<\/p>\n
Taliban authorities have barred chess across Afghanistan until further notice over concerns it is a source of gambling, which is illegal under the government’s morality law, a sports official said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Taliban government has steadily imposed laws and regulations that reflect its austere vision of Islamic law since seizing power in 2021.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Chess in sharia (Islamic law) is considered a means of gambling,” which is prohibited according to the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice law announced last year, sports directorate spokesperson Atal Mashwani told AFP.<\/p>\n
“There are religious considerations regarding the sport of chess,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Until these considerations are addressed, the sport of chess is suspended in Afghanistan,” he added.<\/p>\n
Mashwani said the national chess federation had not held any official events for around two years and “had some issues on the leadership level”.<\/p>\n
Azizullah Gulzada owns a cafe in Kabul that has hosted informal chess competitions in recent years, but denied any gambling took place and noted chess was played in other Muslim-majority countries.<\/p>\n
“Many other Islamic countries have players on an international level,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
He said he would respect the suspension but that it would hurt his business and those who enjoyed the game.<\/p>\n
“Young people don’t have a lot of activities these days, so many came here everyday,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
“They would have a cup of tea and challenge their friends to a game of chess.”<\/p>\n
Afghanistan’s authorities have restricted other sports in recent years and women have been essentially barred from participating in sport altogether in the country.<\/p>\n
Last year, the authorities banned free fighting such as mixed martial arts (MMA) in professional competition, saying it was too “violent” and “problematic with respect to sharia”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n
\n \n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kabul: Taliban authorities have barred chess across Afghanistan until further notice over concerns it is a source of gambling, which is illegal under the government’s morality law, a sports official said on Sunday. The Taliban government has steadily imposed laws and regulations that reflect its austere vision of Islamic law since seizing power in 2021. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5559,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557\/revisions\/5559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}