We have another outrage against women in Afghanistan where Shirin Gul, 26, was reportedly flogged to death in the Shahrak district of Ghor after being accused of running away from home. What is fascinating is how the greatest concern is not that a woman can be publicly flogged but whether the flogging proved too excessive under Islamic law. Recently, a 19-year-old woman was stoned to death in Ghor.

Her family insisted that Gul died following the beating. Local officials confirmed that she was flogged but denied that she died as a result. The family said that she had gone to the town to visit her uncle’s family.

According to her family and some locals, Gul died after she was meted out the lashing.

The plight of women and girls in Afghanistan and other nations under Sharia law is chilling. To think that a women walking to her uncle’s house can be confronted, interrogated, and then severely flogged under Islamic laws is otherworldly. In what is especially twisted is the notion that there is an investigation into the level of flogging as opposed to the disgusting notion of flogging women and girls in the name of morality. To beat a woman to death raises the specter of not just religious fanaticism but a degree of enjoyment by the abuser. Indeed, in our stories covering morality police, one often concludes that people drawn to these functions display extreme misogynistic and sadistic tendencies. Religion becomes an officially sanctioned avenue to satisfying such sick desires.

In any civilized nation, the men who flogged Gul would be locked away as dangerous sociopaths. Yet, in this twisted environment, they claim the mantle of the enforcers of a moral code.