In a public meeting on climate change in Bamyam, the province’s Taliban governor told the audience that murderers should be beheaded and thieves should have their hands amputated.
“If 10 people kill one person, then all 10 people should be beheaded so that other people learn a lesson so that no Muslim should be killed,” said Abdullah Sarhadi on Saturday, October, 23. “A society can only be reformed by the implementation of Islamic punishments,” continued the Taliban leader.
“According to the sharia and Quran, whenever a person steals, his hand should be amputated so that the society is safe,” Sarhadi emphasized. “When a person has stolen, he has committed treason. When he has committed treason, he has no dignity anymore. When one hand is amputated, the whole society will be reformed,” he said.
This senior Taliban official likened cutting off a thief’s hand to medical treatment: “If a doctor tells someone that your hands or legs have cancer and should be amputated, no one says that it is cruelty or it is barbarity. If the Quran and Hadith command it, they call it barbarity.”
He justified the implementation of sharia laws by saying, “The Holy Quran has established certain punishments for the protection of people. For example, if a person steals, it is a command of sharia that the person’s hand should be cut off.”
At the meeting, at which the Taliban had not allowed women to participate, Sarhadi also talked about how women’s rights should be further restricted. He asked the men at the meeting not to allow women of their families to leave the house, claiming that it would provide the opportunity for “prostitution.” Emphasizing that Islam gives full rights to women, he said, “A woman should remain at home. The husband is responsible for providing all her maintenance and expenses. It is her husband’s responsibility to take her to the doctor.”
“A woman should stay at home, according to their nature. They should do nothing. Women should not go out, not pick up shovels and pickaxes, and not do farming or driving,” he reiterated.
The Taliban had previously announced that punishments for hudud crimes, such as amputation of thieves’ hands, would be implemented. There are reports of widespread violations of human rights taking place across the country, including torture, flogging, and stoning to death.
But the Taliban censorship of media does not often allow word of those harsh punishments from reaching beyond local communities.
The statements made by the Taliban governor of Bamyan are added confirmation of the policies that the Taliban have implemented in the past year, especially those aimed at restricting the rights of women to work outside the home or even do once-common household chores, such as going to the market for food. Now, girls above the sixth grade are prohibited from going to school and many working women are forced to stay at home. Also, women are not allowed to travel without a mahram.
