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Taliban allegedly executes Afghan folk singer days after terror group declares 'music is forbidden in Islam'
Image source: Twitter video screenshot via @andarabi

Taliban allegedly executes Afghan folk singer days after terror group declares 'music is forbidden in Islam'

The Taliban executed an Afghan folk singer just days after the terrorist group declared "music is forbidden in Islam," the New York Post reported, citing the singer's family.

The Post noted that Fawad Andarabi's family told the Associated Press that he was shot dead Friday when "enforcers returned to his home after earlier searching it and even drinking tea with him."

"They shot him in the head on the farm," the folk singer's son, Jawad, said of his father's execution in the Andarabi Valley after which he was named, the paper reported.

"He was innocent, a singer who only was entertaining people," Andarabi's son said, the Post noted, adding that the folk singer also played a bowed lute called a ghichak and sang traditional songs about his country.

More from the paper:

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the AP that the insurgents would investigate the incident, but had no other details on the killing in the area about 60 miles north of Kabul.

It came just days after Mujahid told the New York Times that music was being outlawed, just as it had been during the group's brutal rule from 1996 until 2001.

"Music is forbidden in Islam," Mujahid told the paper, while insisting, "We're hoping that we can persuade people not to do such things, instead of pressuring them."

Afghanistan's former interior minister, Masoud Andarabi — who is not related — shared footage of the singer performing, saying he was "brutally killed" simply for "bringing joy to this valley and its people."

"Taliban's brutality continues in Andarab. Today they brutally killed folkloric singer, Fawad Andarabi who simply was brining [sic] joy to this valley and its people," Masoud Andarabi tweeted. "As he sang here 'our beautiful valley….land of our forefathers…' will not submit to Taliban's brutality."

Anything else?

Karima Bennoune — the United Nations special rapporteur on cultural rights — said she felt "grave concern" in regard to Andarabi's killing, the Post reported.

"We call on governments to demand the Taliban respect the #humanrights of #artists," she tweeted, according to the paper.

Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, tweeted in regard to Andarabi's reported execution that "there is mounting evidence that the Taliban of 2021 is the same as the intolerant, violent, repressive Taliban of 2001. 20 years later. Nothing has changed on that front."

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