Abdul Rahim Karimi was Minister of Justice of Afghanistan between December 2001 and October 2004 in the Afghan Interim Authority and the

Afghan Transitional Administration Afghan or Afgan may refer to: Related to Afghanistan *Afghans, historically refers to the Pashtun people. It is both an ethnicity and nationality. Ethnicity wise, it refers to the Pashtuns. In modern terms, it means both the citizens of Afghanist ...

. He was replaced by Sarwar Danish when

Karzai Hamid Karzai (born 24 December 1957) is an Afghan politician who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from 2002 to 2014, including as the first president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan from 2004 to 2014. He previously served as ...

reshuffled his

cabinet Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to: Furniture * Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers * Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets * Filin ...

when he was elected president in 2004. Karimi, an ethnic Uzbek Islamic law professor from

Takhar Takhar or Taahkarr (in Serer and Cangin) is a demi-god in the Serer religion worshipped by many Serers (an ethnic group found in Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania). "Folk-Lore In The old Testament. Studies In Comparative Religion Legend and L ...

who lacked an independent power base as he was aligned with the

Shura-e Nazar The Shura-e Nazar () (known as the Supervisory Council of the North) was created by Ahmad Shah Massoud in 1984 at the northern provinces of Takhar, Badakhshan, Balkh and Kunduz, during the Soviet-Afghan War. It comprised and united about 1 ...

, the

Jamiat-e Islami Jamiat-e-Islami (also rendered as Jamiati Islami; ), sometimes shortened to Jamiat, is a predominantly Afghan Tajik political party and former paramilitary organisation in Afghanistan. It is the oldest and largest functioning political part ...

and the

Northern Alliance The Northern Alliance ( ''Da Šumāl E'tilāf'' or ''Ettehād Šumāl''), officially known as the United National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan ( ''Jabha-ye Muttahid-e barāye Afğānistān''), was a military alliance of groups that op ...

, was installed as minister by the

Bonn Conference Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This m ...

, following the defeat of the

Taliban government The government of Afghanistan, officially called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and informally known as the Taliban government, is the central government of Afghanistan, a unitary state. Under the leadership of the Taliban, the government is ...

Warlords

As a minister with a background United Islamic Front he is reported to have said that all

Afghan refugees Afghan refugees are citizens of Afghanistan who were forced to flee from their country as a result the continuous wars that the country has suffered since the Afghan-Soviet war, the Afghan civil war, the Afghanistan war (2001–2021) or either p ...

were welcome to return after the Taliban-era, except for communists, indicating that he still saw the world through the lens of the Cold War. He also took a stance against the Islamic warlords however. In November 2002 he said that government laws could not be enforced in parts of the country were warlords were still in power. A judge could not make fair decisions in areas ruled by

Mujahideen ''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' (), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' (), an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in ''jihad'' (), interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the commun ...

commanders, and as a consequence, in much of Afghanistan, the rule of the gun continues to prevailed over the rule of law.

Sharia

Islamists wanted that the legal system of Afghanistan would be drawn solely from

Sharia Sharia, Sharī'ah, Shari'a, or Shariah () is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition based on Islamic holy books, scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran, Qur'an and hadith. In Islamic terminology ''sharīʿah'' ...

law. But Karimi intended for the new legal code to be based no more than 20 percent on Islamic jurisprudence. He claimed that the Islam of his government is different from the Islam of the Taliban, but defended the fact that Sharia law remained in place: "people would not understand if we would get rid of it" completely. Under his leadership, Afghanistan signed up as a member of the

International Criminal Court The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an intergovernmental organization and International court, international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute ...

. He was also responsible for the new electoral law, providing for presidential and parliamentary

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated ...

.{{Cite news, url=https://www.rferl.org/a/1340577.html, title=AFGHANISTAN'S NEW ELECTION LAW PAVES WAY FOR SEPTEMBER POLLS, last=Esfandiari, first=Golnaz, work=RFE/RL, access-date=2017-05-14

References

Government ministers of Afghanistan