A couple of recent comments threads have gone into issues related to the new Afghan constitution and the current role of Islam in Afghanistan.
Basing my information about the document mostly off
Amin Tarzi's article for RFE-RL, I just
blogged about two key issues. I won't reproduce the entire thing here, but the short bullet points:
- ) When the warlords warned about the danger of the President becoming dictatorial, they appear to have had reasons.
- ) The "Islam" component of the constitution is largely a paper tiger, at least as far as fears of a theocracy go. All it says is that no law can go against Islamic law, which is a lot more open to interpretation than people realize. Women are actually guaranteed representation in Parliament.