Afghan Shia women protest against a new conservative marriage law Wednesday in Kabul. A group of some 1,000 Afghans swarmed the demonstration by 300 women Wednesday. (Musadeq Sadeq/Associated Press)

Afghan women protesting against a new law that severely undermines women’s rights were pelted with stones in the country’s capital Wednesday, say reports.

About 300 mostly young women gathered in Kabul to show their opposition to a recently passed law that forbids women from refusing to have sex with their husbands and requires them to get a male relative’s permission to leave the house.

The demonstration, organized by women’s rights activists in the country, occurred in front of a Shia mosque recently built by a cleric who helped craft the law. Critics of the law say it effectively legalizes rape within marriage and is a return to Taliban-style rule.

About 1,000 people opposed to the protest surrounded the women and threw gravel and small stones as police struggled to hold them back. The group of counter-protesters included both men and women.

Some shouted “Death to the slaves of the Christians.”

“You are a dog. You are not a Shia woman,” one man shouted to a young woman in a headscarf holding aloft a banner that said, “We don’t want Taliban law.”
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Jeremy Starkey, a reporter with The Independent newspaper who was at the demonstration, said he saw men pelt the women with stones.

“I saw the men surging forward on a number of occasions,” he said.

“Female afghan police officers joined hands to form a human chain around the women to try to protect them.”

The law, which applies only to the minority Shia community, received widespread international condemnation.

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The Afghan constitution guarantees equal rights for women, but also allows the Shia to have separate family law based on religious tradition.

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read more about the Afghan women’s plight: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/afghanistanunveiled/women.html