Afghanistan's ruling Taliban recently codified its rules specifying what women cannot do. It is a long list, as we will see. But first, let me state that the Taliban's legislation cannot be considered law at all, and that referring to these rules as law will give law a bad name.
So what can't Afghanistani women "legally" do now? They cannot attend school after grade 6. They cannot appear in public with their face or body uncovered. They cannot sing, recite, or read aloud in public.
They cannot look at men to whom they are not related. They are not permitted in most professions. They must have a male guardian when traveling.
These rules aren't law under any reasonable definition. As political philosophers of various schools and eras have pointed out, a defining characteristic of genuine laws is their generality — their applicability to everyone.
Plato (427-347 B.C.) denounced "laws which ... favor particular sections of the community," and added that "people who say these laws have a claim to be obeyed are wasting their breath."
John Locke (1632-1704) said that "Freedom ... under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society."
In our own era F.A. Hayek (1899-1992), beloved by conservatives, noted that "There can clearly be no moral justification for any majority granting its members privileges by laying down rules which discriminate in their favor."
In his famous "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" (1963) ,Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: “An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself.”
I differ from Dr. King only in that I do not concede that the unjust codes to which he refers rise to the dignity of being laws in the first place. In my book, his unjust codes are pseudolaws, not laws.
The distinction between genuine laws and pseudolaws shows up clearly in the periodic table of human associations — the main result of my work as a political scientist. They fall in totally different parts of this periodic table and are sharply defined.
Genuine laws are general rules of action enforceable by sanctions and applying to all people who take the prohibited actions. Pseudolaws are enforceable by sanctions, but either apply only to some people or are not rules of action at all.
By my standards, and by the standards of Plato, Locke, Hayek and King, the Taliban's rules are pseudolaws.
But for perspective, remember that it has not been all that long since rules discriminating against women were in the American "legal" code. And women were only granted the right to vote in all the states in 1920.
The United States shows that progress is possible here, dramatically so in this election year with a woman one of the two leading presidential candidates.
The most troublesome pseudolaws in U. S. history protected slavery, then segregated and repressed the freed slaves and their descendants. And yet we have recently elevated Black people to the presidency and other high political offices.
Afghanistan is only a century behind the United States in the political status of women, and from a historical perspective a century is a terribly brief period.
But we must hope that Afghanistan's women won't have to wait a century to achieve legal equality. In the meantime, they should violate the current pseudolaws whenever they can get away with it.
The principal argument against civil disobedience is that it fosters disrespect for law, and that law is essential in any decent society. Law is indeed essential. But disobedience to pseudolaws hardly implies disrespect for genuine laws.
Let's hear it for the women of Afghanistan!
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966 and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School. His college textbook, "Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective," was published in 1981. His most recent book is "The Case of the Racist Choir Conductor: Struggling With America's Original Sin." His columns have appeared in newspapers in Michigan, Oregon and other states. Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.