Recently, there were news reports that the police in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan in Central Asia, arrested some bearded citizens in the streets, took them to the police station, and forcibly carried out "shaving" operations.
Among them, it also includes the 1.3 million followers of the internet celebrity pictured below, Abdulrahmun Muverde.
However, his statement on social media was not very resistant, and only expressed some doubts about the government's behavior - please don't ask me what happened, why I shaved, which may be difficult for me to answer...
Moreover, just look at the photos he posted, after shaving off his beard, his mental state is also very good.
Similar to the social media po said that they were "accidentally" shaved by the police, there are several old men. Like the picture below, the shampoo and cosmetics sales agent, Muhammachusufu Ibu Kabir, was stopped by the traffic police and said that he would take him back to check his identity.
Muhammachusuf Ibrahim
Kabir wanted to take a leave of absence from his boss first, but the traffic police who stopped him couldn't help but say anything, and directly called the police and forcibly took him to the police station.
Unexpectedly, after a while, Kabir found that his boss had also been pulled by the police.
The Uzbek police also seem to pay attention to the combination of men and women to work without getting tired
One by one, the police station brought in about a dozen men.
At this time, a small leader-like person came, followed by two tony teachers, telling them to shave their beards here and then they could go out.
However, most of the dozen or so men at the scene expressed their disobedience and stressed that their beards were only personal aesthetics and living habits, and had nothing to do with the religious extremist forces that the police screened on a daily basis.
But the police still insisted that this was a request from their superiors and there was no room for negotiation.
In the end, the arms could not be twisted to the thighs, and the bearded men who were caught enjoyed the free shaving service provided by the police station. After that, like a different person, he walked out of the police station.
After our netizens saw this news, they all gave praise to the police in Uzbekistan.
Good helpful free service!
You see, this one by one vicissitudes uncle, seconds to become a spirit guy!
Before this big beard, wearing a mask can not cover, does not meet the requirements of epidemic prevention and control, shave clean, more hygienic!
Comparison of Muhammachussuf Ibrahim's boss shaving before and after
Tashkent in Uzbekistan was the fourth largest city in the Soviet era, the economic and cultural center of Central Asia, and an important industrial town (famous aircraft manufacturing base).
In fact, similar to the situation in Tashkent, the five "stans" of Central Asia, especially in urban areas, have long been deeply rooted in modern and secular life, and the female labor force participation rate is much higher than that of other Muslim-majority countries and regions.
The first generation of leaders after independence in these countries were all high-ranking cadres trained by the CPSU, and their successors were also active defenders of secular governments, let alone beards, not even small mustaches, and clean chins.
The supreme leader of the five Central Asian countries at the beginning of their independence. President Rahmon Ofajik, who has been president since the country's independence in 1991, surpassed Nazarbayev
There are now five "Stan" presidents in Central Asia, and the second from the left is Tajiks President Rahmon
The folk atmosphere is not too bad.
Like the internet celebrity podcast mentioned earlier, he is involved in the field, almost nothing to do with religion, he has a beard, it is likely to highlight the personality, modify the face shape (small face?). ）；
And the salesman Muhammachusufu Ibu Kabir, he also said on social media that the reason why he and his boss grew a beard is mainly to appear stable, so that when he sells shampoo, it makes people feel more reliable.
This may be similar to our proverb "there is no hair on the mouth, and it is not firm to do things".
However, it should not be ignored that the five Central Asian countries represented by Uzbekistan have a very complex surrounding environment and have been plagued by religious extremist forces since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Therefore, these secularized modern governments are always particularly sensitive to certain phenomena.
For example, a young man with a big beard.
Even, in May 2021, a recording circulated on social media saying that Uzbekistan's Ministry of Internal Affairs would launch a "beard" operation — screening bearded citizens one by one and taking pictures before and after shaving.
However, the Ministry of the Interior subsequently denied the existence of such actions and reiterated that there would be no corresponding law prohibiting bearding, and that attitude towards this issue depended only on upbringing and civility, as well as on the conditions of personal hygiene....
Of course, there are also countries in Central Asia that have directly and domineeringly introduced a ban on beard-related beards in the form of legislation.
For example, the old man with thick eyebrows and big eyes, playing and singing with a guitar, is the president of Turkmenistan, Kurbanguli Berdymukhamedov. He continued the policy of his predecessor, The "father" of Turkmenistan, Niyazov, to prohibit male public officials from growing beards and tattoos, while ordinary male citizens under the age of 40 were not allowed to wear beards;
In addition, female public officials (including teachers, doctors, and nurses in addition to civil servants) are not allowed to wear heavy makeup and nail polish, and it is also illegal for women to wear a headscarf of religious significance and a burqa on a daily basis.
Parliament of Turkmenistan – Female parliamentarians wear floral headscarves of the nature of national costumes, no nail polish, and the chins of male parliamentarians are shaved
Moreover, the main ethnic groups in these countries are not forbidden to drink, good at singing and dancing, and they are very jubilant when they jump.
At the scene of the 2019 Turkmenistan National Day military parade, singing and dancing - using the president's "daddy" favorite green costume, men do not grow beards, women do not wear nail polish
Uzbekistan National Song and Dance Troupe performs the folk dance "GilliKhrosch"
Of course, in addition to their national character, we have to admit that this situation is more due to the Transformation and Operation of Central Asia by the Soviet Union.
The Bride and groom, Marriage Registry in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 1925. This was the first year that Ukraine joined the Soviet Union, and women had to go out in burqas and masks
In 1930, girls in Uzbekistan were studying Lenin's monographs
To be honest, the secularization of Central Asia during the Soviet era, universal education, the emancipation of women, and the development of industrialization did seem today to be a major contribution of the Soviet Union to human society.
Moreover, such a secularized, industrialized Central Asia can also alleviate the pressure of stability maintenance in the western part of the continent.
Interestingly, also in Central Asia, while the five "Stans" were advocating shaving, their neighbor, Afghanistan, was asking domestic men to grow beards in the name of "sharia.".
Since last year, the Taliban government has introduced the rule to the provinces in the form of a decree prohibiting barbershops from offering shaving and trimming men's beards, while prohibiting customers from trimming "overly Westernized" hairstyles, and violators will be severely punished under Sharia law.
Some of the larger hair salons even received direct phone calls or door-to-door warnings from the Taliban, who personally handed over the paper ban to their bosses and sternly advised them not to provide customers with "shaving" related services. There is even a huge risk of doing so in private – because the Taliban will take the form of "fishing law enforcement" and leave such "illegal acts" with nowhere to hide.
Taliban's "no shaving order"
Moreover, the Taliban encourage adult men to at least keep their beards under their chins for the length of a punch.
However, such a demand is more difficult for the third largest ethnic group in its territory, the Hazaras with East Asian Mongol ancestry. They are not born with a thick beard to meet this standard.
Hazara people in traditional costumes
To tell the truth, women should be wrapped up, men's hair is not allowed to make fashionable styles, and beards are not allowed to be shaved, which makes the survival prospects of Afghan barbershops and related tertiary industries really worrying.
As for why you should grow a beard, the reasons given by the Taliban are mainly these two.
First, shaving is the embodiment of an "American custom" and a "pagan culture" that must be discarded;
The second is the understanding of doctrine.
Curiously, saudi Arabia, which is also strictly religious and advocates fundamentalist Wahhabism (note that fundamentalism is only a school of faith, not to be equated with terrorism, extreme fundamentalism is), most people today do not deliberately leave a large number of "original" unkempt beards.
Like Miss Korea, what makes the silly indistinguishable is the copy-paste of the general Saudi prince, pay attention to the beards of the princes and grandchildren, and there is no particular exaggeration
Saudi Foreign Minister Al-Jubayr shaved it clean
There are also the purest descendants of the Holy Blood (descendants of the prophet's younger daughter and son-in-law) the Hashemite family of the Jordanian royal family, whose lives are very secular, and generations of monarchs have not had the habit of growing a beard.
The current king of Jordan is a family
The secular regimes in West Asia and North Africa that were overthrown earlier by the Arab Spring were basically jaw-stained.
Like the guys in the photo below – Ben Ali (front row left, then President of Tunisia, exiled to Saudi Arabia after the 2011 Arab Spring), Saleh (second from left in front row, then President of Yemen, later under multiple U.N. sanctions and killed by Houthi militants on December 4, 2017), Gaddafi (front row, center), and Mubarak (front row, second from right).
A few months before the outbreak of the Arab Spring, at the 2010 AU summit, some of the "big guys" were finally grouped together
In fact, in the Quran, which was born in the 7th century AD, there is no explicit written statement that prohibits Muslim men from shaving or asking women to go out to cover their faces in a burqa.
It was not until the 9th century, in the Muslim hadiths written by the religious scholar Muslim bin Hajaji, that the relevant phrases encouraging the bearding of men appeared.
The prophets of the Allah said that there were ten ancient rituals of the prophets: cutting short beards, leaving beards full, brushing teeth, choking noses, trimming nails, washing bone joints, plucking armpit hair, shaving pubic hair, cleaning and rinsing.
For a long time, in Islam, there have been many factions like cattle hair, and those small handfuls of cattle hair can continue to divide the calf hair and the small cow hair, which will not be repeated here - to make their relationship and derived doctrine clear, they can produce a monograph, or the kind of three volumes.
Then, according to the interpretation of the doctrine, each sect has different rules for the way of life and values of the faithful.
Both the beard of men and the burqa of women can be seen as derivatives of the spread of doctrine by different denominations, which have become local traditions, but are also deeply influenced by government decrees.
Obviously, the five "stans" mentioned at the beginning of the Central Asia were the ones who successfully changed customs from top to bottom in the Soviet era with the power of the government and built an industrialized and secularized society.
Similarly, there was the Mustafa Kemal Revolution in Turkey.
Even if the Turkish religious plot is beginning to resurgence today, we can see President Erdogan's jaw, which is still scratched
The exception is Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, several secularization reforms over the past century, starting with King Amanoura in the 1920s, to King Nadir, King Zahir and "Red Prince" Daoud, the Soviet-backed Taraki, Amin and Najibra, among others, have made great efforts to try to take this tribal patchwork country onto the path of secularization and industrialization...
But none of their reforms ended in tragedy.
Afghan women cadres in the 1980s
These secular reformers, without the support of a reliable gun, have taken the risk of violating the traditional social and religious sensitivities of Afghanistan and directly threatening the power of tribal leaders and religious elders in much of the country.
Obviously, in Afghanistan, men with large beards are regarded by some conservative schools as an insistence on the Sharia Code and the embodiment of their power, with complex backgrounds, very deep roots, and difficult to shake in the short term.
Looking at the Taliban, as far as its top leadership is concerned, the Taliban is a collection of conservative forces in a broad sense, mainly representing the interests of the Pashtun national warlords, the conservative mullahs, and tribal leaders.
The American-backed Afghan government, which was driven out by the Taliban, is a combination of compradors, warlords, and urban-class interest groups "wrapped up" by warlords, seriously divorced from the Afghan people.
Last year, at the beginning of the regime, the Taliban's gesture of actively pandering to the will of the international community and the domestic public opinion was objectively more like a concession made in order to gain a legitimate position and stabilize the regime, rather than to really secularize and reform its own ranks.
After all, if you have a little understanding of the teachings of their denominations and their strategies for internal unity and mobilization using the relevant teachings, you will understand that the desire for the Taliban to "keep pace with the times" by a large margin, embrace modern civilization, and make drastic changes to adapt to modern society is, at least at this stage, still very high than life.
So, the barbershops in Afghanistan, the next few days, may not be very good.
Such services may be counted as "illegal activities"
Of course, for more men around the world, the so-called beard is actually not directly related to the "extreme".
Growing a beard is just a personal aesthetic and life hobby, and there is no need to be too sensitive.