Controlling imported books, removing texts from libraries and distributing lists of banned titles – Taliban authorities are working to remove “un-Islamic” and anti-government literature from circulation.

The effort is being led by a commission set up under the Ministry of Information and Culture soon after the Taliban seized power in 2021 and implemented their strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia.

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In October, the ministry announced that the commission had identified 400 books “which were against Islamic and Afghan values, most of which have been collected from the markets”.

The department in charge of publishing has distributed copies of the Koran and other Islamic texts to replace seized books, the ministry’s statement said.

The ministry has not provided figures for the number of books removed, but two sources, a publisher in Kabul and a government employee, said texts had been collected during the first year of Taliban rule and again in recent months.

“There is a lot of censorship. It is very difficult to work, and fear has spread everywhere,” the Kabul publisher told AFP.

Books were also restricted under the previous foreign-backed government that was ousted by the Taliban, when there was “a lot of corruption, pressure and other issues,” he said.

But “there was no fear, one could say what he or she wanted to say,” he added.

“Whether we could make a difference or not, we can raise our voices.”

Contradicts religion

AFP received a list of five of the banned titles from an Information Ministry official.

It includes “Jesus the Son of Man” by renowned Lebanese-American writer Khalil Gibran, for containing “blasphemous language”, and the “counterculture” novel “Twilight of the Eastern Gods” by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.

“Afghanistan and the Region: A West Asian Perspective” by Mirwais Balkhi, an education minister under the previous government, was also banned for “negative propaganda”.

During the Taliban’s previous rule from 1996 to 2001, there were comparatively few publishers and booksellers in Kabul, as the country has already been plagued by decades of war.

Today, thousands of books are imported every week alone from neighboring Iran – which shares the Persian language with Afghanistan – through the Islam Qala border crossing in western Herat province.

Taliban authorities tore through boxes containing a shipment at a customs warehouse in the city of Herat last week.

One man flipped through a thick English-language title, while another, wearing a camouflage uniform with a man’s image on his shoulder patch, searched for pictures of people and animals in the books.

“We have not banned books from any specific country or person, but we study the books and we block those that are against religion, Sharia or the government, or if they have photos of living creatures,” said Mohammad Sediq Khademi, an official. with the Herat Department for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (PVPV).

“Any books that are against religion, faith, sect, Sharia… we will not allow them,” the 38-year-old told AFP, adding that the evaluations of imported books started about three months ago.

Images of living creatures – banned under some interpretations of Islam – are restricted under a recently published “vice and virtue” law that codifies rules introduced since the Taliban returned to power, but the rules have been unevenly enforced.

Importers have been told which books to avoid, and when books are deemed unsuitable, they are given the option to return them and get their money back, Khademi said.

“But if they can’t, we have no option but to seize them,” he added.

“Once we had 28 boxes of books that were rejected.”

Clear stock

Authorities have not been going from shop to shop looking for banned books, said an official of the provincial information department and a bookseller from Herat, who asked not to be named.

However, some books have been removed from Herat libraries and Kabul bookstores, a bookseller told AFP, who also requested anonymity, including “The History of Jihadi Groups in Afghanistan” by Afghan author Yaqub Mashauf.

Books with pictures of living creatures can still be found in Herat’s shops.

In Kabul and Takhar – a northern province where booksellers said they had received the list of 400 banned books – unauthorized titles remained on some shelves.

Many non-Afghan works were banned, one seller said, “so they look at the author, whose name is there, and they are mostly banned” if they are foreign.

His bookstore still had translations of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Gambler” and the fantasy novel “Daughter of the Moon Goddess” by Sue Lynn Tan.

But he was keen to sell them “very cheap” now, to clear them from his stock.