Four Afghan men were summoned by the Taliban and made to enter a reform program after they walked around in public dressed as characters from the BBC’s “Peaky Blinders.”
The men were “caught promoting screen culture and imitating film actors. … Thank God, we Muslims and Afghans have our own religion, culture, and values. We have saved this country from the promotion of bad cultures through great sacrifices, and now we are defending it,” Saif-ur-Islam Khyber, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, said on X.
The four friends, Asghar Husinai, Jalil Yaqoobi, Ashore Akbari and Daud Rasa, appeared on a local YouTuber’s channel after gaining some measure of popularity for dressing up in the clothes used in the historical British crime drama, which takes place after World War I.
“Until today, no one had published this content of classic dressing style in Afghanistan. We have had the same monotonous dressing style for the past many decades and wanted to show variety,” Mr. Akbari said in the YouTube video, according to The Telegraph.
Not all Western clothing is automatically proscribed by the Taliban government, but imitating the show was a step too far, officials said.
“Even jeans would have been acceptable, but the values in the ’Peaky Blinders’ series are against Afghan culture,” Mr. Khyber told the BBC.
Having been put into the reform program, one of the men appeared in a video posted by Mr. Khyber on X to recant their cosplay.
“I’m on Instagram and have 5 million followers. Without realizing it, I used to publish and spread things that were against Sharia. I was summoned and advised, and from today onward I will no longer engage in such sinful activities — and I have stopped,” one of the men, whose name was not specified, said, according to CBS News.
