The Sharia law in which the Taliban have committed themselves to respecting women’s rights in their own way is the sacred law of Islam, based mainly on the Koran, the book that contains Allah’s revelations to Muhammad, and on custom or tradition (the sunna) which collects norms of different kinds. Shari’a in Arabic literally means “beaten road”, even if common sense is “law” and its principles are “the main source of legislation” of Islamic countries: as in the case of Egypt which, although moderate and with a respected Christian minority, has carved this concept into Article 2 of their Constitution, the one that is enabling progress in women’s rights.
However, there are extreme interpretations of Sharia such as those invoked by Islamic terrorists to justify their attacks and crimes, or by states such as Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Yemen and, indeed, Afghanistan to even keep stoning in its own legislation, although there are no direct references in the Koran to this barbaric punishment. But it is also the beheading, the mutilation of limbs (in theory the theft is punished with the cutting of the right hand) and the frustrated ones that conflict with the principles of Western law, which, moreover, does not recognize as crimes choices such as adultery, consumption. alcohol and apostasy, that is the change of religion: all behaviors inadmissible for the Sharia.
Islamic law sees men and women as equal in the eyes of God, but the rights and obligations conferred on them (especially economic ones) are not identical, with clear discrimination of the female gender in terms of inheritance and personal freedoms, limited by male guardian when it comes to traveling abroad for example.