The disciples of Third Wave feminism in Western countries and modern societies of many developing nations have often looked at Muslims as their allies in their perceived patriarchal society. Here is an interesting development for such feminists. The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan, who believe in the core principles of Islam, have enacted a new penal code that effectively permits husbands to physically beat their wives and children as long as the violence does not result in “broken bones or open wounds,” thus normalizing physical abuse. The 90-page legislation, signed by Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, has drawn widespread alarm from rights advocates and the United Nations, which say it codifies domestic violence and entrenches gender discrimination under the guise of legal reform.
The new penal code effectively treats wives as the “property” of their husbands and allows male guardians to use physical force within the home in many circumstances that would normally be treated as criminal assault elsewhere. In instances where injuries are visible, perpetrators face a maximum sentence of just 15 days in prison, and only if the victim successfully proves the abuse in a Taliban-controlled court system.
Now, the requirement that women must personally appear before a judge fully covered and be accompanied by a male guardian, in most cases the abuser himself, creates insurmountable obstacles to justice. An Afghan woman must present visual evidence of harm to be considered for prosecution, a high evidentiary burden that dress codes and restrictions on women’s movement complicate. The legislation also appears not to explicitly criminalize psychological or sexual violence within the family, leaving victims with few legal protections.
Human rights advocates have denounced the new code as a grave rollback of previously established legal safeguards. The Taliban-approved law overturns the 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) legislation, which had criminalized forced marriage, rape, and diverse forms of gender-based abuse. Although enforcement of EVAW was uneven before the Taliban’s return to power, its repeal is seen as a symbolic defeat for women’s rights in Afghanistan.
In addition to the domestic violence provisions, the penal code reportedly introduces a social hierarchy for administering punishment, giving religious scholars and elite figures more legal leeway than ordinary citizens. This is clearly a faulty system that institutionalizes inequality in the justice process. Alongside this, the code’s punitive clauses extend to women’s behavior outside the home, including restrictions on visiting relatives without a husband’s consent, punishable by imprisonment.
International organizations and exile-based Afghan rights groups have called for the United Nations and global partners to intervene and to explore legal mechanisms that prevent implementation of the code’s provisions, which they view as legitimizing violence against a vulnerable population.
The development comes amid a broader deterioration of women’s rights in Afghanistan since the Islamic group known for enforcing Sharia regained control in August 2021. The Islamic movement known as the Taliban first ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, imposing Islamic law that barred girls and women from most education and employment, required male guardianship for movement outside the home, and enforced conservative dress codes. After the U.S.-led intervention in 2001, those policies were rolled back, and women gained increased access to education, employment, and political representation.
However, since retaking control of Kabul in 2021, the Taliban have systematically dismantled these gains. Girls have been banned from attending secondary and higher education institutions for years, making Afghanistan one of the only countries in the world where formal education beyond primary school is strictly prohibited for girls and women. Millions of girls have been denied their basic right to schooling, with secondary-age girls barred from classes since the Taliban takeover.
Women are also no longer permitted to work outside certain clerically approved sectors, and many have lost employment in government, NGOs, and media, thereby shrinking women’s participation in public and professional life. A “morality law” introduced by the Taliban also limits women’s freedom of movement, requiring male guardians to accompany them and banning visits to parks, gyms, and other public spaces.
The situation in Afghanistan today is a form of “gender apartheid,” in which half the population is removed from education, the workforce, and civic life. Afghan women’s rights activists have faced intimidation and violence. The government tightly controls dissent on women’s issues, and many independent media outlets have been shut down or pressured to comply with Taliban regulations, as Afghanistan’s women remain faceless and at the centre of a profound struggle for basic human rights.
The law that the Taliban in Afghanistan has implemented reflects the true interpretation of Islamic law in its original form, presented by the authorities as the foundation of a so-called “Islamic emirate,” with no incorporation of modern legal framework or human rights norms. Now the condition of Afghan women today illustrates what life may look like under a system governed exclusively by Sharia. What’s disturbing is that many Muslim men in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan openly idolize and favor this social setup.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Good work, Presidents Bush & Obama!
gravenimage says
The Taliban was like this before Bush and Obama were ever in office.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Graven
Yeah, but setting up a kleptocratic regime in Kabul and helping write a constitution that declared that no Afghan law can contradict sharia meant that they were never going to move past this. The right thing to have done after 2001 would have been to let the civil war in Afghanistan continue, but just ensure that no side got the upper hand. All while continuing to hunt down Osama, Zawahiri, Atef, KSM and everyone else
Walter Sieruk says
The Taliban are full of anti-female, that oppressive Islamic misogyny. This is because the Taliban base rule on Islam with its Sharia which is thoroughly misogynistic religion.
As a scholar of Islam with it’s Sharia had revealed the disturbing horrible truth in her book “Control of behavior and disregard for human life are key elements in Islam ideology.” Furthermore, the author also exposed that `” Women is Islam are considered unclean, deemed inferior even to dirt.” [1]
[1] THEY MUST BE STOPPED by Brigitte Gabriel, pages 171,172.
Walter Sieruk says
The Taliban are so thoroughly full of Islamic misogyny, therefore they have established a new penal code with make the property of their husbands.
Leading to that new code the Taliban in their Islamic anti- female malice they refuse to allow girls to have an even an elementally school education, and then, of course, no high school education. Therefore, the this makes wives more depended and subservient to their husbands.
In addition, the Taliban have banned women from any kind colleges and universities because the Islam is a religion of oppressive misogyny and their regime in Afghanistan is based on Islam with its Sharia.
The Taliban want the women trapped in Afghanistan to under the darkness tyranny and oppression of Sharia. Therefore, they ban them from receiving an education.
As Thomas Jefferson had, so wisely, declared “Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
Pray Hard says
New? Hardly.
Westman says
“What’s disturbing is that many Muslim men in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan openly idolize and favor this social setup.”
As a child, while returning from hunting with some family men, they stopped to eat in a rustic log restaurant. There was a sign on the wall behind the counter that read, “A woman isn’t any trouble if you keep her pregnant in the summer and barefoot in the winter.”
It was a joke, yet the attitude of it is still prevalent in Islam and should not be surprising. The Quran essentially gives every male in the household superiority over the poor mother and sisters. The husband can essentially threaten or beat the wife into submission so she becomes the “handmaid slave” of the house.
The design of Islam is to condition the men for wars of expansion, collect booty, slaves, women, and force the wives to accept it. “Bagging” the wife in cloth was the visual equivalent of the Chastity Belt. Like the brightly colored poisonous tree frogs it was a danger signal to any male that enticing an absent warrior’s wife will mean his death.
The result is the warrior husband was “King” when home, didn’t spend much time with kids, had sex on demand, could bring home a sex slave, etc. Today, with science-based Western strength, the days of booty and expansion through war are over, yet, the male life enhancement through Islamic indoctrination still remains. Supposedly, Muhammad criticized the men who resisted going to war because they were enjoying their superior status without being the warrior for which it was designed.
Hijrah is now the method of expansion and the booty is government social programs, often administered by useful idiot NGOs. And the groomed girls in thec UK? The Starmer government is forgetting about it by erasing the evidence.
Tell me again why Muslim men, who spend more time with their buddies from the Masjid than with their wives, would want to change anything about women’s status in the family, education, inheritance, etc?
Let me know when Muslim men are “disturbed” by being King Of The Roost in their own Hen House.
And the evil Taliban? Liars to the West about their intentions. The “New Taliban” – same as the old ugly Taliban.
ed says
This is nothing new
gravenimage says
Taliban’s New Penal Code Treats Wives as the Property of Their Husbands
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Horrifying–but just orthodox Islam.
CryHavic says
This troglyditic behavior is setting the stage for 9/11 II. The USA will not settle for attacking a backwater pesthole. Instead, our response to another attack will be widespread and destructive. These are terrorist assholes.
OLD GUY says
I keep waiting to see the pink, purple and blur haired women protestors screaming for women rights under Islam. Where the hell are they? I guess nobody pays them to protest for their own good.
Contose says
The Islamist male’s paradise just short of 72 virgins: Ejaculations on tap without the hassle of treating women as human beings such as themselves.