Rights, Legal Scholarship and the Study of the Taliban with Haroun Rahimi

Omar Sadr talks to Haroun Rahimi about the notion of rights, how the contestation between the liberal and Islamic notions of right took place, how the law scholars studied the totalitarian Taliban, and finally why legal scholarship in Afghanistan has been avoiding a critical approach about the Taliban.

Dr. Haroun Rahimi is an Assistant Professor of Law at the American University of Afghanistan. In his research, Dr. Rahimi studies law and development, and institutional reform. He is also an associate editor for the Manchester Journal of Transnational Islamic Law & Practice.

Suggested readings:

1. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press.
2. Faiz Ahmed, Afghanistan Rising: Islamic Law and Statecraft between the Ottoman and British Empires. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
3. Jennifer Murtazashvili. 2016. Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan. Published online by Cambridge University Press.
4. Haroun Rahimi. 2021. A Constitutional Reckoning with The Taliban’s Brand of Islamist Politics: The Hard Path Ahead, Kabul: AISS.
5. Haroun Rahimi. 2021. Afghanistan’s laws and legal institutions under the Taliban” Melbourn Asia Review.