When power dresses as piety

2026-02-08 - 22:26

On January 4, 2026, the Taliban unveiled a new criminal code for Afghanistan. It is presented as a return to ‘authentic’ Islamic governance. In reality, it is a comprehensive architecture of coercion, three parts, ten chapters and 119 articlesdesigned not to deliver justice but to consolidate absolute power under the guise of religion. This structure matters. The code is not a loose collection of edicts; it is a carefully layered system. Its early chapters define who qualifies as a ‘proper’ Muslim and who does not. Later chapters prescribe punishments, authorize vigilante enforcement, restrict women’s autonomy, divide society into hierarchical classes, and criminalize criticism of the rulers. In short, belief, behaviour, and obedience are fused into a single coercive mechanism. Law becomes theology, and theology becomes a weapon. Islam, however, was never meant to function this way.The Qur’an repeatedly grounds law in justice, restraint, and moral accountability. “O you who believe, stand firmly for justice, as witnesses for God, even if it be against yourselves” (4:135). The Taliban code does the opposite: it creates protected classesparticularly clericswho are exempt from judicial scrutiny, while ordinary citizens face punishment not only by courts but by neighbours empowered to police ‘sin’. This inversion is not Islamic but authoritarian.One chapter reportedly restricts recognition of Islam to a single jurisprudential school, branding others as deviant. This is an extraordinary claim in a civilization that historically flourished through pluralism. Islam’s classical legal tradition was built on difference, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i, Hanbali, Ja‘farieach interpreting the same revelation through reasoned debate. The Qur’an explicitly warns against denying another’s faith “Do not say to one who offers you peace, ‘You are not a believer’” (4:94). Sectarian exclusion is not doctrinal purity, it is political gatekeeping. Another chapter criminalizes changing one’s religious school of thought. This, too, contradicts the Qur’an’s clearest principle “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256). Faith that survives only under threat of prison is not faith. It is fear.Perhaps most dangerous is the chapter allowing punishmentand even killingin the name of ‘public interest’, while simultaneously empowering citizens to enforce morality themselves. The Qur’an treats human life as sacred “Whoever kills a soul... it is as if he had slain all mankind” (5:32). Islamic law historically imposed stringent standards of evidence precisely to prevent abuse. By contrast, the Taliban code lowers the threshold for violence and raises it for mercy. Women and children are especially vulnerable under this framework. Provisions that legitimize domestic punishment or restrict women’s visibility in public are defended as virtue. Yet the Qur’an commands husbands to “live with [their wives] in kindness” (4:19), and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) never struck a woman or a child. Normalizing coercion inside the home is not moral order but privatization of cruelty.Another chapter criminalizes dissent, punishing criticism of the Taliban leadership with lashes or imprisonment. This directly contradicts the Islamic ethic of accountability. When Abu Bakr assumed leadership, he declared that “If I am right, support me and if I am wrong, correct me”. In Islam, speaking truth to power is not sedition, it is worship. What the Taliban have produced is not timeless Islam but frozen authority. Islam is for all times not because it resists change, but because its principlesjustice, dignity, consultation, mercyare adaptable to changing human conditions. The Qur’an itself invites reflection and reason“Will you not then think?” (7:169). Civilizations stagnate when law is treated as an artifact rather than a moral compass. This distinction is crucial for the international community. The Taliban insist that criticism of their laws is hostility to Islam itself. That claim must be rejected unequivocally. Islam does not belong to regimes. It belongs to its ethical commitments. When power shields itself with Allah’s name, scrutiny becomes not only legitimate but necessary.History offers painful lessons. In Iran, protests against economic hardship were once labelled ‘war against God’, punishable by death. Elsewhere, clerical authority has been invoked to nullify constitutions and silence parliaments. Wherever religion is monopolized by the state, dissent becomes heresy and tyranny becomes sacred. Afghanistan today is not suffering from an excess of Islam. It is suffering from its instrumentalization.The Qur’an warns precisely against this abuse “And do not mix the truth with falsehood or conceal the truth while you know [it]” (2:42). A law that divides Muslims into castes, sanctions violence without due process, suppresses women, and criminalizes criticism does not revive faith but corrodes it. For Muslims worldwide, the challenge is moral clarity. For non-Muslims, it is intellectual honesty. The Taliban’s code is not Islam restored,but authoritarianism baptized. If Islam is to remain a faith for all times, it must be defended from those who would reduce it to a tool of fear.When power dresses as piety, the Qur’an itself stands as the strongest indictment. —The writer is PhD in Political Science, and visiting faculty at QAU Islamabad.