110 Islam and Modernity
and simultaneously established Islam as a vehicle of legitimacy for temporal
rule (Ghani 1978). The Amir also made use of the ulama to codify and propa-
gate a form of Islamic knowledge that legitimated him as absolute ruler and
commander of the faithful. This interpretation of Islam served as an ideology
of state-building that transcended the parochial identities of tribe, ethnicity
and community and served, in Olesen’s view (1995), as a precondition for the
secularisation of state and society. The suppression of local mechanisms for the
settlement of disputes under the Amir and their replacement by sharia courts
was noted as a step that not only curtailed the power of tribal customary law but
enhanced women’s recourse to justice (Ghani 1983).
Clerical infl uence waxed and waned as successive rulers chose to confront
the ulama (with disastrous consequences in the case of King Amanullah in
the 1920s) or reached compromises with them (Gregorian 1969). The ulama
retained the ability to mobilise in successive waves of protest against govern-
ments encroaching on their territory.^15 Legal reforms in Afghanistan had led to
separate legal elites (Islamic law specialists trained in madrasas as well as experts
in statutory law trained at the Kabul Law School) and a dual court system
dealing with statutory and sharia law (Kamali 1985). The Taliban represented
a violent swing of the pendulum in favour of Islamic clerical rule, when all
national legal codes were rescinded in favour of a restrictive application of the
sharia (Barfi eld 2003). It is important to note, however, that even at the height of
state secularism under the PDPA, who in 1978 removed all religious references
from government, it was not long before the government had to resort to the
language and symbolism of Islamic legitimacy. Indeed, all the successive consti-
tutions of Afghanistan (including the 1987 constitution framed by the commu-
nist government under Najibullah) endorsed the tenets of ‘the sacred religion of
Islam’ and the principle that no law can contravene these tenets. Dorronsoro
(2005) further remarks that, in comparison to the pre-war period, the ideologi-
cal fi eld was rendered homogenous by the jihad years, when Islamic ideologies
achieved total hegemony and the differences between tendencies became
harder to discern on some issues such as the status of women.^16 It would be erro-
neous, nonetheless, to evaluate the rule of the Taliban as a mere culmination of
these trends. If, for the fi rst time, the ulama dominated the political and military
life of Afghanistan, this was, as Rubin (2000: 1796) cogently argued, the direct
result of geo-politics and the resources made available by global fl ows. Many
have suggested that both the social origins of the Taliban and their application
of a puritanical Deobandi Islam constituted a signifi cant break with patterns of
everyday belief and rule in Afghanistan (e.g. Barfi eld 2005). This does not imply,
however, that their successors would be prepared to countenance a regime sanc-
tioning women’s greater public presence and visibility, as many women parlia-
mentarians and rights advocates would soon discover.^17 The reinstatement in
2006 of the notorious Ministry of Vice and Virtue, which had acted as a tool of