The Taliban has passed a new law in Afghanistan allowing husbands to beat their wives as long as there is no serious bodily harm in a new criminal code published by the group.
The 90-page penal code, signed by Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, sets out different levels of punishments for people depending on their standing in society.
Article 9 of the code divides Afghan society into four categories: religious scholars (ulama), the elite (ashraf), the middle class, and the lower class.
It appears to create a caste system in which offenders are categorised as either ‘free’ or ‘a slave,’ with women being placed on the same level as slaves.
Disturbing clauses state that ‘slave masters,’ or husbands, can give out physical punishments to their wives or subordinates.
Meanwhile, if a religious scholar or member of the elite commit an offense, the consequence is limited to advice or a court summons.
For the middle class the same crime can result in imprisonment, while the ‘lower class’ faces both corporal punishment and imprisonment.
The code, called De Mahakumu Jazaai Osulnama has been distributed across courts in the country, prompting waves of outrage online from activists outside Afghanistan.
Although citizens in the country are too afraid to speak out as it is, the Taliban passed another ruling stating that discussing the code would be deemed an offense.
According to the code, corporal punishment for serious crimes will be carried out by Islamic clerics, but encourages husbands to give out ‘discretionary punishments’ to their wives for less serious misdemeanors.
Regarding violence against women, Article 32 states that only if the husband beats the woman with a stick and this act results in severe injury such as ‘a wound or bodily bruising’, and the woman can prove it before a judge, will the husband be sentenced to fifteen days’ imprisonment.
However, the contradiction lies in that a woman must remain fully covered while simultaneously proving her injuries to a judge.
She is also required to be accompanied by a male chaperone, which is usually the husband himself.
[/b]The new code also does not condemn or prohibit sexual or psychological violence against women.[/b]
In addition, the code stops women from seeking refuge with their family to escape violence at home.
Human rights movement Rawadari said that Article 34 of the code states that a woman who repeatedly goes to her father’s house or that of other relatives without the permission of her husband and ‘does not return home despite her husband’s request’ faces three months in prison.
Her family and relatives would also face punishment.
Writing on X, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls Reem Alsalem said of the new laws: ‘The implications of this latest code for women and girls is simply terrifying.
The Taliban however have understood, and understood correctly, that no one will stop them. Will the international community prove them wrong? And if so when?’
The new penal code comes as Islamic laws in Afghanistan have become so restrictive that even barbers are facing detention for cutting men’s beards too short.
Officials tasked with promoting virtue ‘are obliged to implement the Islamic system’, he said.
In an eight-page guide to imams issued in November, prayer leaders were told to describe shaving beards as a ‘major sin’ in their sermons.
The religious affairs ministry’s arguments against trimming state that by shaving their beards, men were ‘trying to look like women’.
Last year, three barbers in Kunar province were jailed for three to five months for breaching the ministry’s rules, according to a UN report
