[Al Arabiya Latest] Pakistani Taliban facing a fierce government military operation in a tribal area severed the right hands of three alleged thieves after a Taliban Islamic court found them guilty.The amputees, who were brought to a hospital in the northeastern city of Kohat for excessive bleeding, accused the Taliban of victimizing them for belonging to the area of a former Taliban commander who broke away from the group, according to media reports.
Taliban and other fundamentalists in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa have been fighting to enforce their strict version of Islamic Shariah law for many decades.
Taliban groups in tribal areas had proclaimed a ban on various social and individual practices they deem un-Islamic such as allowing men to shave their beards, renting music and movie CDs and billboards with pictures of women.
These bans had resulted in the closure of barber shops and movie rental shops. Shops whose owners refuse to comply with the ban were also bombed.
They had also forced women to wear the Islamic veil.
Shariah enforcement has been a hot topic of debate among Pakistani politicians and clerics, with moderate clerics rejecting the Taliban's version of Shariah calling it "extremism."
One of the leading clerics and chairman of the Ruyet-e-Hilal (moon sighting) committee, Mufti Munibur Rehman has argued that Islamic codes of punishments such as amputation and stoning to death could only be enforced if the state is a true Darul Islam (Islamic welfare state) where people's welfare is a priority and their needs are provided for.
Clerics have also cited the edict of Khalifah Hazrat Umar bin Khattab who suspended the amputation for theft punishment during the time city of Madina was hit by famine.