Looking further at these Old Testament rules, Talibanesque really is the word! The same mindnumbing double standards, the same absence of any sense of women as anything other than pieces of male property. But then the Taliban are simply taking seriously a set of rules which all three Abrahamic religions traditionally assert to have been laid down by God.
Thus, a man who rapes a betrothed woman gets the death penalty (Deuteronomy 22:25), but for a man who rapes a woman who isn’t engaged to be married, the penalty is to pay her father 50 shekels, marry the lucky girl and never be allowed to divorce her (Deuteronomy 22:29).
Similarly, a man who wrongly accuses his wife of not being a virgin when they married must pay a fine of 100 shekels to her father, and is forbidden from ever divorcing her (Deuteronomy 22:19). But if a woman is so accused, and can’t prove her virginity, she must be brought ‘to the door of her father’s house’ and stoned to death (Deuteronomy 22:21).
