Taliban Bans Afghan Women from Looking at Men

 The Taliban movement in Afghanistan has banned women from speaking or showing their faces in public. On Wednesday 21st August, The Islamist movement published its 114-page vice and virtue rulebook that covers aspects of everyday life such as public transport, music, shaving, and celebrations. The laws, which have been approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, say that it is compulsory for all women to cover their bodies in public and that face coverings are essential to 'avoid temptation and tempting others'. 

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The law further stipulated that women are prohibited from singing, reciting poetry, or reading aloud in public because women's voices are deemed "intimate". In addition to the ban on their voices, the women are forbidden from looking at men to whom they are not related by blood or marriage, and vice versa. the Taliban’s new laws ban music, solo travel for women, and social interactions between unrelated men and women. The United Nations has expressed deep concern over these developments, with Fiona Frazer, head of the UN’s human rights service in Afghanistan, warning that the Taliban’s increasing control is fostering a climate of fear, especially for women and girls.