AAN’s unofficial translation of the Penal Code for Courts

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AAN is pleased to publish a translation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s Penal Code for Courts by Islamic scholar John Butt.* The Code largely deals with what in Islamic law are called ta’zir punishments. These are discretionary, decided on by a judge or ruler, in this case, by the Islamic Emirate’s Supreme Leader, Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada. The bulk of the 119-article Code comprises lists of offences, ranging from matters of religion and public order, to forgery and adulteration, corruption and sex, alongside specifying their punishments – prison terms, flogging, or execution.

You can preview the English translation online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.

The Code has not (yet) been published in the Official Gazette, but it has been circulated to the nation’s courts, which the law says are “responsible for [its] implementation.” The Code is written in Pashto. No Dari version has yet surfaced. Its publication in Pashto only, like its lack of publication in the Official Gazette, is unusual, given the status of both Dari and Pashto as official languages. The 119 articles of the Code are heavily footnoted, largely with references to back up the choice of laws drawn from Hanafi jurisprudence, much of which is in Arabic. AAN has not translated those original footnotes, but the English version does included extensive explanatory notes by the translator to illuminate or clarify certain points.

Alongside the translation, we are also publishing an analysis of the Code by AAN’s Kate Clark. She considers its implications for human rights and the rule of law – the Code mentions slaves, obligates class-based discrimination in punishment, permits domestic violence and appears to place non-Sunni Muslims outside the community of Afghans who have ‘acceptable beliefs’. She also looks at what the Code reveals about the Emirate’s priorities when it comes to crime, punishment and control.

*John Butt is a graduate of the Darul Uloom Deoband in India. This is the key seminary informing the Islamic thought of most Afghan Sunni clerics, including the Taliban. Butt went on to have a career in journalism and broadcasting – including reporting for the BBC from Kandahar in the early 1990s on the men who would go on to form the Taliban movement – and setting up radio serial dramas. His autobiography, A Talib’s Tale: The Life and Times of a Pashtoon Englishman, was published in 2021.

To err is human; to correct is responsible

Thanks to our readers, we were alerted to two items in our translation that required amendment, one was a clarification, the other, a correction.

1. Article 2, item 12 (Page 10)

We have amended the article and added footnote 7 to clarify a reference to the term hala:

Accused [mutaham] is a person regarding whom one just witness – or two witnesses of unknown integrity [mastur al-hala] – has given evidence before a judge that he has committed one of the crimes mentioned in this Code. 

For further clarification, we added the following as footnote 7:

The term, mastur, meaning ‘covered’, is a common way to refer to a woman, ie someone who wears hijab. Here, though, it seems to refer to someone whose condition (hala) is obscure.

• Article 55 (Page 55)

The sentencing provision in Article 55 was mistranslated as three months’ imprisonment. This has now been corrected to read one year’s imprisonment.

The updated version is now available to view or download below. If you downloaded a copy of the translation before 27 April 2026, please replace it with the version currently available on the website.

You can preview the English translation online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.