A senior Shia cleric in Kabul stands up for democracy.

Supporters of the Afghan law which critics claim legalises marital rape and restricts the rights of women say they will oppose amending the legislation significantly. “A change in this law will be illegal and against democracy,” said Sayed Abdul Latif Sajadi, a senior Shia cleric in Kabul who played a leading role in drawing up the legislation and pushing it through parliament. “Any change will be against the wishes of four million people.”

Men. Against the wishes of four million men. He means any change will be against the wishes of four million men – women of course were not asked and not given any way to voice an opinion. Women, on the contrary, were presented with multiple examples of women being murdered for sticking their heads over the parapet, so we know they had every incentive to shut up and pretty much no incentive to protest a law that makes their enslavement more official than ever.

The Shia Family Law, which has been denounced inside and outside Afghanistan, applies only to the four million Afghans who are Shia. It is the first time in predominantly Sunni Muslim Afghanistan that the Shia, mostly members of the long-oppressed Hazara ethnic group, have had their rights legally defined and recognised.

No; there again, that’s not right, and this time it’s the reporter who gets things backwards. It’s not the case that ‘the Shia’ ‘have had their rights legally defined and recognised’ because what this law does is take rights away from Shia women. What this bill legally defined and recognized was the ‘right’ of men to subordinate women, which is quite different from defining and recognizing the rights of the Shia in general.

“Those Afghans who protest against the law just want to make the West happy,” says Mohammed Sarwar Jahadi, a former prisoner of the Taliban and an MP for the Hazara heartland of Bamyan province in central Afghanistan. He said the law was discussed in parliament over a two-and-a-half-year period and was whittled down from 750 to 249 articles. “During that time we didn’t hear a single protest.”

Gee I wonder why – it surely couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Afghan women live under a constant threat of death. Could it?

Mr Sayed Sajadi, a Hazara, said the strength of protests against the law surprised him. “It was unexpected because already 99 per cent of Afghan women only leave the house with their husband’s permission.”

Ah! Ah yes! There we have it – that’s the real puzzle. 99 per cent of Afghan women are already completely ground into the mud so where the hell would protests come from? Nowhere! They wouldn’t! Thus all these protests are simply astonishing. All the men are looking at each other in baffled amazement, at a stand to figure out how anyone could have the nerve or the energy or the muscle power to make a protest.

Many Afghans say that in any case the relationship between men and women in their country is none of the business of foreign non-Muslim politicians and Nato commanders. Women protesting against the law were denounced by counter-demonstrators chanting: “Death to the enemies of Islam! We want Islamic law!”

Yeah! The relationship between men and women in Afghanistan is none of the business of foreign non-Muslim politicians and it’s also none of the business of the women of Afghanistan, so they’d better shut the fuck up before somebody does it for them, if you get my drift.