Vile and twisted version of Islam

THEY might look the part with their beards and traditional clothing.

But how could the Taliban claim to be upholding Islamic Law – the Sharia – and yet practise such a twisted version of it?

Their frightening, backwards portrayal of my beautiful faith sends chills down my spine and I fear for the women and girls who have been thrown to the wolves. It is the antithesis of Islam.

When the religion was revealed to the prophet Muhammad in Arabia around 600AD, newborn girls were so despised they were buried alive.

Prophet Muhammad stamped out this atrocity, decreeing that anyone who treated their daughters with kindness would be granted a place in Paradise.

The Quran is also unequivocal about the rights of women.

The prophet’s first wife was a successful businesswoman herself and, under Islam, women had the right to work, to sell and buy properties,

choose their own husbands – and divorce them too if they wished – and vote. That didn’t come to Western women for centuries.

Likewise, education was not just a right but “a duty of every Muslim, man and woman”.

The prophet Muhammad’s own daughter, Fatima, was highly educated and he respected her so

much he would stand up when she came into the room.

But 1,400 years on, the Taliban who ruled in the 1990s were sending all their wives, sisters and daughters back into the kitchen.

And they were sending the whole country back into the Dark Ages.

The old Taliban didn’t just deny their citizens their God-given Islamic rights,

they were brutal and barbaric, beating women in the street for not being covered up enough and kidnapping girls as young as 12 to turn them into jihadi fighters’ brides.

We need time to see if new Taliban is cut from the same cloth, or if they mean what they say about taking over with “serenity”.

I’m not holding my breath.