Shariah law : And that does it mean for Afghan women?
Afghanistan disaster: Here are the fundamentals about Shariah and thus the way it could factor into the Taliban’s treatment of girls.
Afghan girls attend a category within the north-eastern province of Badakhshan, near the border with Tajikistan, Afghanistan April 23, 2008.
The Taliban have taken the word of honor that ladies in Afghanistan will have rights “within the bounds of shariah,” or Shariah, under their newly established rule. But it is not clear what this will mean.
Shariah leaves considerable room for interpretation. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the past, they imposed a strict one, barring women from working outside the house or leaving the house without a male protector, eliminating schooling for women, and publicly flogging people that violated the group’s morality code.
The insurgents have not yet said how they shall apply it now. But many Afghan women fear a return to the past ways.
Here are the fundamentals about Shariah and thus the way it could factor into the Taliban’s treatment of girls.
WHAT IS SHARIAH?
Shariah is predicated on the Quran, stories of the Prophet Muhammad’s life and therefore the rulings of spiritual scholars, forming the moral and legal framework of Islam. The Quran details a path to an ethical life, but not a selected set of laws.
One interpretation of Shariah could afford women extensive rights, while another could leave women with few. Critics have said that a variety of the Taliban restrictions on women under the guise of shariah went beyond the bounds of Shariah.
The interpretations of Shariah are a matter of debate across the Islamic world, and all groups and governments that base their legal systems on Shariah have done so differently. When the Taliban say they’re instituting shariah, that doesn’t mean they are doing so in ways in which Islamic scholars or other Islamic authorities would accept as true.
WHAT DOES SHARIAH PRESCRIBE?
Shariah lists some specific crimes, like theft and adultery, and punishments if accusations meet a type of proof. It also offers moral and spiritual guidance, like when and the way to wish, or the way to marry and divorce.
It does not forbid women to go away home without a male protector or bar them from working in most jobs.
HOW HAS THE TALIBAN PREVIOUSLY INTERPRETED SHARIAH?
When the Taliban controlled Afghanistan from the year 1996 till the year 2001, they banned television and most musical instruments. They established a department for the Promotion of Virtue and therefore the Prevention of Vice supported a Saudi model.
Restrictions on behaviour, dress and movement were enforced by morality cops, who drove around in pickup trucks, publicly humiliating and whipping women who didn’t adhere to their rules. In 1996, a woman in Kabul, Afghanistan, had the very best of her thumb stop for wearing nail enamel, consistent with Amnesty International.
Women accused of adultery were stoned to death.
WHAT MIGHT THIS MEAN FOR WOMEN NOW?
Experts are scanning Taliban leaders’ recent behaviour for clues on whether their treatment of girls will change.
When a senior Taliban official gave an interview to a female television journalist in Kabul within the week, it had been a neighbourhood of a broader campaign by the group to present a more moderate face to the planet and within Afghanistan.
But hours later, a prominent anchor-woman on state television said that the Taliban had suspended her and other women who worked there indefinitely.
A Taliban spokesperson said that women would be allowed to figure and study, and another official has said that females should participate in government signalling possible separate past practices.
But outside Kabul, some women are told to not leave home without a male escorting them, and therefore the Taliban have prevented women from entering a minimum of one university. They have also picked up some women’s clinics and schools for women.
Hosna Jalil, the previous deputy minister for women’s affairs in Afghanistan, told Deutsche Welle, a network in Germany, that she had little faith the Taliban would interpret Shariah differently now. “Shariah law for them meant lack of access to education, restricted access to health services, no access to justice, no food security, no shelter, no employment, literally nothing,” she said.
SOURCE
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/world/asia/shariah-law-afghanistan-women.html