{"id":76496,"date":"2026-02-25T22:31:02","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2026\/feb\/25\/the-taliban-are-burning-musical-instruments-in-the-name-of-morality-it-is-an-assault-on-all-culture"},"modified":"2026-02-25T22:31:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:31:02","slug":"the-taliban-are-burning-musical-instruments-in-the-name-of-morality-it-is-an-assault-on-all-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76496","title":{"rendered":"The Taliban are burning musical instruments in the name of morality. It is an assault on all culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The sounds of Afghan history are being erased to prevent music\u2019s \u2018moral corruption\u2019 of the Afghan people. We can help keep Afghanistan\u2019s music alive. Plus, Eliane Radigue\u2019s deep listening, and the brilliance of Sinners\u2019s score<\/p>\n<p>The horrors of the Taliban\u2019s rule in Afghanistan are all-encompassing. New laws that <a href=\"https:\/\/lawandsocietymagazine.com\/taliban-legalise-domestic-violence-under-sweeping-new-afghanistan-laws\/\">effectively legalise domestic abuse<\/a> means that every woman in the country now lives with the threat of state-sanctioned violence. In the context of the twin tragedies of the Taliban\u2019s fundamentalist zealotry, and the rest of the world\u2019s silence in the face of their atrocities, the fate of Afghanistan\u2019s cultural life might seem a smaller catastrophe. Yet it\u2019s equivalently devastating.<\/p>\n<p>The recent burning of hundreds of musical instruments and equipment \u2013 reported last week on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.afintl.com\/en\/202602185551\">Afghan National Television<\/a> \u2013 is the latest stage of the Taliban morality police\u2019s ongoing mission to destroy all these artefacts. Last week\u2019s pyre included tablas and harmoniums, instruments that are the bedrocks of Afghanistan\u2019s unique tradition of classical music, as well as keyboards and amplifiers.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2026\/feb\/25\/the-taliban-are-burning-musical-instruments-in-the-name-of-morality-it-is-an-assault-on-all-culture\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sounds of Afghan history are being erased to prevent music\u2019s \u2018moral corruption\u2019 of the Afghan people. We can help keep Afghanistan\u2019s music alive. Plus, Eliane Radigue\u2019s deep listening, and the brilliance of Sinners\u2019s scoreThe horrors of the Taliban&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,1635,71,1636,53,447,86,212,425,371,61,44,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-classical-music","category-culture","category-folk-music","category-human-rights","category-islam","category-law","category-middle-east-and-north-africa","category-music","category-religion","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76497,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76496\/revisions\/76497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}