Today's Christian Science Monitor reports that in Afghanistan, a crisis may be brewing over whether the country's Supreme Court will move away from its strict Islamic focus and will be modernized. Presently all 9 justices are mullahs. Earlier this year at the London Conference on Afghanistan, the country agreed to reform its justice system. (Text of 2006 Afghanistan Compact.) On February 11, European diplomats delivered a demarche to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, calling for compliance with the agreement to address existing gender imbalance in the judiciary, and particularly in appointments to the Supreme Court.
This however is likely to meet opposition from Islamic scholar Fazel Hadi Shinwari who presently heads Afghanistan's Supreme Court and whose rulings have reflected strict compliance with Sharia. Responding to the European pressure for professionalization of the Court, Shinwari said: "Anything that is according to the Koran is fine with me, but if you go against the Koran, you Europeans will have to tell Karzai to get rid of this old man who is in charge of the Supreme Court. I'm ready to resign, but then there will be lots of problems, just as the desecration of the image of the prophet Muhammad, peace be unto him, caused 60,000 people to go out into the streets. The same thing will happen here."
As to pressure to address gender imbalance in the judiciary, Shinwari who is both Chief Justice and head of Afghanistan's Council of Islamic Scholars says: "We have many women judges here, but a woman cannot be a judge over the general country, and she cannot sit in this chair. If a woman becomes a top judge, then what would happen when she has a menstruation cycle once a month, and she cannot go to the mosque? Also, a woman judge cannot give an execution order, according to Islamic law."
