In his first press conference after the Capture of Kabul by the Taliban, the group’s chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has repeatedly said the group would respect women’s rights, “within the framework of Islamic law.”
What does it mean?
Islamic law or sharia is based on the Muslim holy book, the Qur’an, and the judgments of Islamic scholars around the world. It acts as a code of conduct in all areas of life for Muslims, regulating everything from business to daily routines and personal beliefs and practices.
But it is interpreted in several ways: there is no agreed sharia law code.
Interpretations range from those used by ISIS to justify the horrors of its brutal caliphate, to modern Islamic feminists, who see sharia as a system that guarantees equality for all.
Taliban leaders have suggested they will impose a less harsh version of sharia law Afghanistan now of what they did when they were last in power, from 1996 to 2001.
Shamshad News / via REUTERS
During these five years of rule, the group was condemned internationally for enforcing a medieval version of Islamic law, which included punishments such as public hangings, floggings, and stoning.
The group banned music, cut off the hands of the alleged thieves and killed tombstones of those convicted of adultery.
But it was the restrictions on women that caused the most outrage and misfortune. According to the Taliban’s interpretation of sharia law during the 1990s, women and girls could not work, or be educated, or even leave home without wearing a burqa and be accompanied by a male relative.
Women who disobeyed the rules were often whipped in the streets.
But when the Taliban began negotiating the so-called peace deal with the Trump administration, it began to present itself as a more moderate force.
Two years ago, I met Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen at a splendid hotel in Doha, the Qatari capital, where the talks took place.
“We are not against women’s education and their work,” Shaheen said. “(All we want is for them to do it [while wearing] an Islamic hijab, “he told me. But I wouldn’t say much more about the specific freedoms women and girls would have under the group’s government.
Pashtana Durrani had been helping to educate girls in Kandahar, but hid when the Taliban seized the southern city.
He told CBS News this week that he didn’t want to assume that the Taliban “would come to kill me, but I’d like them to accept the fact that we’re the same people in the same country, right? I just have different views on girls’ education “.
The Taliban continue to insist that it will guarantee the rights of women and girls, and even said it wants women to join the new government. But in recent days they have brought several announcements of appointments to the new regime, and it has yet to take any place by a woman.
Many analysts believe the group is only conducting a first public relations campaign to gain the support of both Afghans and the international community now that it controls the country.
But how long will this apparent public relations campaign last? It is too early to know what the Taliban really means when it says it will rule “within the framework of Islamic law.”