The Taliban's morality police have detained four men accused of promoting foreign culture for adopting fashion inspired by the popular British series Peaky Blinders.
The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice said the young men, whose videos of themselves styled as 1920s gangsters went viral in Afghanistan, had offended local culture and religion.
"A Muslim should guard Islam's red lines, should not unnecessarily copy non-Muslims, and set their ideals in accordance with Islamic values and Afghan culture," a Taliban spokesman said in a video statement posted to social media.
Donning flat caps and trench coats, the men had deemed themselves the Thomas Shelby Group — named for Cillian Murphy's lead character in the acclaimed historical drama Peaky Blinders, which centres on a Birmingham crime gang.
The voice of one of the men was quoted in the Taliban's statement as saying he apologised for "unknowingly publishing pictures and videos that are against sharia on my pages for millions of my followers".
"I didn't know this act was against sharia and a sin. I promise not to do this again," he said.
Mujib Abid, a research fellow with the University of Melbourne's Initiative for Peacebuilding, said the Peaky Blinders cosplayers were an example of the many creative ways Afghans were resisting the Taliban's "suffocating regime".
The Taliban has ruled Afghanistan since recapturing the capital, Kabul, in 2021 and has since enforced laws to "prevent vice and promote virtue".
Women have been banned from education, most jobs, and visiting public places such as parks — a situation the United Nations describes as "gender apartheid".
"Women bear the brunt of the current repressive, misogynistic and exclusionary form of power that Afghans have to contend with right now in the form of the Taliban emirate," Dr Abid said.
"But, you know, there are underground schools that are functioning. Women find spaces on social media."
Taliban anxious over 'promotion of bad cultures'
Nila Ibrahimi went viral in 2021 with a protest song in defiance of a ban on women and girls over the age of 12 singing in public.
The 19-year-old human rights activist, who now lives in Canada as a refugee, recently told ABC Radio National that women and girls continued to resist the Taliban's repressive laws in Afghanistan.
"It was the place where I first learned to stand against injustices and taboos that I faced growing up," she said.
"Seeing how persistent and consistent these girls are with ways of not giving up [in] the face of the Taliban's rules, that's another source of inspiration for me.
"When I look at Afghans, they're all resilient and they speak up for themselves."
Social media was providing a platform for Afghans like the Thomas Shelby Group to "test the waters" and push back against the Taliban's severe restrictions on cultural expression, Dr Abid said.
Earlier this year, the Taliban began severing high-speed internet cables and imposed a 48-hour nationwide communications blackout as a means to "prevent vice".
"They are afraid of their people opening up to the world and seeing other possibilities," Dr Abid said.
The Taliban's statement regarding the Thomas Shelby Group said its regime was "saving" Afghanistan from foreign influence and that the men had now "found the true path".
"We have saved this country from the promotion of bad cultures through great sacrifices, and now we are defending it," the spokesman said.
But Dr Abid said young Afghans would continue to find ways of dissenting — just as they had done under Soviet occupation in the 1980s, the first period of Taliban rule in the 1990s, and indeed under a Western-backed government after the US invasion of 2001.
"You still see that there are a lot of young people … who do the very things that there are edicts in place that bar them from doing," he said.
