The Taliban propose to restore the stoning of adulterous women

The Taliban government raised its voice publicly for the first time the possibility of reinstating stoning for women who commit adulterya method of execution used during the previous fundamentalist regime and whose return threatens to further undermine women’s rights in Afghanistan.

The Taliban government spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, presented last night during an interview with the Afghan television channel TOLO the latest reference to the application of lynching, the stoning of a person to death in a public square, as a practice that adheres to Sharia or Islam. law.

“One of the laws Sharia law is stoning. If the conditions are met again, we will certainly implement Sharia provisions. “Whether it’s prayer or stoning, we will carry it out,” the spokesman said.

According to Islamic law, stoning is a punishment used to punish women, especially for adultery, which is considered a crime in Afghanistan.

However, “it is difficult to meet the conditions for stoning”, because if a married woman and a man commit adultery, “four men or two men and four women are needed as witnesses” to apply the decree, religious scholar Mawlawi Mohammad Saleh explained to EFE.

Furthermore, a woman’s testimony in court is worth half as much as a man’s testimony, while rape is consideredto the “confession” of adulteryin accordance with Islamic legislation.

“Detailed law and conditions for the implementation of this regulation are missing,” social rights and women’s rights activist Nahid Noor told EFE.

The return of this practice, in force during the previous fundamentalist regime from 1996 to 2001, further degrades the position of women’s rights, which have suffered significant deterioration and apartheid since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.

Today, Afghanistan is the only country in the world that bans women’s education, according to the UN. Added to this is a series of regulations that range from the prohibition of working for non-governmental organizations or playing sports to segregation by gender or the imposition of a veil when going out on the street.