The Taliban have always had an issue with “image,” whether this image takes the form of a painting (especially those depicting living beings), a film, or is presented as news broadcast on television. For this reason, they have now sought to formalize this matter into law through a decree. In addition to the image, the Taliban’s problem with “voice” is also longstanding. Since human interactions are expressed through voice and image, banning these essentially means depriving people of their right to any form of political action or reaction.
To clarify this issue, this note highlights two points: First, regardless of the source of such decrees, the Taliban’s use of them is fundamentally political. Second, regardless of their underlying motives, implementing such decrees ultimately results in both society losing its human and political essence and people being hurled back from the age of “state” and “city” to the pre-state, village era. Consequently, as people are practically expelled from the realm of the “political community” and stripped of “civic agency,” they lose their human dignity, according to the views of Aristotle and Hannah Arendt. This is the outcome that authoritarian and totalitarian regimes inevitably bring about.
1) Regardless of the origins of these decrees, it is clear that they are currently being utilized to serve the negative policies of an authoritarian and totalitarian regime. They are actively contributing to the destruction of a “human society.” Whether these decrees are rooted in religious laws or ethnic plans, they have now become tools for reinforcing, expanding, and perpetuating a totalitarian system in its most negative form. In the words of Hannah Arendt, the survival of totalitarian politics requires the regime to dominate the voice, image, mind, and all dimensions of individual and collective life. For the Taliban, nothing has facilitated the extension of this limitless control over the private and public lives of Afghans and the implementation of ideological policies as effectively as “Sharia.”
The Taliban’s political use of Sharia follows a specific mechanism designed to sustain their power. Their first step is to ensure that people remain trapped in ignorance and lack of awareness. To achieve this, no measure is simpler than banning women’s education. Women constitute half of the population, and such a prohibition can easily be given a religious justification. However, women, by their humanity, raise their voices in protest against this deeply oppressive situation. The next step, therefore, is to silence these voices. And what better way to achieve this than by declaring that “women’s voices are forbidden”? This measure not only cloaks itself in religious rhetoric but also serves a practical purpose: it officially criminalizes and delegitimizes the protest of the most discriminated group in society—women. Anything classified as unlawful is automatically subject to punitive measures. Thus, in the blink of an eye, instead of punishing the widespread violence against women’s rights, speaking out against such violence becomes an act worthy of punishment. The key distinction between a good government and a bad one lies in the foundation of their legitimacy. A good government derives its legitimacy from the “consent and approval” of the people, while a bad government bases its power on “coercion and force.” For a coercive government like the Taliban’s, maintaining this foundation of force becomes essential for its survival. Such a government must strive to preserve the authority and grandeur of its coercive power. This raises an important question: What factors can challenge this coercive force, which serves as the source of power and legitimacy for such a regime, rooted in violence, anger, and suppression?
The most obvious force that challenges this coercive power is a parallel coercive force. However, that option is not the subject of this note. Here, another option is referred to, which may not be initially evident but could lay the groundwork for the creation of a rival coercive force in the long term, and that is what is seen and heard, meaning all activities and popular participation opposing the ruling authority. This is something that inherently challenges coercive power. A ruling power that lacks official public consent—meaning consent through the conventional process of “voting”—must interpret the absence of public protest as consent. The mere silence of the people, and their failure to speak out against the exercise of power over them, is deliberately interpreted by the ruling power as consent: “tacit consent.” It is at this point that the system cannot tolerate anything that disrupts this silence. The production and strengthening of this potential opposition to the regime is a process that takes shape through the interplay of evidence and the coming together of activities that refuse to conform to the imposed official narrative and format, ultimately maturing in a way that, as mentioned, can potentially manifest as another coercive force in the form of a threat.
Under a regime of coercion, every voice and image carries a reality that inherently undermines the regime’s claims. Allowing the free dissemination of images and voices directly disproves the regime’s assertion of “tacit consent.” voice speaks for itself, and images reveal truths. In the modern world, the media, often described as the “third eye” of governments, derives its power from the sharing of voice and image. This revelatory quality of voice, image, and art as a whole poses a significant threat to a regime built on authoritarianism and tyranny. Such a regime must conceal its actions and shield them from public scrutiny to sustain its power. The unfiltered and unregulated dissemination of voice and image exposes the regime’s false narratives and undermines its ability to control the narrative, making these tools a formidable challenge to its survival. A regime that derives its legitimacy from instilling fear and terror is itself fearful and perpetually avoids exposure. To achieve this, it seeks to deafen ears, silence tongues, and blind eyes, ensuring that nothing is heard, seen, or spoken. Such a regime is not built on the prosperity of society but on the preservation of power for a specific group or circle at any cost. To maintain this power, it must either command the sun not to rise—so that nothing is illuminated or exposed—or, since that is impossible, it must strip society of its collective vision, preventing the realities from being seen.
The emphasis on the prohibition of publishing images of “living beings” by a regime that builds the framework of its politics on the foundation of oppression against living beings is a strategic move. The domain of a regime’s authority (in this case, the application of force) naturally pertains to living beings. These living beings, particularly human ones, are the ones who either support governments or pose threats to them. Within the entire realm over which a regime exerts its force, only living beings—and specifically sentient and conscious human beings—are capable of thought and awareness. Plants and inanimate objects neither possess the ability to think nor to speak. Oppression cannot be applied to stones and wood. The subject of oppression is always a living being, which is why the display and portrayal of oppressed living beings must be prohibited. The clear implication of banning images and voices is that people should neither see nor hear. Only in the context of blindness, deafness, and consequently, voicelessness—and by reducing people to an animalistic existence—can the coercive rule of the Taliban endure. Thus, this seemingly religious edict automatically transforms into something highly advantageous for the survival of Taliban rule, making its political motivation more prominent than its purely religious intent.
2) If the Taliban’s motivation were solely religious, could their ban on voice, image, and art be justified?
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the Taliban’s primary motive for banning voice, image, and art is purely to enforce Sharia. Even in this scenario, their ruling is neither desirable nor justifiable—especially if we prioritize humanity over religion, as we should. The reason is simple: implementing such decrees strips society of its humanity, reducing it to the level of an animal farm. The humanity of a society is preserved through art and thought. Without these, when art, critical thinking, and political actions core traits of human existence—are banned, society ceases to resemble a human community and instead mirrors an animal farm. In an animal farm, there is no music, no painting, no sculpture, no intellectual discourse, and no expression. The essence of humanity lies in political action and reaction. To be human is to exercise free will, voice dissent, and influence one’s environment. Without these qualities, a person cannot fulfill Aristotle’s definition of a “political animal.” Hannah Arendt further elaborates on this concept: citizenship is a prerequisite for defining humanity because it entails active participation in public life and the ability to exercise political will. A regime that deprives individuals of their ability to influence the public sphere—such as the Taliban—removes them from the realm of humanity. By denying voting rights, freedom of political expression, party activity, and open representation of societal realities, the Taliban regime effectively negates the humanity of those under its rule, reducing them to a subhuman existence. Under such conditions, fundamental concepts like the state, the city, the citizen, and the political community lose all meaning. What emerges instead of a political order is a state of existence akin to the “pre-political” era of humanity, comparable to life in caves or primitive villages. Here, human relationships are defined by raw power and direct domination, rather than by social contracts or principles of citizenship. In a world where the global community has evolved into a metaphorical “city,” Afghanistan, under the Taliban, regresses into a village—a place where the social order has yet to reach the level of the state or the city. This regression turns the Taliban’s ban on images into an anti-political policy, one that destroys the possibility of expressing will or representing reality and pushes the population to the brink of dehumanization.
By blocking avenues of influence and eliminating public space, the Taliban deprive individuals of their capacity to fulfill themselves as “political animals.” They render them mute and passive—qualities belonging to inanimate objects or non-speaking animals, not to humans.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
