In Iraq, the law lets husbands "discipline" their wives, and under the new religious code, a wife can seek divorce for physical abuse only if it is repeated. In Afghanistan, 2026 decrees narrowed the cases in which domestic violence can even be prosecuted. The tradition behind them is explicit. Quran 4:34 gives men authority over women and tells husbands who fear their wives' disobedience to admonish them, leave them alone in bed, then strike them. In his farewell sermon, the Prophet allows husbands to beat their wives "but not severely" (Muslim 1218). And a hadith recorded by Abu Dawud (2147) adds that a man will not be asked why he beat his wife. Violence, in other words, comes with a manual.
Five years after the Taliban's return, a civil society speaker told the UN Security Council that being a woman in Afghanistan is now a crime. In Geneva, NGOs are pleading with the Human Rights Council to at least keep talking about it: renew the rapporteur, keep the dialogues, launch the investigative mechanism. The rapporteur, for his part, has been banned from the country since 2024.
Since 2025, Iraqi couples can trade the civil family law for a Shia religious code. It sets marriage at puberty, accepts weddings with no witness and no register, hands children to their fathers at seven, and lets a woman divorce only if she is abandoned, unpaid or repeatedly beaten. Iraqi women fought to make the reform less terrible. Six months later, parliament made it worse.
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