiting them from reading or singing aloud, both in public and at home. It also forbids women from making direct eye contact with unrelated men and from using city taxis without a male relative.
UN experts say that these measures mirror the Taliban’s harsh rule of the 1990s and highlight the regime’s unchanged approach. They warn that without a strategy to counteract such practices, engaging with the Taliban risks reinforcing their impunity and encouraging further abuses.
