Public flogging sounds like something from another century. In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, however, it is happening in the twenty-first century, sometimes before crowds gathered to watch.
A new report by the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO) has documented 2,745 people publicly flogged by the Taliban between February 2022 and April 2026. The organization recorded 634 separate incidents across Afghanistan.
Among those punished were 1,761 men and 422 women. The gender of another 562 people was not specified.
These numbers should not be dismissed as isolated examples of an unusually brutal criminal justice system. Public flogging has become part of a much larger system of punishment, intimidation and social control.
And religion provides its justification.
Punishment as a public spectacle
AHRDO describes public flogging as a deliberate spectacle. People are physically punished in front of others, adding public humiliation and social stigma to the pain itself.
The organization says many documented cases involved accusations related to sexual behavior and so-called moral offenses. Women have been particularly vulnerable to punishment over relationships, adultery and restrictions imposed on their movement.
The punishment therefore does more than hurt the person receiving the lashes. It sends a message to everybody watching.
Obey.
Follow the prescribed moral rules.
Do not challenge the authorities who claim the power to define them.
This is punishment transformed into political theater. The body of the accused becomes a warning to everyone else.
Where religion becomes criminal law
The Taliban do not present these punishments as meaningless cruelty. They claim religious legitimacy for the system they have created.
That distinction matters.
Religion becomes especially dangerous politically when governments stop treating theological rules as private beliefs and begin enforcing them through police officers, judges and physical punishment. At that point, disagreement with a particular interpretation of religion can carry consequences far beyond a theological argument.
The Taliban’s January 2026 criminal procedure code illustrates the problem particularly clearly. It defines Muslims according to Hanafi jurisprudence and discriminates against people outside that interpretation. It also provides for corporal punishment and severe penalties while weakening basic legal safeguards.
The question is no longer simply whether somebody believes in Islam. The state decides which interpretation of Islam is correct and then gives that interpretation coercive power.
Once theology becomes criminal law, the person holding the whip is no longer merely expressing a religious opinion.
The state is enforcing it.
What happened to the right to a fair trial?
The brutality of flogging is only part of the story.
AHRDO also documented allegations of arbitrary detention, forced confessions and denial of access to lawyers, evidence and witnesses. In other words, some people may face severe physical punishment within a system that does not provide the protections expected from a legitimate judicial process.
That combination is particularly disturbing.
A government can claim that somebody committed adultery, violated a morality rule or engaged in prohibited sexual behavior. Yet if the accused cannot meaningfully challenge the evidence, consult a lawyer or defend themselves, the word “justice” becomes difficult to justify.
A punishment does not become fair simply because a court orders it.
Nor does cruelty become moral because religious authorities approve it.
The numbers are getting worse
The broader trend is alarming.
UN experts reported earlier this year that at least 1,110 people were publicly flogged during 2025 alone, including at least 170 women. That was almost twice the number recorded in 2024.
The acceleration continued into 2026. According to figures cited by UN experts, Taliban authorities reported flogging 162 people in January alone.
The UN experts described corporal punishment as an offense against human dignity and physical integrity. Depending on its severity, they warned, it can constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment or torture.
These are not merely disagreements between Western secular values and Afghan religious traditions. International human rights principles exist precisely because governments have historically defended cruelty by appealing to tradition, religion, national security, ideology and public morality.
Human dignity cannot depend on geography.
Women pay a particular price
The Taliban’s use of corporal punishment cannot be separated from their broader treatment of women.
Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban have systematically restricted women’s education, employment, movement and participation in public life. Afghanistan remains the only country where girls are prohibited from receiving education beyond the sixth grade.
Women accused of violating the Taliban’s morality rules face another layer of danger.
A relationship can become a crime. Clothing can become a matter for government enforcement. Movement can be restricted. Interaction between men and women can fall under state scrutiny.
Then the same government that creates those restrictions claims the authority to physically punish people for violating them.
This is not simply conservative religion.
It is authoritarian government built around religious rules.
Nearly 3,000 human beings
Numbers this large can become strangely abstract.
Two thousand seven hundred and forty-five.
It is easy to read the figure and continue scrolling.
But every number represents an individual human being who was brought before authorities and physically struck as punishment. Hundreds were women. Many were punished publicly.
AHRDO’s report is based not only on documented incidents but also on testimony from 23 people who experienced flogging themselves. The organization emphasizes that its findings represent documented cases rather than necessarily every incident that occurred.
The true total may therefore be different.
What we already know is disturbing enough.
This is about power
Religious debates often become trapped in arguments about sacred texts. Someone quotes one verse. Somebody else quotes another. Moderates insist that extremists have misunderstood the religion, while fundamentalists insist that moderates have abandoned it.
Those theological arguments can continue indefinitely.
The political issue is much simpler.
No religious authority should possess the power to have someone publicly whipped for violating its interpretation of morality.
Christians should not have that power. Muslims should not have it. Jews should not have it. Hindus should not have it. Atheists should not have comparable ideological power either.
A humane state should protect people from violence rather than transform violence into a ceremony of moral instruction.
Five years of Taliban rule
The flogging figures arrive shortly after the fifth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power.
Those five years have devastated the rights of Afghan women and girls. Secondary and university education has disappeared for girls. Employment opportunities for women have been severely restricted. Freedom of movement has narrowed. Journalists and activists have faced detention and intimidation.
The Taliban have meanwhile embedded their religious interpretation increasingly deeply into law.
Their 2026 criminal procedure rules went even further. Human Rights Watch says they discriminate on the basis of religion and define Muslims exclusively according to Hanafi jurisprudence, while Amnesty International says the rules institutionalize corporal punishment and fail to provide basic fair-trial guarantees.
This demonstrates one of the fundamental problems with theocracy.
It is never enough for the government to declare that God’s law should rule.
Someone must decide what God’s law actually means.
Then someone must enforce that interpretation.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban have appointed themselves to both roles.
The world should not normalize this
There is another uncomfortable dimension to the story.
Five years after the Taliban returned to power, international engagement with their government is gradually becoming a political reality. Governments have practical reasons to communicate with whoever controls Afghanistan. Humanitarian aid, migration, regional security and diplomacy cannot simply disappear.
But communication must not become normalization.
A regime should not gradually acquire international respectability merely because the world has become accustomed to its abuses.
Publicly flogging thousands of human beings cannot become background noise.
Neither can excluding millions of girls from education.
The passage of time does not transform oppression into legitimacy.
Religion cannot excuse the whip
Supporters of religious government frequently present divine law as morally superior to laws created by imperfect human beings.
Afghanistan provides a brutal reason to question that assumption.
When religious certainty merges with authoritarian power, rulers can portray their own interpretation of morality as something greater than human judgment. Opposition then becomes more than disagreement with government policy. It can become disobedience to what rulers claim is divine authority.
That is an extraordinarily dangerous concentration of power.
Nearly 3,000 documented public floggings should therefore be understood as more than a horrifying statistic. They demonstrate what can happen when a government claims authority not only over people’s actions but also over morality, sexuality, religion and private life.
The Taliban may call it justice.
A society committed to human dignity should call it what it is: institutionalized cruelty.
