The Taliban’s comeback has got me reminiscing about my trip ten years ago to Pakistan, where I visited mosques and madrasas to find out what people thought about the sharia. Opinions varied, but one perspective was pretty universal. In the slums I visited, sunk in poverty and fought over by armed gangs, people weren’t worried that laws might be too repressive; they just wanted stability. With that in mind, I wrote a short post for the LRB about the Taliban takeover: https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2021/september/promoting-virtue-and-preventing-vice