For more than a week, social media has been abuzz with the gory details of the death of Rukhsana, an Afghan girl of 20 years of age, who was stoned to death for allegedly committing adultery. That the incident happened in the Taliban controlled area in Ghor province lends credence to the fact that the decree was religiously sanctioned.
The footage, widely circulated on social media websites, shows a screaming girl buried in a hole from where her head is visible. Men are seen pelting stones at her. The accusation against Rukhsana was that she had committed adultery, extra-marital sex. The story ran saying that she was forced to marry a man against her will. While her husband was away from home for the last five years, working in Iran, Rukhsana allegedly had sexual relations with a man whom she was not married to. Since stoning to death, called rajam, has a purely religious context, the legality of the punishment needs to be examined in the religious perspective.
One school of thought holds that Islam prescribes stoning to death as a punishment for an adulterer — a married person who indulges in extra-marital sex — no matter whether the adulterer is male or female. But before that punishment can be administered, several preconditions must be met. First, the act of intercourse must be extra-marital, i.e. a married person having sex with a person whom he/she is not married to. Secondly, four eyewitnesses must have observed the act of adultery. Thirdly, not everybody but a legitimate government should decide whether the accused is guilty or not.
Let us critically examine the case. If Rukhsana was married against her will to a person whom she did not like then no marriage had taken place! In Islam, there is no nikah — the Islamic method of solemnising a marriage — by force. In that case, since she was not married in the first place, her stoning to death could not be carried out. Secondly, I doubt that four Muslims would have observed her committing adultery, an act of privacy. Perhaps the act of adultery might have been scientifically proven. A DNA test can be conducted on a newborn baby — if any — to authenticate that the child’s DNA matched that of the male adulterer. Yes, if it were the west and not Afghanistan then the possibility of that happening might have been presumed. Perhaps footage might have appeared showing the act of adultery?
Let us presume that footage was available and a DNA test of a newborn infant was also carried out to prove that adultery had taken place, could then stoning to death be carried out? The clergy are divided on the point. For one school of thought, in the event, rajam becomes necessary. For the majority, the four eyewitnesses who see the act without any source are a must for the rajam to be carried out. Nevertheless, if a judge is convinced that adultery has taken place but there is the absence of four eyewitnesses then punishing the guilty though rajam cannot be carried out. Last but not least, are the Taliban entitled to be a legitimate government with the power to execute rajam? The answer is of course an obvious no! On all the above counts, Rukhsana, the accused, had the benefit of the doubt. Then why was she stoned to death even when she had a fair chance of being freed if judged through the prism of Islamic justice?
In fact, as is true in religiously politicised conservative Muslim societies, Islam is used to serve as a means to justify the end of protecting retrogressive cultural values. In these backward societies, the eloping of a girl with a boy or even an unsubstantiated accusation of premarital sex on either the male or female adult suffices to qualify for death. It is the so-called loss of face or honour in society that warrants the killing of the accused irrespective of whether Islam sanctions such a punishment or not. The support of the clergy for this Stone Age mentality stems from shared conservatism that informs the thinking of both cultural thugs and religious hooligans. Should we wait and see how many more Rukhsanas we can lose to the darkness of ignorance or should we act?
The way forward from sheer cultural conservatism and religious extremism is to gradually depoliticise religion and introduce secularism as an eventual aim with an emphasis on modern secular education, especially among females who get ardent support from male feminists to the cause of women’s empowerment. For these noble measures to be fruitful, the revival of a centralised Afghan state is inevitable. Until that happens, liberty, beyond the narrow confines of a conservative society, has a hefty price tag attached. Rukhsana, the ill-fated Afghan girl, paid for it with her life.
The author is a researcher and political analyst based in Quetta. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @mughtian