Taliban to reinstate Stoning Women
Kabul, Mar 27 (EFE).-
The Taliban government has, for the first time since their return to power in 2021, publicly raised the possibility of reinstating stoning women who commit adultery, which threatens to further undermine women’s rights in Afghanistan.
Stoning women for adultery was a method of execution used during the previous regime of the same fundamentalist group (1996-2001).
Taliban government spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid, during an interview overnight with the Afghan broadcaster TOLO, spoke of the possibility of bringing back this law – which involves stoning people to death in a public square – claiming it was a practice in accordance with sharia or Islamic law.
“Without a doubt, one of the Sharia laws is stoning. If the conditions for it arise again, we will undoubtedly implement the Sharia decrees; whether it is prayer or stoning, we will carry it out,” Mujahid said.
According to Islamic law, stoning is the punishment for women who commit adultery, considered a crime in Afghanistan.
However, “it is difficult to meet the conditions for stoning”, since if a married woman and man commit adultery, “it takes four men or two men and four women as witnesses” to implement the decree, religious scholar Mawlawi Mohammad Saleh told EFE.
Moreover, a woman’s testimony in court is worth half that of a man, while rape is considered a “confession” of adultery, according to Islamic law.
“There is a lack of a detailed law and the conditions to implement this decree,” social and women’s rights activist Nahid Noor told EFE.
Despite promises of change from their previous regime (1996-2001), the Taliban regime has imposed increasing restrictions on Afghan women, almost completely removing them from public life, ever since they seized power in 2021.
Among these restrictions are a ban on secondary and university education, or to work in most public spaces with some exceptions, in addition to a strict dress code that requires them to go out on the street with their faces covered.
Currently, Afghanistan is the only country in the world where there is a ban on education for women. EFE