Afghanistan: Woman says ‘The Taliban will kill you if you don’t have a man living in the house’
The more completely the Sharia is implemented, the more desperate women become, as their rights are trampled. The Taliban adheres strictly to Sharia, and the group is far from being singular in that. The Islamic State, al Qaeda and some Islamic countries do the same in varying degrees.
Iran has an oppressive male guardianship system for women, as does Qatar. So also does Saudi Arabia (which has also cracked down on female human rights defenders, despite boasting of “reform”). The Taliban has fashioned its government after the Iranian regime, so how should one expect women to be treated? Sharia allows for barbarity toward women, to train them not to violate its oppressive laws. If a man beats his wife, it’s his right to do so under the Sharia (cf. Qur’an 4:34).
In Afghanistan (and elsewhere), if the man is particularly abusive and threatening so that the woman decides to leave him for her own safety, she not only faces the prospect that he will hunt her down, but she also faces retribution by the state. This is how it is ensured that women remain obedient and inferior to males as specified in Qur’anic and Hadith texts. This is a norm in Afghanistan under the Taliban, as told by one Muslim woman below.
“The Taliban interpretation of Shariah, Islamic law, forbids women from leaving their houses without a male escort, says Obed Benjamin Rod, an Afghan Canadian pastor in Hamilton who is helping Afghan women escape the country.” The problem is that this is not an “interpretation”; it is strict adherence.
“Afghan women desperate to escape Taliban rule: ‘We don’t know how long we can hide,’” by Katharine Lake Berz, Toronto Star, November 6, 2021:
Maryam Said Anwar’s says her body still bears the scars from the beatings with a screwdriver she endured at the hands of her husband. Forced to marry when she was 13, Anwar says she was drugged, beaten and tortured by her husband. “Even as l lay full of pain and blood on the ground, he would hit my face and remove my nails with heavy-duty pliers.”
She fled after six years with her three young children — a newborn, 2 and 4 at the time — moving from place to place to hide from her spouse. But when the Taliban took power in Afghanistan last summer, her fears skyrocketed; now she feared not just being beaten but being killed. A woman who left her husband, she says, would be executed by the Taliban if discovered.
The Taliban interpretation of Shariah, Islamic law, forbids women from leaving their houses without a male escort, says Obed Benjamin Rod, an Afghan Canadian pastor in Hamilton who is helping Afghan women escape the country. That means women who live without a man in the house or work outside their homes are breaking Taliban laws, some of them punishable by death.
Two women Rod is helping are sisters Sara and Shabnam Saljughi, aged 18 and 21. In tears, the young women pleaded over the phone from a safe-house in Afghanistan: “We don’t know how long we can hide,” said Shabnam. “Help us save our lives.”
The pair, who are Christian, fled their father in Mazarsharif a year ago when he tried to marry them to Taliban fighters. Last month Taliban soldiers entered their apartment looking for “infidels,” and the sisters hid with an upstairs neighbour. “I was so scared we had left a Bible in the house,” says Shabnam. They believe their father had told the Taliban to kill them.