Mohammad Mohaqiq, leader of Afghanistan’s Islamic Unity Party, has called for the personal status laws of Shiite Muslims to be exempted from the country\u2019s general legal framework. This demand comes in response to the summons and physical assault of a Shiite cleric in Kabul. Mohaqiq warned that interfering in Shiite religious affairs could deepen social divides.<\/p>\n
On Friday night (May 15), Mohaqiq wrote on Facebook that many Islamic countries differentiate between general laws and personal status laws. He noted that this principle was also recognized during the previous Afghan republic. According to him, executive legal and criminal laws can be uniformly applied to all citizens, but issues such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, child custody, and other religious and worship matters should be governed according to the jurisprudence and beliefs of each religious community.<\/p>\n
Referring to Iraq\u2019s experience, Mohaqiq added that in that country, Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians each have their own institutions to handle religious matters, and their freedom to implement personal status laws is guaranteed.<\/p>\n
The party leader also recalled that in Afghanistan, Shiite personal status laws were previously implemented within the framework of Ja\u2018fari jurisprudence. Furthermore, the 2003 constitution, ratified by the Loya Jirga, officially recognized the Ja\u2018fari school as a legitimate sect. He emphasized that the Taliban administration has since revoked this recognition and, according to him, imposed pressures on the practice of Shiite rituals and personal status laws.<\/p>\n
Mohaqiq described the summons and beating of the Shiite cleric Hussein Dad Sharifi in Kabul as an “insult.” He stated that the Taliban have criminalized the practice of temporary marriage contracts (Nikah Mut\u2018ah) and threatened some Shiite clerics with six months imprisonment if they conduct such ceremonies.<\/p>\n
He also highlighted an incident in Ashtarlay district of Daykundi province, where, he said, a Pashtun man claimed a married Hazara woman as his spouse, leading to the arrest of her family members by the Taliban.<\/p>\n
Mohaqiq warned that continued “religious and honor-related pressures” could increase ethnic and sectarian tensions in the country. He urged the Taliban administration to respect the personal status domain of Shiites and refrain from actions that, in his words, “add fuel to the fire of conflicts,” stressing that the consequences would benefit no one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mohammad Mohaqiq urges Afghanistan to exempt Shiite personal status laws from general laws following the assault of a Shiite cleric in Kabul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-politics","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}