On Monday, September 27, information about the new legislative prohibition in Afghanistan has spread - men were forbidden to shave beards and visit barbershopes. At the same time, the next day, officials of the country refuted such a ban. We decided to check how things really are with shaving beards in Afghanistan.

Such Russian -speaking media were written about the ban. "New Gazeta", TASS, "Kommersant", "Vedomosti" and other information also appeared in English - at BBC, CNN, ABC And Independent. A refutation of such a ban in Russian was published Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru And "Moscow Komsomolets". As a source, they all referred to a large Afghan television channel Tolonews.

Those sources that wrote about the prohibition, I referred On two paragraphs: a statement made by the head according to the information and culture of the Gilmain province, and the document received by local residents. Such a statement succeeded detect On the site of the local media Etilaatroz. According to them, the head of the department is the name of Hafes Rashid Gelmandi. In Russian, there is only one news in this name - publication On Facebook with information about the prohibition posted on the page with the stated category “Humor, jokes, memes, life hacks”. In English - a little more: his mentioned in tweet Afghan journalist, and there is material 2020 with his mention on the resource Afghanistan Analysts. It says that Hafiz Rashid Gelmandi (yes, here his name is already written not as Hafes, but as Hafiz) Cher Mohammad Abbas Stanexzai described as a former Talibana*media officer in a guilmen and that he published a series of tweets about the murder of the Afghan journalist Mohammad Iliyas Daiya. On Twitter a user with that name Not. On Radio Liberty Afghanistan succeeded To discover the news about the release of two Taliban from prison, one of them is a certain Hafiz Rashid, there is even his photo.

This material allows you to suspect that the name of the official is actually Hafiz Rashid, and Helmandi is a kind of nickname, consonant with the name of the province - Hilmain (it is quite possible that these are just two different people). However, no leader, according to information and culture with this name, is still not. It can be assumed that after the arrival of the Taliban, too little time has passed to power for the information about the head of one of the departments in the province to appear in English.

The second source of the ban, according to media reports, is the instructions received by local residents. There are no refinement in the materials of Western publications, these instructions were written or oral. From the written ones managed to detect Photo sheet of paper with the inscription. The signature says that this is the ban. Unfortunately, the translators from the photograph could not clarify whether the document refers to the case and whether it can be considered genuine. Options for translation from Arabic (as the auto -determination of the language offers), Persian and Urdu are absurd, and there is no translation with Pushta and Dary in the functionality of such applications.

Screenshots of Yandex-translator according to pictures

Auto -Raching (translation of the picture into text) and the subsequent translation with Pashtu using another algorithm also did not give results.

Screech at the auto -shifting in Google translator

It is impossible to reliably determine whether a photograph of the document has an attitude to the case, and also to establish its authenticity without a specialist who speaks the necessary languages.

In a refutation of the ban on shaving beards, another official appeared - Indamulla Samangani, a member of the Commission on Culture of the Ministry of Culture and Information. There is more information about him in open sources than about Hafiz Rashid Gelmandi. It is mentioned in publications TASS, Russia Today, The Tribune India, India Today and others. However, commenting on information about the ban, Indamullah Samangani does not deny the fact of the ban, he only reports that this is not the official position of the Taliban. This wording does not exclude the possibility of introducing a ban on a local level.

In various currents of Islam, attitude to the beard miscellaneous. Some consider the wearing of a beard strictly binding, others are as recommended as possible, its shaving is somewhere considered sinful, and somewhere it is simply undesirable. The Taliban is a radical current and, moreover, in its last coming to power indeed obliged men to wear beards, and those who have the length of the beard was less than a clenched fist, Passed punishment. Therefore, the ban on shaving beards does not contradict already known facts.

Thus, it is most likely that in the province of Hilmens, and possibly in several others, such a ban was really introduced. However, it is not a law issued by the Ministry of morality and vice, but an act issued by the local authorities, which local residents nevertheless have to observe.

*Organization recognized in the Russian Federation of terrorist.