Evaluation Note / Hilmi Demir, PhD

Almost all Pashtuns and other ethnic groups who joined the Taliban are Sunni, and Hanafi sects account for the majority. So, what does this mean? Firstly, it is necessary to define correctly what Hanafism is. Hanafism, one of the four Sunni schools of law, is widely followed by Muslims. Others are Shafi, Maliki, and Hanbali. From how Muslims pray to how they will take the taxes, the sects which tell what the Muslims should do or not to do are referred to as the Islamic Schools of Law.

In Islam, the Islamic School of law has a wider meaning than law. It includes all aspects of life, such as worship and treatment. To put it another way, these sects determine religious practices such as prayer and fasting, family law such as marriage and divorce, commercial law such as shopping, and criminal law provisions such as crimes and punishments.

In some ways, sects of Islamic Law are necessary for the establishment of a legal state and the existence of legal society. These sects had doctrines to follow or precedents to give importance when making laws. In that sense, doctrines can be named as a way of law-making, and the fatwas as the law. Yet these fatwas are more personal and do not mean the laws that every citizen is supposed to obey like in our modern society. The authority to make laws in traditional Muslim societies belonged to autonomous sectarian scholars rather than the state. In every ecole of Islamic Law, the law-making technique might not change yet the fatwas might change depending on time and place.

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