Life should be dull and empty and joyless, because god. No music, no dance, no play, no laughter, no frivolity, no flirting, no getting jiggy. No faces, no conversation, no friendship, no mingling, no color. No joy – because that’s the devil’s work.
Taliban insurgents beheaded 17 civilians, including two women, who were holding a party with music in a southern Afghanistan village, officials said Monday.
Party. Music. Women. Mingling. Too much fun. No fun for you! No fun, no pleasure, no heads.
“I can confirm that this is the work of the Taliban,” the Helmand provincial governor’s spokesman Daud Ahmadi told AFP, referring to Islamists notorious during their rule for public executions and the suppression of music and parties.
“Two women and 15 men were beheaded. They were partying with music in an area under the control of the Taliban,” he said.
Nematullah Khan, the Musa Qala district chief confirmed that the villagers had organised a party with music, and one local official said he suspected that the two women had been dancing.
Secret parties with dancing women from a gypsy-type tribe are common across southern Afghanistan.
During their 1996-2001 rule in Afghanistan the Taliban, now waging a fierce insurgency against the NATO-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, also tried to stop the mixing of men and women who were not related.
I like to watch dancing. I like music. That party sounds like a very good time. It sounds like the epitome of humans at their best – doing beatiful things with music and bodies in motion to express celebration. It’s so deeply pathetic that there are people who think that’s the epitome of evil and that they worship a god who hates that.