Vice and Virtue Ministry
Encyclopedia
The Vice and Virtue Ministry was a government department during the reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan
. It set and enforced the moral standards required to be followed in society. Utilizing a squad of over 30,000 men, shopkeepers were forced to close during prayer time, video
and cassette
tapes were banned, television
and kite
-flying were outlawed. It has been alleged that schools for females were shut down but Taliban spokesperson Rahmatallah Hashimi has dismissed the allegation stating that all schools were initially shut down due to safety concerns, but were later reopened upon achieving stability in the controlled regions. The squads allegedly harassed and attacked women if their head-to-toe burqa
veils revealed skin and men if their beards did not meet the required length.
In 2005, the indie band The Happy Bullets
recorded an album and song using the same title, but changed the institution into a British
prep school
with tongue-in-cheek references to climbing the social ladder of Europe
an high society.
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. It set and enforced the moral standards required to be followed in society. Utilizing a squad of over 30,000 men, shopkeepers were forced to close during prayer time, video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
and cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
tapes were banned, television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and kite
Kite
A kite is a tethered aircraft. The necessary lift that makes the kite wing fly is generated when air flows over and under the kite's wing, producing low pressure above the wing and high pressure below it. This deflection also generates horizontal drag along the direction of the wind...
-flying were outlawed. It has been alleged that schools for females were shut down but Taliban spokesperson Rahmatallah Hashimi has dismissed the allegation stating that all schools were initially shut down due to safety concerns, but were later reopened upon achieving stability in the controlled regions. The squads allegedly harassed and attacked women if their head-to-toe burqa
Burqa
A burqa is an enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic religion to cover their bodies in public places. The burqa is usually understood to be the woman's loose body-covering , plus the head-covering , plus the face-veil .-Etymology:A speculative and unattested etymology...
veils revealed skin and men if their beards did not meet the required length.
In 2005, the indie band The Happy Bullets
The Happy Bullets
The Happy Bullets is an indie pop band from Dallas, Texas that formed in 2003.Recording songs that combined a 1960's psychedelic nostalgia with ironic and literate lyrics, The Happy Bullets began when indie songwriters Jason Roberts and Tim Ruble met while working together at an art gallery in a...
recorded an album and song using the same title, but changed the institution into a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
prep school
Preparatory school (UK)
In English language usage in the former British Empire, the present-day Commonwealth, a preparatory school is an independent school preparing children up to the age of eleven or thirteen for entry into fee-paying, secondary independent schools, some of which are known as public schools...
with tongue-in-cheek references to climbing the social ladder of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an high society.