Sharia in Kabul?: A theological iron curtain is descending across Afghanistan - radicalism taking hold across the nation

National Review, Oct 28, 2002 by Nina Shea

Shortly after Afghanistan's cabinet was announced in June, new chief justice Fazul Hadi Shinwari denounced the newly appointed women's affairs minister, Sima Samar, for speaking "against the Islamic nation of Afghanistan." Samar was formally charged with "blasphemy," which can carry the death penalty. Her crime? Dr. Samar had allegedly told a magazine in Canada that she did not believe in sharia, or Islamic law. Fearing for her life, Samar ultimately declined her office, even though, under intense U.S. pressure, the charges were dropped.

President Bush has robustly affirmed the importance of human rights and democracy in America's foreign policy. In his New York Times op-ed on September 11, the president declared that America would work "to extend the benefits of freedom and progress to nations that lack them." One might think, then, that the political reconstruction of Afghanistan-entailing considerable American involvement and hundreds of millions of dollars in financial support-would present a clear opportunity for protecting the human rights the president championed.

Think again. Notwithstanding the endless news stories about girls being allowed to go to school, Afghanistan is in imminent danger of being reconstructed as an Islamic state under hard-line sharia law.

This hard-line rule differs from more common applications of sharia, which regulate mostly family and inheritance issues. Under the Islamist version of sharia, courts pronounce and enforce strict, all-encompassing codes of behavior supposedly based on a literal reading of the Koran and accounts of Mohammed's life. Commanding their own police forces, the courts apply archaic rules of evidence and administer harsh corporal punishments. The final rulings of sharia criminal courts are considered to be pronouncements of divine law, and as such cannot be criticized or altered. The broad range of human rights-freedoms of expression, press, and religion; equality under the law; non-discrimination; the right not to be tortured-are typically denied.

In June, President Karzai appointed a politically diverse cabinet, including a number of moderates, to lead Afghanistan's government in the current transition period. To head the supreme court, however, he appointed Shinwari, a man with a well-publicized commitment to implementing hard-line sharia. On January 24, for instance, Shinwari had told the international press that under the new government, adulterers would be stoned to death, the hands of thieves amputated, and consumers of alcohol given 80 lashes.

He is also opposed to the practice of Christianity. Reuters quoted him as stating: "The Islamic government, according to sharia, is bound to punish those who get involved in anti-Islamic activities. We can punish them for propagating other religions-such as threaten them, expel them and, as a last resort, execute them." Shinwari told a National Public Radio correspondent that Islam has three essential rules. First, a man should be politely invited to accept Islam; second, if he does not convert, he should obey Islam. The third option, if he refuses, is to "behead him."

Two weeks before his appointment as chief justice, Shinwari reiterated that the nation would continue as an Islamic state under all-encompassing sharia law. According to Agence France Presse, Shinwari insisted there would be no "Western-style government" in Afghanistan: "No one will accept it. Only an Islamic government is acceptable to the Afghan people." The 70-year-old justice had lived in exile for nearly 40 years, mostly in Pakistan, where he taught Islamic law at a madrassa. Decorating the wall above his desk, according to the Associated Press, are a sword and a leather lash for flogging. They were left by the Taliban, but Shinwari keeps them up as symbols of the harsh sharia justice which he also endorses.

Not that Shinwari isn't critical of the Taliban. Indeed, he never misses an opportunity to denounce them as "barbaric" for having carried out stonings and amputations as public spectacles in Kabul's sports stadium, rather than in private. He has faulted them for pressing private doctors, and not special prison doctors, to implement sentences of amputation. He has deplored their rushing hastily to judgment, instead of methodically using appropriate procedures. But Shinwari has never backed away from the extreme sharia punishments, and has repeatedly and publicly asserted that he intends to apply them in the supreme court he now heads. "We are not eager to execute criminals or chop off heads," he recently told the Washington Post, "but if all the conditions are fulfilled, [it] is required."

In an absolute sharia state, only the judiciary holds power. Iran's President Khatami has repeatedly complained that religious judges hold the real levers of power and do not allow him to usher in the civil liberties for which he was twice elected. Already in Afghanistan, Karzai's justice ministry has ceded formal control of the central prosecutor's office to the court, and a commission on judicial reform was dissolved after religious hard-liners obstructed it. If Shinwari's vision of Afghanistan were realized, he and his colleagues on the bench would emerge as the country's most powerful political figures. And the U.S. should not expect much in the way of cooperation from them. Shinwari has already said that he will be lenient with those involved in Afghanistan's opium industry-a priority concern of the State Department-since, as he explained to the press, narcotics are not banned under Islamic law. Nor is it a good sign that he is given to referring to non-Muslims, even in public interviews, as "infidels."