Rights groups decry Afghanistan 'virginity tests'

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Sorry the web browser wont permit correction of the the latter Quranic Quote coming from the 24th chapter of the Quran - so here it is:

And for those who accuse their wives, but have no witnesses except themselves, let the testimony of one of them be four testimonies (i.e. testifies four times) by Allah that he is one of those who speak the truth.
7. And the fifth (testimony) (should be) the invoking of the Curse of Allah on him if he be of those who tell a lie (against her).
8. But it shall avert the punishment (of stoning to death) from her, if she bears witness four times by Allah, that he (her husband) is telling a lie.
9. And the fifth (testimony) should be that the Wrath of Allah be upon her if he (her husband) speaks the truth.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Basically the statement that the religion somehow mandates it versus strict tribal culturalism or patriarchy being a motivator of it has no clear evidence basis as far as I know from actual scripture and practice in the earliest era of Islam and the earliest scholarship and writings.

We see other violent punishments in tribal cultures of patriarchy thousands of miles away.

For example:

The earliest mention of Native American women having their noses cut off for adultery is in a memoir by Alexander Maximilian, a Prussian prince, naturalist, and ethnographer who explored the Great Plains in the 1830s. He said this about the men of the Blackfeet tribe: "They generally punish infidelity in their wives very seriously, cutting off their noses in such cases; and we saw, about Fort McKenzie, a great many of these poor creatures horribly disfigured. When ten or twelve tents were together, we were sure to see six or seven women mutilated in this manner. The husband also cuts off the hair by way of punishment."

Repudiated by her mate, the mutilated woman was no longer marriageable and ended her days laboring for other households — perhaps counting herself lucky she hadn't been killed outright, as sometimes occurred. Did her paramour, meanwhile, have any appendages cut off? Not that we hear about — he might have to surrender his horse. Not a trivial sanction, maybe, but to my way of thinking not terribly comparable.

This in no way justifies it - but it shows that this concept of violent implementation of patriarchy is not solely or even purely based on religious law and religious tendency as many above claim.

Instead, its based in primal tribal mate gaurding behavior...

This is why in Pashto translations/discussions of the Quran Maryam the Virgin, the mother of Isa is described as a:
Speen Laman Anjeelay.

Translated literally as: White Loincloth Girl or implicity as a girl who has not sullied herself yet with sexual intercourse.

Its not the actual phrasing or the Arabic - but as I said it is the language used to describe her.