ISLAMIC CHIVALRY IS NOT DEAD! Gee, what a relief.

Afghanistan's top political and religious leaders invoked Afghan and Islamic traditions of chivalry and hospitality Sunday in attempts to shame the Taliban into releasing 18 female South Korean captives.

Apparently, it's not just the kidnapping of women that Islam appears to frown upon.

Echoing Karzai's words, Afghanistan's national council of clerics said the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, taught that no one has the right to kill women.

"Even in the history of Afghanistan, in all its combat and fighting, Afghans respected women, children and elders," the council said. "The killing of women is against Islam, against the Afghan culture, and they shouldn't do it." [emphasis added]

It's a good thing that Muslim clerics bravely took a stand on this apparently unclear and not so very obvious law. But don't expect there to be any carryover to the Palestinian terrorists or to Iraq. It seems you can't fool the Taliban: They know Islamic law, which apparently includes a literal interpretation of lex talionis:

But the Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, instead invoked the religious tenet of "an eye for an eye," alleging that Western militaries are holding Afghan females at bases in Bagram and Kandahar, and saying that the Taliban can do the same. He said the Taliban could detain and kill "women, men or children."

"It might be a man or a woman. ... We may kill one, we may kill two, we may kill one of each (gender), two of each, four of each," Ahmadi told The Associated Press by satellite phone from an unknown location. "Or we may kill all of them at once."

Ahmadi has obviously spent a lot of time calculating this.

Technorati Tag: Afghanistan and Taliban and Qari Yousef Ahmadi.