afghanistanNadir Shah adopted a far more cautious approach to change and empha-
sized the government’s Islamic and Pushtun credentials. Nur al-Mashayekh
Fazl ‘Omar, the Hazrat of Shor Bazaar, became Minister of Justice and
during the three years of his tenure he transformed Afghanistan’s legal and
social order to create an Islamic state in all but name. When he retired, his
son-in-law succeeded him and continued the Islamization programme.
During the era that the Hazrat and his family were in power, many mullahs
and Mujadidi pirs became actively involved in Afghanistan’s political life,
where they acted as a brake on legal, social and educational reform.
The Islamizing Constitution of 1931In his first public statement, Nadir Shah announced that he intended
Afghanistan to be ‘a progressive state’ but that it would adhere staunchly to
Islamic doctrines. 11 A month after taking office he issued a ten-point policy
statement that endorsed the revisions to the 1924 Constitution. In October
1931 a new Constitution formalized Nur al-Mashayekh’s Islamization project
by declaring ‘Hanafi Sunnism’ as the foundation of the state’s legal system
and the faith of ‘the population in general’. A council of religious specialists,
known as the Jam‘iyat-i ‘Ulama’-yi Afghanistan, was established to ensure
all legislation conformed to the Islamic law, shari‘a courts became the basis
of the justice system and all judges were required to adjudicate solely on
the basis of Islamic jurisprudence. Nur al -Mashayekh also established the
Ihtisab, a department within the Ministry of Justice that enforced Islamic
morality and religious practices. This was backed up by an ideological
police, the al-’Amr bi’l-Mar’uf. 12 This was the first time in Afghanistan’s
history that such a body had been deployed as an arm of the state.
It became compulsory for women to be veiled in any public space. All
adult women had to be accompanied by a mahram, or close male relative,
when they left the family compound, although the al-’Amr bi’l-Mar’uf
instilled such fear that few women ventured out. A few foreign women
married to Afghans defied the parda laws, but they and their husbands
faced harassment and persistent offenders risked being dismissed from
their posts and even imprisonment. There was strict press censorship and
the women’s newspaper founded by Queen Soraya was banned, as were
all publications deemed to be against Islam. Foreign publications were
only permitted provided they did not contain material ‘against religion
and the policy of the Afghan government’. Freedom of movement was
restricted with the reintroduction of identity cards, a Soviet-style internal
passport system, while social interaction between Afghans and foreigners