As I understand it, you are in fact allowed under the law to provide financial recompense to the victim (or their family) rather than suffer the legal consequence. So I'm not sure that your argument holds up.
Am I wrong about that?
And I'm not sure that you can equate Taliban law with the original incarnation of Islam which was quite lovely for its time, and nothing at all like the Taliban. (If a woman needs to express herself as a human by having the rights to her own autonomy - does that need hold up under Taliban law?)
Sorry, I should have clarified. Buy money, I mean that you can't do an OJ through the lawyer system and buy a dream team. Everyone knows OJ did it- but because he had money to get the best lawyers, he got away with it. But in this system, there are no lawyers. Its a free public service. Financial recompense is available for some crime such as accidental killing, and the amount is dependent on the wealth of the criminal, and only if the victim's family agrees. So a rich person would have to pay more, if the family agreed to the blood money.
I don't know how the Taliban are going to implement laws in regards to women's autonomy this time around. For example, Islamic law originally had women be accompanied by a male relative only if the distance to a journey was beyond a certain time limit. I suppose this was due to safety reasons back then. But the calculation of the speed of transportation within a single day in the modern era of airplanes have had some scholars opine that that women no longer require a male to go anywhere these days. I have also never heard of the original laws having segregated walkways in the streets or shops like how Iran did, so it would be wrong if they implemented those kinds of policies.
Nah, dude. The Taliban, as a whole, are evil beasts. Sure, they're wiser now having spent the past two decades planning on how to govern their country without getting thrown from power again. And you're right that they're making significant improvements to the image they're projecting to the rest of the world. But that doesn't mean their ideology has changed. As you note, they are making exceptions to that ideology--such as the woman news anchor--but those are exceptions to the norm.
There were warnings that women's rights activists in Afghanistan were in danger, Now, they are disappearing and being killed in the streets.
www.abc.net.au
Before my translator fled Kabul to head to Pakistan, he told me how he was at the barbershop when some Taliban broke into the building and started beating up the barber for trimming beards and eyebrows and playing music. This is the kind of culture that will exist in Afghanistan as far as the Taliban can reach, and as we know, it's only the tip of the ice burg when it comes to their brutality and human rights violations.
I've been reading through your comments on this thread and I got to tell you, I feel for you. To me you seem like the kind of guy that's really just trying to figure things out, and your bouncing some of your convictions off the folks here in an effort to make them stronger. I respect that, and I hope you don't find me patronizing. As a younger man, I sure thought I had things figured out on complicated issues like this one. And if I'd had the opportunity to enter a discussion about those issues in a community like this, I probably would've leapt at it.
My advice, though--if you don't mind me offering it-- is that you maintain the distinction between moral relativism and keeping an open mind.
If you're really curious about who the Taliban are, I strongly suggest reading mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef's autobiography, "My Life with the Taliban." Zaeef helped found the Taliban with Mullah Omar, fought with the U.S. against the Russians, helped the Taliban rise to power in the 90s, then got sold by Pakistan to the U.S. and sent to Guantanamo for a while. Now he's living in Kabul.
Listen to what he has to say. I don't think you'll see his convictions regarding women and human rights as having the sort of moral fluidity capable of evolving with the times.
We'll see if it becomes the norm or the exception in time. I heard that the hit series Ertugrul was allowed on Afghan TV by the Taliban, a show many times more popular than Game of Thrones worldwide. Women usually cover their hair on that show, but sometimes they don't.
Your link on the killing of the woman activist says that the suspects luring women to those locations had been arrested by the Taliban. At most, it said the Taliban fostered an environment where crimes against them could occur, not that it was the Taliban that killed them. I'll point out here that the so called activist list is apparently fake, according to the official spokesman:
(Translation: A fake list was compiled and published by the intelligence agency of the enemy in which the names of many journalists, writers and activists of various societies were written and then threatened by the Cultural Commission of the IEA. This list and letter is absolute fake, no one cares.)
I've posted a video earlier where the Taliban Foreign Minister said he didn't have a problem with music being played on TV.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/...alwar-kameez-Taliban-hold-designer-items.html Here, some Taliban members are clean shaven. I'm not doubting your story about the translator and the barber. From what I've heard, it seems there are conflicts within the Taliban itself as to the direction they want to go. The older crowd seems to be more conservative, while a lot of the younger ones seem to be more liberal. The war took 20 years, and a whole generation grew up in that environment. The Taliban needed the support of the new generation, and it was because of this that they entered the ranks. So again, its the waiting game to see how it plays out. I think its worth mentioning that changes are occurring. I remember a few months ago there was a big idea that girls wouldn't be allowed to go to school and then that changed as the university stayed open as an exception, and then that changed to only a couple of provinces having schools open, and then this changed again to even more. Last time I checked, 8-9 provinces out of the 34 have women's schools currently open. Yes, it should be more, but this is more than just a few months ago and the country is in a state of humanitarian crisis.
And this is what frustrates me about the media- it would be fine if they just reported normally, but the overwhelming bias and outright fake news among all the so called independent sources forces one to go to sources beyond the mainstream, regardless of wing. Both the left and the right report the same when it comes to these types of issues. They report something which is supposed to be taken as fact in course, but it isn't. But the story is already out, so by the time something shows it wasn't the case, its already too late. And it keeps happening one-sidedly, which then divides people into 2 groups: one who accept that even if there were some fakes, its still generally the truth and two, people that suspect everything.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ban-hanging-someone-us-helicopter/5668864001/ A viral video of a Taliban hanging someone from a helicopter turned out not to be the case.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I've seen Zaeef talk before on youtube, but I hadn't known he had a book out. I'll check it out.
Another thing to consider is that you have a right to attorney in the US, and if you cannot afford it, one will be provided to you. You can also waive your right to attorney, though it's not clear how doing so would expedite matters much or get you a fairer trial.
The reason for attorneys and for jury trials that don't always proceed quickly are beyond the scope of this thread I think, but as unfair as our system can be, I don't think swifter justice is going to dispense with bias and inequalities in our legal system.
I personally am opposed to the death penalty in my own (and other) countries. For one thing, people end up on death row and are sometimes executed for crimes they didn't commit. And even when people can be reasonably said to deserve death for crimes they committed, I feel that the act of killing in the name of vengeance is incredibly corrupting and toxic.
Human Rights Watch has released a report regarding Taliban reprisals against people who worked for the former government, btw.
KABUL (AP) — Taliban fighters have summarily killed or forcibly “disappeared” more than 100 former police and intelligence officers since taking power in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said in a r…
www.ksnt.com
Swift justice is only one part of trials. Like in the OJ example though, getting good lawyers affects the outcome. The US has 4% of the world's population, yet 20% of the incarcerated population. This system has the judge listen to both parties. The judge knows the law and is meant to give a fair trial. It isn't dependent on how well a lawyer talks.
We agree to disagree then. If you've followed the Epstein case, you'll see that former US president Bill Clinton visited the pedo island 27 times, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak was a visitor too, and many other famous names. This has been going on for a long time, yet we all know, like OJ, who did it. The Taliban had dealt with similar situations in the past, and I'm sure you know what policies they took. Hung em all. Fast justice, cheap justice, not spending life in prison or wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. Objectively, there are metrics where this type of justice far outstrips US secular law. Europe can get away with doing this because much of their wealth was gained from colonialism from poor countries, which wasn't even long ago-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_indemnity_controversy Their inefficient governments and expensive policies are unsustainable, and this is why they are beginning to no longer able to keep such expensive systems running. Look at the eras before colonialism- they too used the corporal systems like the Taliban. If Afghanistan should use expensive incarceration system and not the cheap corporal system, then it cannot be expected to be sustained, as it is not as rich as other nations. Keep in mind that trillions were used militarily which destroyed Afghan infrastructure over the past 20 years, and only a few billion were actually spent on aid (much of which was stolen by corrupt Afghan officials). Thus, there was not advancement but actually regression, under the US. But its not like as though these countries are doomed to fail. In fact, Libya under Gadhaffi was a "good dictatorship". Before him, only around 15% of the people were literate, and he brought it up to over 80%. Housing was free. Education was free. Healthcare was free. No, it wasn't perfect. But it still shows how western style democracy wasn't needed to build something pretty good for the people.
The link that you posted of ex-officials, lets assume the worst and say the Taliban is indeed hunting them down. Sorry, but I don't feel bad about them, and won't even count that as criticism against the Taliban. You have to understand how corrupt and evil the former US backed government was. After the Afghan warlords defeated the Soviets, the warlords then turned on each other in a power struggle to control the country. These warlords were created by the US- these are pictures of the textbooks they made and funded with extremists from Saudi and Pakistan to radicalize little kids for battle on google. You ask how even regular men there had such a history of abusing and trampling on the rights of others? Simple. It's because they could. When you're the winner of the war with a bunch of weapons, you can do literally anything you want to anyone you see. And no one can stop you. Imagine going down the street and playing God. So these warlords and their soldiers took people's money, took their land, took their women, took their kids. Sure, they could have protected the people. But they didn't. I don't know if you've played Grand Theft Auto, but its where the character can do anything and commit crimes. It was just like that back then, anything goes.
But it was the Taliban that arose and protected the people, from the very people that were supposed to be heroes of the country. They quickly gained power and the rest is history. But the US, in trying to defeat the Taliban, allied themselves with the ones who had terrorized the people in the first place.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/10/...e-night-raids-cia-backed-afghan-strike-forces The scale of US and US backed government crimes far outstrips the incidents you hear about the Taliban, by far. You hear of individual Taliban incidents, yet the US does far worse, and on an industrial scale level. So you would expect an investigation into the US for what they did. But no:
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-...hanistan-war-crimes-investigation-2021-09-27/ They decided to stop investigating the US and just go after the Taliban. You know, there's the so called Hague Invasion Act. If the US or anyone it deems to be an ally is ever held by the International Criminal Court, it allows the use of military force to invade Denmark. No, it doesn't mean the Taliban are good. But if the US is at least kind of good, what does that make the Taliban?