This is a touchy

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This is a touchy topic. But I think it’s gotta be broached. If you’ve seen Beneath the Veil, Saira Shah’s riveting and courageous documentary about women under Taliban rule (running on CNN in the United States) you certainly remember the horrific images of a burqa-clad woman being publicly executed in a soccer stadium in Kabul. A reference to the video even made it into President Bush’s recent speech at the United Nations.

In the context of the documentary you get the impression that the woman was being executed for going burqa-less, or schooling young women, or perhaps some sexual infraction the Taliban would have no patience for. You also get the impression this is a common occurrence.

But it turns out she was being executed for braining her husband with a hammer while he slept. And the execution, which took place in November 1999 (three years after the Taliban took power), was also the first time a woman had been executed under Taliban rule.

Don’t get me wrong. The images are horrific. And the reality no less so: a crude, public death by gunfire – a gruesome spectacle after what I’m sure was a rather inadequate trial. I’m an ambivalent opponent of capital punishment. So I don’t think people should be executed at all. But I couldn’t help thinking at least a little differently about this one incident after I learned a bit more about the case.

The Taliban are such a rotten, barbaric crew that there’s no shortage of reasons to despise them and root them out. And I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep thinking they got a bad rap for this woman’s execution. But a little more context in this case was really in order.

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