In Afghanistan, a 2024 Taliban law bans the mixing of unrelated men and women, who may not even look at each other. In Terengganu, Malaysia, a man and a woman, both repeat offenders, found alone in a hotel room, owe six strokes each, and nine mosques serve as caning venues. The logic starts with Quran 17:32, “do not approach unlawful sexual intercourse”, read by jurists as banning anything that might lead there, and with 24:30-31, which tells believers to lower their gaze. The hadiths do the rest: no man may be alone with a woman without one of her close male relatives (Bukhari 5233), for Satan is “the third of them” (Tirmidhi 2165). Wherever this logic becomes law, a chat at the coffee machine is already one step too close.
On September 15, the syariah appeal court of Terengganu, in Malaysia, sentenced a man of 41 and a woman of 20 to six strokes of the rattan each, for having twice been caught alone with someone of the opposite sex. The prosecutor had found the fine too lenient. The caning is due by mid-October, and the state now has nine mosques licensed for the purpose.
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