Iran’s morality police have a new target: dancing kindergartners.

Ahmad Esfandiari, the head of the state’s Welfare Department, has issued a stern warning in the news media, notifying Iranian kindergartens that any programs which continue to teach five-year-olds how to dance will lose their operating permits.

According to reports from Aftab News and Mohabat News, Esfandiari criticized the curriculum offered by many kindergartens as “secular” and “immoral.”

He added that his organization was seeking to implement better religious instruction in kindergartens and would strive to be more active in promoting “Koranic preschools and mosques-run kindergartens.”

He also called a number of children’s programs aired on various television channels as “unacceptable.”

More from Beliefnet and our partners