Kabul, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's Taliban religious police have punished 39 beard-trimmers in recent days, the official Radio Shariat said on Tuesday.
A number of people who did not attend the required prayers five times a day in the mosque and some drivers who were listening to music were also punished, the ruling militia's mouth-piece said.
"The mobile anti-vice teams of the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice this week invited people to deeds of virtue," it said.
"Thirty-nine men who had trimmed their beards contrary to the Mohammadan Sharia were given Sharia punishment," it added.
Though the station did not specify the penalty, the religious police minister Mawlawi Mohammad Salim Haqani has already said beard trimmers face up to 10 days in jail.
The crackdown comes in the middle of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when people must fast between dawn and dusk.
In an interview with the official Heywad daily published on Tuesday, Haqani said his anti-sin teams were giving enforced haircuts to young men in Kabul sporting western hairstyles.
"Those boys who are doing their hair as per western fashion are captured and given proper haircuts in the nearest barber shops," he said.
If young people are caught listening to music, they are held in the House of Juvenile Delinquents and freed after they have acquired proper "ethics", he said.
The Taliban have brought most of Afghanistan under their ultra-orthodox interpretation of the Islamic Sharia law, banning women from outside jobs and education and ordering men to grow untrimmed beards.
They have also forced women to have their bodies and faces fully covered when they venture out.
Haqani said women who have not complied to this order have been punished.
Male relatives or husbands of women who come out without proper coverings are found and also punished, he said.
"Otherwise, according to the rules given to our department by religious scholars...these women are threatened a bit, keeping in mind their honour," he said.
Locals said that the religious police personnel armed with canes and leather whips beat women who show their faces and even ankles.
Haqani said last week those who shirk from offering their daily prayers should be beaten until they bleed.
He denied his men were harassing people.
"Our personnel who have special ID cards do not enter houses unless accompanied by the local village chief and allowed by the house owner," Haqani said.
"Our department has come into being for the well-being and welfare of the people not their harassment." - Sapa-AFP