Taliban To Implement Sharia Law In Afghanistan

The Taliban has ordered Afghan courts to completely implement its interpretation of Sharia Law, including potential public executions, amputations and flogging, a decision that experts believe may worsen the poor country’s human rights situation.

Afghanistan’s Supreme Leader Alaiqadar Amirul Momineen issued the “obligatory” order after meeting with judges to “examine the cases of thieves, kidnappers, and seditionists,” according to Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid.

“Those cases that have met all the Shariah conditions of limitation and retribution, you are obliged to issue the limitation and retribution, because this is the order of the Sharia… and it is obligatory to act,” Mujahid tweeted Sunday.

According to Kaheld Abou El Fadl, a professor of Islamic Law at UCLA and one of the world’s foremost authorities on Sharia law, there is a long history of discussion over Sharia rules and varied interpretations of their significance.

“Every point of law you’ll find 10 different opinions … Sharia is very open-ended,” he said.

Sharia law, according to El Fadl, is the “search for the divine will” within Islamic jurisprudence. “Although it is customary in both Western and indigenous discourses to use Sharia interchangeably with Islamic law, Sharia is a far broader and all-encompassing notion,” according to a statement on El Fadl’s website.

( Culled from Al Jazeera).