By Wil Morat

THE NEXT TIME YOU RUN AWAY, THIS WILL BE YOUR GRAVE," MARIAM'S HUSBAND warned her, pointing at a hole he dug behind their house in northwestern Afghanistan.

"Mariam" (some names have been changed) is seventeen years old and didn't really have anywhere to run. She has been repeatedly beaten, humiliated, and caught trying to escape. Now her husband is ramping up the abuse. He treats her worse than a disobedient dog; he once urinated in the corner and forced her to sleep in the puddle.

But Mariam is not resigned to her fate. Accompanied by her aunt, the young bride has approached an unusual resource for women facing violence in the same country that spawned the Taliban.

Mariam obtained the assistance of a Muslim man.

In a mud-walled compound north of Kabul is a law office run by the Afghan Women Judges' Association and funded by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). It provides free legal aid to women hoping for an alternative. The lawyer who will assist Mariam is "Atayee," a salt-and-pepper haired man with empathetic eyes and a dark stubble covering his jaw. He sits in a cold, unassuming room, potentially risking his life to defend women. It is visibly evident he has earned their trust: none of his clients keep their faces hidden under the burqa in his presence.

"According to Islamic and Afghan law, men have to support women," Atayee says with a soft voice. His fight is as much about eliminating violence against women as it is standing up for his own personal and religious values.

In post-Taliban Afghanistan, women seeking a brighter future are turning to an often overlooked and underutilized ally. It is a clandestine society of sorts, made up of hundreds of educated, progressive and devout Muslim men who are helping to change women's roles in Afghan society. These men freely choose their occupation, knowing they or their families may be killed for taking a stand against extremism.

In nearby Kapisa province, a ninety-minute drive north of Kabul, is another young male lawyer in a similar legal aid center. A recent law graduate, "H.F." says his old classmates know what he does, but few others. He doubts his family fully understands that he risks his life to help women escape gender violence. In the post-Taliban environment, something as simple as publicizing your name can be suicidal, and many Afghan men who work for women's rights keep their occupation a secret. But despite the risk, H.F. says he needs to help because "it's too difficult for a woman to defend herself."

Illiteracy and the lack of female education in Afghanistan make it nearly impossible for women to progress without help. Islam was intentionally perverted by the Taliban to justify keeping women covered in the burqa, deny them an education, force them into marriage at pre-pubescent ages, and permit physical and mental abuse. Violations continue, and tradition has become inextricably tied to religion.

Faced with this distortion of his religion, the head of the Afghanistan Islamic Scholars Council, Fazel Ahmad Manawi, is pushing for a new strain of religious identity within Afghanistan. Partly at his urging, the mosque he worships at now has about thirty women who attend Friday prayers. Sunnis, the majority of Muslims in Afghanistan, typically do not allow women into the mosque; however, Manawi says involving women in religion will help change attitudes in even the most conservative minds.

"The mosque is the best place to guide the people," Manawi explains. He is a man publicly known for supporting women. Friday prayers are a chance for the imams to inform both sexes about the rights all Muslims are entitled to enjoy.

When women first attended his mosque three years ago there were some disgruntled worshippers who disagreed-and a few angry debates. Manawi savored those debates as a chance to spread new ideas supported by his extensive knowledge of sharia law (laws based on the Qu'ran and the example of the Prophet Muhammad's life).

There are now an estimated twenty mosques that have women members. Manawi believes the practice is finding wider acceptance and the number will increase with time. But with the Taliban resurging from the south, publicly opining about a lack of women's liberties can carry a heavy price.

"I'm not afraid of my people, just the Taliban," Manawi says defiantly. His day job with a private telecommunications company in a wealthy Kabul neighborhood--protected by razor-wire fences and armed guards--affords Manawi a freedom that most men in Afghanistan don't have.

Only a mile across town but a world apart, in an oversized and yellowed building in Old Kabul near the canal that was once the Kabul River and is now an open sewer, Mufti Seddiqie Musleem and his colleagues in the Daral-Fatwa discuss what Islam requires of its followers. As advisors to the Supreme Court Justices of Afghanistan, this assembly of mullahs can issue a religious decree, or a fatwa, that can condemn an apostate to death, or--more to Musleem's liking--it can help free women from the bonds of tradition through a more accurate interpretation of the Qu'ran and sharia law.

"Islam calls for men and women to have equal rights. The country will not be developed without it," says Musleem, a member of the Elimination of Violence Against Women Commission. Musleem is no feminist by western standards, but his influence is critical to changing the customs and institutions that have relegated women to a substandard class. He believes that education in the schools, and especially the mosques, is the best way to raise women's status.

"Men should have more respect for women," Musleem says, noting that Islam requires men to be "an example." Nothing is said casually; he meticulously analyzes everything down to the syllable before he speaks. He pulls quotes from the Prophet Muhammad from memory to support his claim that "men who violate women's rights are oppressors."

His support doesn't come without risk. On a late summer night in 2005, Musleem and his five brothers were abducted from their home and held for twelve days. Facing possible execution, a ransom was paid to secure their release. Musleem insists he was concerned only about his family, not himself. Assuring the safety of family members is the biggest concern of every Afghan man who works with women's organizations. None of them take any chances with their wives and children.

Zia Moballegh, a national program officer for UNIFEM, keeps the details of his job a secret from his neighbors. He suspects that they may cooperate as informers for the Taliban or Al Qaeda if faced with threats to their own families. When he rented his house, the owner asked what his occupation was. Moballegh told him only "UN administration"; he specifically hid the fact that he worked for women's rights.

With a trimmed goatee and a black sport coat, Moballegh doesn't fit the stereotypical profile of a religious Afghan man, yet the motivation for his work comes from his own internal struggle to understand sharia law. He is sometimes accused by conservatives and traditional mullahs of "importing westernized issues and concepts." Moballegh dismisses their accusations. "In deep ideology and discussion, their claim is baseless. Women's rights are guaranteed in sharia law," he says.

Interpretations of sharia law vary; but within the circles of men working in women's development in Afghanistan, an increasing number have spent years studying the law in universities in Iran, Pakistan and Egypt. Many of these legal theologians have a liberal interpretation of Islamic doctrine and sharia law--one they hope to spread upon their return to Afghanistan. The idea that religion is an answer to extremism is a popular view among Afghans, and many see sharia law as a guarantor of women's rights and equality that doesn't carry the cultural barriers that western-imposed ideas often do.

Having devoted all his time in the post-Taliban era to women's development, Moballegh has watched reconstruction firsthand and is most worried about security. He describes a suicide bombing two days earlier that killed six people at a reconstruction project in an outlying neighborhood of Kabul. Six months earlier in the same area, the Taliban posted a printed decree warning that any girl attending school without a burqa would be killed.

"Now if you go to that neighborhood, all the girls are wearing burqas." Moballegh shakes his head solemnly. "They are getting closer."

For every father, husband or brother who is careful with his identity for fear of reprisals by extremists, there is a rebel who enjoys the spotlight. Azim Mujadidi is a field coordinator for UNIFEM in Parwan province. Just twenty-four years old, he started with UNIFEM teaching English to women's classes.

Young, charismatic and blessed with an infectious smile, Mujadidi regularly stands on the corner of a crowded roundabout, waiting to liaison with the white UN Landcruisers. In Afghanistan, being seen talking to someone in a UNIFEM vehicle could be a death sentence, but Mujadidi isn't fazed.

"The people in Parwan know me as a supporter of women," he says over hot tea in his bubblegum-pink office. While talking to the elders and leaders of villages was difficult at first, now many members of the community participate in ceremonies and openings of other projects because "they see the benefits of UNIFEM's projects." Mujadidi is proudest of a poultry-raising project; years after it ended, the women are still raising and selling chickens, an example of sustainability that he says is sorely needed.

Mujadidi thinks extremism is caused by economics, not dogma. He is looking for more long-term projects that will lift women from poverty, and believes that economic development coupled with an accurate interpretation of sharia law can eliminate extremism.

"The big reason anyone becomes a Talib, or Al Qaeda, or any other group is for economic reasons," Mujadidi says. "Anyone who wants to help Afghanistan, they send soldiers. We don't want soldiers. We want something to eliminate poverty."

After the discussions on politics and religion have been exhausted, a way to eliminate poverty is really what all Afghans are looking for: men like Mujadidi and women like Mariam, who hopes the legal aid center can offer her an escape from the husband who has already dug her grave.

As she sits in the lawyer's office, her blue burqa pulled back over her head, revealing her frosted blue eyes, Mariam knows poverty is limiting her options. With no education or job skills, running away from an abusive husband might be the easiest part of surviving as a woman in Afghanistan.

Yet men like Musleem, Atayee and Mujadidi are changing the future. They are men with a strong Islamic faith that demands they fight for women's rights when tradition dictates otherwise. They risk their lives for a future that includes Islam and women as part of the solution. They are not the mainstream but neither are they an aberration; their numbers are growing, and each man who takes action lends courage to another to do the same.

Musleem, the mufti who spends his time contemplating what Islam requires of the faithful, leans back in his chair and sips his tea. The threat of assassination hasn't deterred him from spreading the message that true Islam teaches men to protect the rights of women.

"I'm not afraid of dying because I am working very honestly," Musleem says with a peaceful smile behind his long and bushy beard. "We can't avoid our destiny."

Wil Morat is an American freelance writer living in Mumbai, India. He welcomes any comments, critiques, or discussions at wjmorat@gmail.com. Hasib Seddiqi contributed to this article.