The Afghan Taliban's dreaded morality police have arrested four young men for dressing like characters from the British TV series Peaky Blinders.
The men were detained in the western Afghan city of Herat this week.
The Taliban accused them of "promoting alien culture" after photos went viral of them wearing clothing like that worn by the Shelby family in the popular historical crime drama.
Asghar Husaini, Jalil Yaqoobi, Ashore Akbari, and Daud Rasa are members of the self-style Thomas Shelby Group, and are known to locals as the Jabrael Shelbys after the Herat neighborhood where they live.
Over the past month, the men -- all believed to be in their 20s -- were seen on the streets of Herat sporting flat caps, suits, gloves, and long trenchcoats. The attire resembled the period costumery of Peaky Blinders, which depicts the era following World War I.
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WATCH: The Afghan Men In Peaky Blinders-Inspired Outfits
The arrests are part of a broader Taliban campaign to eradicate what it deems modernity and Western influences in Afghanistan. The Taliban's Law On the Propagation Of Virtue And Prevention Of Vice, officially enacted in 2024, specifically prohibits Afghan men from wearing Western clothing in public.
"They wanted to protest and show that they are opposed to this system of coercion and domination," Sahraa Karimi, an Afghan filmmaker, told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi about what motivated the men to wear those particular clothes.
"Such attire is completely normal all over the world, and these men live in this world and have access to social media, watch films and TV series," she said.
Taliban's Quest To Erase Modernity
Since returning to power, the Taliban has imposed draconian restrictions on how Afghan men and women can appear and interact in public.
Women are required to wear the niqab, a head-to-toe Islamic veil. A male chaperone must accompany them. Men are encouraged to grow beards and wear traditional Afghan clothes. Most Taliban officials wear turbans and loose-fitting clothes.
SEE ALSO: Taliban Bars Women Without A Burqa From Entering Hospitals In AfghanistanSaiful Islam Khyber, spokesman for the Taliban's Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, said the behavior of the Thomas Shelby Group contradicts "Islamic values and Afghan culture."
He also posted a video of one of the men issuing an apology for their conduct.
Before their arrests, Husaini, the leader of the self-styled group, said they were motivated by "a special interest in the classic clothing style" of Peaky Blinders.
He told Herat Mic, a local YouTube channel, that they planned to showcase the clothing of various Afghan communities in the future.
Rasa, another member of the group, said they faced some online criticism.
"There was a lot of commotion in cyberspace," he said, adding that even some relatives accused them of promoting Western culture.
"But this is not [just] Western culture. In the 1950s and '60s, we had a similar style here in Afghanistan," he said.
In Afghanistan, Western attire became a symbol of modernity and liberalism after reformist Afghan King Amanullah Khan adopted suits for men and skirts for women as formal dress in the 1920s.
In subsequent decades, many educated Afghans adopted Western clothing while government offices and gatherings required formal Western clothing.
SEE ALSO: Afghanistan As It Once Was: The Photographs Of William PodlichBut Afghan Islamist groups have opposed Western clothes and mannerisms. The Taliban has formally banned such attire and actively targets Afghans for wearing such dresses.
It has also conducted an extensive crackdown on dress code violations, fining and jailing offenders.
Directed by the British screenwriter and film director Steven Knight, Peaky Blinders depicts the exploits of the Shelbys, a fictional criminal family in Birmingham after World War I.
It has attracted a global fan base since its 2013 debut. Since then, it has aired six seasons and attracted hundreds of millions of viewers globally.