Comparative Theology

Romans repeatedly makes claims that sit in direct tension with both shared Islamic theology and distinctly Pashtun cultural frameworks that shape how those claims will be heard.

Romans doctrine	Adjacent Pashtun/Islamic concept	Key difference
Righteousness and justification (صداقت)	Honor-shame ethics (nang) rather than guilt-innocence	Right standing before God is a legal-forensic category; Pashtun default ethical reasoning tracks honor and shame instead, requiring explicit bridging rather than a direct one-word equivalent.
Salvation and atonement (نجات)	Badal (retributive revenge cycle)	Christ’s atonement resolves the debt of sin once, through a willing substitute, rather than through ongoing retaliation - closer in shape to the customary institution of nanawatai than to badal.
Adoption (زوی نیول)	Rigid patrilineal tribal genealogy (qawm/khel)	Full inheritance-equivalent status for a person outside the bloodline is a sharper departure from Pashtun social norms than in most other cultures in this pipeline.
Incarnation and Sonship of Christ (تجسد، د خدای زوی)	Tawhid (shared with Arabic Sunni Islam)	Same core objection as Arabic, but with less settled local precedent for how to teach it.
Prayer and Intercession (منځګړیتوب)	Nanawatai (customary mediation ending a feud)	A genuine positive resource: Christ’s mediating intercession can be taught through this existing cultural institution, calibrated carefully since nanawatai still requires the guilty party’s own submission act.

Why this matters for translation

Pashto’s comparative theology differs from Arabic’s in an important way: several of its distinguishing rows are not primarily about competing religious content but about a differing cultural logic (honor-shame vs. guilt-innocence, badal vs. one-time settlement) that shapes how correctly-translated doctrine is actually received. This Language Package’s doctrine_risk_registry.json and its heavy use of native-speaker review reflect that distinction.