The recent reports from Afghanistan, where women were left to die beneath the rubble of earthquakes because male rescuers hesitated to touch them, point to a tragedy that is not merely natural but also man-made. What killed these women was not just the earthquake, it was also the weight of misinterpretation, a crushing burden of cultural rigidity masquerading as Islamic law.
At the heart of this issue lies a misunderstanding of Sharia. Islam, in its essence, is not a faith that permits death where life can be saved. Its legal and ethical framework is built upon what scholars call Maqasid al-Sharrah (the higher objectives of Islamic law) Among these objectives, the preservation of life (hifz- al-nafs) stands second only to the preservation of faith. The Qur’an says, “Whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved all of mankind”. (Surah al Maida, verse 32). To allow life to perish when it can be saved is not an act of piety but one of negligence.
Opponents of male rescuers touching women in emergencies often argue from the perspective of modesty, an important Islamic principle. Yet modesty is not absolute when pitted against survival. Islamic jurisprudence is clear that al-tubīḥ al-mahzurat it neans necessity makes permissible what is otherwise forbidden.
“But if one is forced by necessity without willful disobedience nor transgressing due limits, there is no sin upon him. Indeed Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.Surah al-Baqarah (2:173): Classical scholars from across schools of thought, whether Imām al-Nawawi among the Shāfiʿīs or Ibn ʿĀbidīn among the Hanafis, affirmed that physical contact or even exposure of the body is justified when saving life. When a house is burning, when a river is drowning, when rubble is suffocating,law is suspended until life is restored.
This principle is not new, nor is it an invention of modern reformers. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ himself taught, “There should be neither harm nor reciprocating harm.” That is the spirit of Islam: mercy and urgency in removing harm. To stand by, citing gender barriers, is to violate this very spirit. It turns a religion of compassion into an instrument of cruelty.
And yet, in parts of Afghanistan, women remain trapped not only by the debris of their homes but also by rigid cultural codes. Here lies the crux,this hesitation is less about Islam and more about culture. In deeply conservative societies, religion often becomes entangled with custom until the two are indistinguishable. Modesty becomes mistranslated into paralysis. Male rescuers fear community censure more than divine judgment. Women are silenced, not by scripture, but by social norms cloaked in religious legitimacy.
Modern Sharia councils across the Muslim world have made it clear that this misinterpretation has no legal basis. Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Dar al-Ifta in Egypt, and the International Islamic Fiqh Academy have all issued rulings: saving life takes precedence over all gender-related restrictions. If women rescuers are unavailable, men must act immediately. To delay is a sin. To allow death for fear of touching is an inversion of Islamic priorities.
The tragedy in Afghanistan therefore raises an uncomfortable question: why does this distortion persist? The answer may be found in the larger absence of religious literacy. In conflict zones, where education is scarce and clerics are politicised, what passes for “Islamic law” is often a patchwork of half-memorised rulings, cultural taboos, and patriarchal anxieties. True scholarship is the kind that weighs Qur’anic verses against legal maxims and prophetic traditions and is rare. In such a vacum, rigidity thrives, and lives are lost.
This issue also exposes a wider tension between tradition and modern humanitarian practice. Disaster relief today is gender-neutral; professional rescue teams do not pause to segregate rubble by sex. Yet in Afghanistan, rescuers face not just falling buildings but the falling weight of communal scrutiny. Here, modern emergency protocols and traditionalist anxieties clash, and the victim is invariably the vulnerable woman.
But Islam need not be placed in opposition to humanitarian logic. If anything, its principles harmonise with it. Preservation of life, protection of dignity, and removal of harm are as much Islamic as they are humanitarian. What is required is not a rewriting of Sharia, but a rediscovery of its essence. Faith must be reclaimed from the clutches of cultural rigidity and applied with wisdom in contexts where life hangs by a thread.
This is not merely a women’s issue, nor an Afghan issue. It is a human issue, and it is also a reputational issue for Islam itself. When the world sees Muslim men watching women die for fear of touching them, it is not Afghan culture they blame; it is Islam. The faith of mercy, justice, and balance is presented as one of cruelty and absurdity. The burden of correcting this lies on scholars, leaders, and ordinary Muslims who must challenge the conflation of custom with law.
The Qur’an repeatedly describes the Prophet ﷺ as a “mercy to the worlds”. If mercy is not extended in moments of disaster, if the law becomes an instrument of death rather than salvation, then something has gone terribly wrong. Sharia is not a straitjacket; it is a moral compass. Its flexibility in emergencies is not a loophole but a testament to its wisdom.
The earthquake in Afghanistan has already claimed countless lives through nature’s force. To add to this toll through human hesitation is an unforgivable tragedy. If we are to honour the dead, we must ensure that their deaths are not repeated. Rescuers must be trained not only in pulling people from rubble but also in understanding the true spirit of their faith. Sharia, rightly understood, does not ask them to pause before saving a life. It commands them to act.
When the next disaster strikes – and in our world of shifting plates and rising waters, it surely will we must decide: will we let women die under the weight of rubble and misinterpretation, or will we allow Islam’s true principle of mercy to guide our hands?
Author is student of post graduation at AMU. She can be mailed at muskanshafimalik@gmail.com
