To Shave or Not to Shave: Taliban Outlaws Cutting Beards in Afghanistan's Barbershops

A street barber shaves a Kabul resident.

An Afghan barber cuts a man's hair as people walk by in Kabul, 17 September 2007.

An Afghan barber shaves the moustache of an elderly man in Jalalabad, the provincial capital of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul on 20 December 2006.

A man gets a haircut in a barbershop in Kabul, 19 June 2002 as pictures depicting different haircut styles – all without beard – are displayed on the wall. Since the end of the last Taliban era, an increasing number of Afghan men have abandoned the long beard, which was imposed during the fundamentalist Islamic regime.

An Afghan street barber sits on a plank in the snow as he trims the moustache of a customer in Kabul, 9 February 2012.

An Afghan roadside barber trims his own beard while waiting for customers in Kabul, 28 October 2010.

An Afghan barber, trims the moustache of a man in Kabul, 9 February 2012.

Afghan men sit on chairs as they have their hair cut in Herat, 19 February 2012.

A street barber trims a client's beard in Kabul, 5 April 2002.

An Afghan boy walks past a barbershop where a man gets his beard trimmed in Kabul, 6 November 2013.

An Afghan barber cuts a man's beard in Bangi village, Andar district in Ghazni province, 6 January 2011.

An Afghan barber watches near the site where suicide bombers attacked the entrance to a guesthouse in Kabul on 10 August 2010.