Being in love can get you killed, if your parents don’t approve and you happen to live somewhere in the wild west, backward, Taliban-controlled regions of Afghanistan and you decide to elope. You see, elopement is

regarded as deeply damaging to family honour across Afghan society

So rather than see a young couple happily married, they would rather have them dead, it seems.

This is what happened to a young couple who were trying to elope and make their way to Iran. Though a little more progressive, Iran is hardly a place one would go to escape harsh religious practices, but that’s where they were headed when they were grabbed by militant Taliban (possibly handed over to them by their very own parents) and gunned down by a firing squad.

One might think it was a question of star-crossed lovers since the 19-year-old young woman, Gul Pecha, was apparently a Sunni and 21-year-old Abdul Aziz was Shiite (and we know how well they get along in Iraq, and elsewhere), but supposedly eloping is considered an immoral act (since that was what they were accused of, ‘ immoral acts’) and some Clerics decided they deserved to die for this.

And it seems their execution was the entertainment of the day, since they were murdered, in cold blood, in front of a large group at the local Mosque.

Not everyone approved, however. Ghulam Azad, governor of the province where the young couple were killed, condemned the act, calling it an “insult to Islam”.

“An unmarried young boy and an unmarried girl who loved each other and wanted to get married had eloped because their families would not approve the marriage,” he said.

“Through legal channels it would take months to prove such a case,” Azad said. “How can these people make a decision in four days and kill them? No one has the right to kill anybody without the decision of a court.”

Indeed, no-one has the right to kill anyone for being in love and wanting to get married.

Although the Taliban, and other religious fanatics consider Shariah Law just and good, it is anything but that.