Barber Shops, Dancing and Televisions

Behind the Northern Alliance advance, barber shops were doing a brisk trade as men rushed to remove the Taliban-mandated beards they had been wearing for years. People in liberated towns dug up the outlawed TV sets they had buried to hide from the religious police who smashed any they found. Citizens threw roses and money at the liberating fighters. People who live in occupied lands soon learn to dance in honor of the next invading force, whoever he is. Still, many in Afghanistan had no need of pretense as they rejoiced in honor of those who drove the Taliban from their midst. In Taliqan in the northeast, Muhammad Asif told The New York Times, "All the restrictions, on television, on shaving, on women . . . The Quran says nothing about such things. The Taliban people are a bunch of illiterates." Well put. Laws do not change people unless they carry the imprimatur of a transcendent authority. Ruling without the consent of the governed remains an undertaking of limited promise, and those who carry measuring sticks to enforce a four-inch minimum for beards soon find their own futures measured by them.

Ed Fowler

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(c) 2001 Millennium Relief & Development Services, vol. 1 no. 15a
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