In the early days of January, a document began circulating through the provincial courts of Afghanistan that would fundamentally rewrite the social contract of the nation. Signed by the Taliban’s reclusive leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Criminal Procedure Code for Courts (De Mahakumu Jazaai Osulnama) is a manifesto for institutionalized inequality. Across its 119 articles, the code formally divides the population into a four-tiered hierarchy where justice is no longer blind, but rather a reflection of one’s social standing.
The architecture of this new order is most visible in Article 9. Here, the Taliban has codified a stratified system of punishment that mirrors a medieval estate system more than a modern judiciary. At the apex sit the religious scholars, or Ulama, who are essentially immunized from the harsher realities of the law. For them, a criminal act is met not with a cell or a lash, but with verbal advice. Just below them are the Elites, or Ashraf, whose birth or tribal prominence buys them counseling over incarceration. The true weight of the law descends only upon the middle class, workers and professionals who face standard imprisonment, and the lower class, who are sentenced to both imprisonment and public flogging.
This formalization of discrimination represents a catastrophic collapse of the rule of law. Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is categorical that all are equal before the law. By transforming the courtroom into a venue for reinforcing social caste, the Taliban has rejected the core of modern governance. Yet, perhaps more damaging to the regime’s own claims of legitimacy is the fact that this code stands in direct opposition to the egalitarian foundations of the faith they claim to defend.
Islamic history is defined by its origin as a radical social equalizer. In the 7th century, the swift expansion of Islam was driven largely by its promise of a society where a slave and a prince stood shoulder-to-shoulder in prayer and before the law. This revolutionary message of Musawah allowed Islam to dismantle the rigid, oppressive class structures of the Byzantine and Sassanid empires. It was this liberation of the lower classes of the ancient world that fueled the faith’s rapid growth across continents.
The Prophet Muhammad was famously uncompromising on this issue. When a noblewoman from the Makhzum tribe was found guilty of theft and prominent companions sought to intercede on her behalf, the Prophet’s rebuke was enduring. He warned that previous civilizations were destroyed because they punished the weak while letting the noble go free. He declared that even if his own daughter, Fatima, had committed the crime, he would have applied the law without hesitation. By explicitly sparing the elite while whipping the poor, the Taliban’s new laws are not just a human rights violation, it is a theological subversion of the very ethos that made Islam a global force.
The rot of this stratified justice extends into the private sphere. The code adopts a chillingly high threshold for recognizing domestic abuse, requiring bone fractures or severe bruising before a husband’s violence is considered a matter for the court. This effectively grants legal cover for a spectrum of physical and psychological violence, contradicting the absolute prohibition of torture and degrading treatment found in international law. Furthermore, by criminalizing the act of a woman seeking refuge with her parents without her husband’s permission, the state has systematically dismantled the last remaining safety nets for victims of abuse.
The sectarian implications are equally grim. The code labels any school of thought outside the Hanafi tradition, including Jafari Shias, Ismailis, and Salafis, as heretical. In Islamic jurisprudence, the concept of public interest, is intended to preserve the sanctity of life and intellect. However, Article 14 weaponizes this concept to justify the execution of those who defend false beliefs. This is the legal framework for a slow-motion purge of Afghanistan’s intellectual and religious minorities.
Even the language used in the document suggests a return to a feudal mentality. The code explicitly utilizes terms like ghulam slave and master, granting masters the right to execute punishments on those they claim to own. This ignores the famous challenge of the second Caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, who asked: “Since when have you enslaved people, when their mothers gave birth to them free?” While the Caliph Umar punished the sons of governors to protect the rights of commoners, the Taliban’s code shielding the sons of the regime while punishing the commoner.
Ultimately, the Taliban’s new criminal code is less a system of justice and more a tool of social control. By prioritizing confessions over forensic evidence and empowering ordinary Muslims to act as judge and executioner on the street, the regime has created a vigilante state. In this environment, the lower class doesn’t just suffer the most, they are the primary targets of a regime that views poverty as a symptom of low status rather than a failure of governance. The result is a manifesto for a divided nation, dismantling the very pillars of justice that once promised equality to all.
