The Taliban terrorist organization ruling Afghanistan confirmed on Wednesday that it had formally banned mixed martial arts (MMA), a sport that began thriving in the country in the final years before the fall of Kabul in 2021.
The edict banning MMA followed the publication of an extensive decree last week by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice listing a host of new prohibitions on the private lives of Afghans. The decree officially banned women from showing their faces or using their voices in public and mandated beards and “Islamic” haircuts on men, among other restrictions.
Afghan women wait to receive food rations distributed by a humanitarian aid group in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, May 23, 2023. (Ebrahim Noroozi, File/AP)
MMA was a nascent sport in Afghanistan when, following the disastrous decision by leftist American President Joe Biden to extend the 20-year Afghan War beyond an agreed-upon May 2021 deadline, the Taliban seized control of Kabul and the Afghan federal government. The Taliban has remained the uncontested ruling power in Afghanistan since, although it has not received formal recognition as such from any other country nor from the United Nations.
The Agence France-Presse (AFP) confirmed the MMA ban with Taliban officials on Wednesday.
“It was found that the sport is problematic with respect to sharia and it has many aspects which are contradictory to the teachings of Islam,” the Taliban’s sports agency said in a statement. “That’s why this decision has been made to ban mixed martial arts in Afghanistan.”
The Afghan news outlet Ariana News also confirmed that the Taliban would prohibit the sport, reproducing a similar statement in which the jihadists declared MMA to “have problems from the Sharia point of view.” Ariana added the context that Afghans had long been circulating “rumors … on social media” that the Taliban was planning to announce a wholesale ban on anything deemed a “combat sport,” including MMA but also other martial arts such as boxing, judo, and karate, which would be consistent with the Taliban’s policies to disarm the general population. In August 2021, shortly after taking power, the Taliban rapidly moved to confiscate as many firearms as possible from civilians. A year later, the jihadists began conducting door-to-door raids to ensure they had left the population completely disarmed.
Separately, the BCC reported on Thursday that Tolo News – another Afghan outlet the Taliban swiftly disarmed – reported that the reason offered to them for the ban on MMA was that it was “too violent” and dangerous to practice.
MMA was growing in popularity among Afghan men at the time of the fall of Kabul after years of investment by gyms and fighters to organize and foster an MMA community. The first private MMA tournament in Afghanistan, the Snow Leopard Fighting Championship, launched in 2016, attracting only male fighters despite the relatively liberal society for women that existed in Afghanistan compared to today. A year later, ESPN profiled Afghanistan as a hub of potential talent in the sport.
“Seeing Afghans like Siyar Bahadurzada and Baz Mohammad Mubariz make their way into a multibillion-dollar global promotion like the UFC, fighters hope the sport can succeed locally and bring about change to a region where anything positive can make a major impact,” ESPN reported at the time.
Biden’s surrender of the country to the Taliban immediately caused alarm among MMA practitioners who expected the extremist jihad terrorists to at least severely limit freedom of association to participate in sports.
“During the Taliban’s rule in the 1990s, which extended for five years before the attack of Sept. 11, 2001, the armed group allowed some sports, but with heavy regulations on attire and with breaks for prayer,” the outlet Business Insider noted in August 2021, correctly predicting: “The short-shorts and bare chests and tattoos sported by several of MMA fighters would be against all Taliban decency standards.”
Business Insider described Kabul as littered with billboards advertising products using MMA stars and the capital rapidly filling up with MMA gyms. While enthusiasm for the sport was growing, it also noted a significant lack of regulation, creating a sports ecosystem where steroid use thrived and safety protocols for fighters were not strictly respected.
Al Jazeera reported in a June 2024 profile of Afghan refugees taking to MMA that the Taliban indeed banned MMA in August 2021 and persecuted known fighters. The ban appears to have been unofficial, however, as the Taliban was still promoting itself – falsely – as an updated, “inclusive” iteration of the group compared to the brutal totalitarianism of the 1990s Taliban.
Baz Mohammad Mubariz, featured in the 2017 ESPN report, was “living without a visa in Thailand after escaping from Kabul” as of June 2023, according to Al Jazeera. Mubariz was still fighting, successfully, in Thailand as of April.
The Taliban celebrated the third anniversary of Biden losing Afghanistan on August 15 of this year, hosting a massive parade featuring American military equipment at what was formerly the American Bagram air base. The parade preceded the announcement of the new “morality” standards, which formalized the betrayal of the Taliban’s promises to the international community that they would build an “inclusive” government.