Hudood -the divine law?

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EDITORIAL: Our backward politicians and Zina Ordinance

On Tuesday, the National Assembly rejected a bill proposing amendments to the Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance 1979, which requires a rape victim to present four male witnesses to substantiate her claim or be convicted of fornication or adultery and/or face punishment for lying. The bill — The Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Bill, 2005 (Amendment to Section 8) — was presented by MNA Kunwar Khalid Yunus of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). The treasury benches, which boast a strong pro-women lobby, joined the clerics and other conservative MNAs to reject the proposed amendment. It is tragic that an elected house has an all-parties majority that doesn’t want to get rid of a bad law.

MNA Yunus of the MQM said that a clause in the offending Ordinance should be repealed because it discriminated against women: “The Hudood Ordinance was introduced by Gen Zia ul Haq to court Saudi Arabia’s support for his rule. Of the 57 Muslim countries worldwide, the Hudood law was enforced only in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The ordinance had been enforced in 1979 without being incorporated in the Constitution by the then parliament”. When the speaker put the bill to vote, it was easily defeated. Predictably, MMA member Dr Sahibzada Abu Alkhair Muhammad Zubair called the Hudood Ordinance “part of the divine law” that could not be amended. Now take a look at the most platitudinous lies in Muslim history, and it comes from the lips of the federal law minister, Mr Wasi Zafar: “Women in Pakistan enjoy complete liberty and respect, especially compared to those in Western countries”.

This is nothing new, however. An earlier bill by the PPPP onhonour-killing was watered down to include a mitigating clause. Thismeant that honour-killing could go on and the victims would be thewomen of Pakistan who otherwise enjoy “complete liberty and respect” compared to what women get in the Western countries. The fact that no other Islamic state except Saudi Arabia has the same kind of cruel legislation as ours should mean that the “divine law” is not universal even among the Islamic community. The argument here is not that zina is not mentioned in the Quran but that a misinterpretation has been allowed, and Pakistani women demeaned. Most of the women rotting in jails are being punished for pointing to men who had raped them. In the current practice of opposing “love marriages”, the Zina Ordinance is used by vengeful parents, exposing the married couple to the punishmentof stoning to death.

Had our National Assembly been endowed with any moral will or intellect it could have found ways and means to tinker with the law in force to alleviate the suffering of women. The first point to consider was that the Ordinance confused rape with fornication. No sensible person in the world can believe that a woman forcibly subjected to sex can be guilty or that she should be required to bring four pious witnesses to prove the crime. If a rape scene has four witnesses it would be recognised as some kind of theatrical performance rather than crime. More enlightened Islamic scholars have already opined on the difficulties introduced into the subject by the Arabic word zina which subsumes both rape and fornication. It is on the ground of this scholarly opinion that theIslamic world has not incorporated the clause that our law has.

Zina takes us to the next step in our purblindness when it comes to legislating Islamic laws. Those found guilty of adultery are to be sentenced to stoning to death (rajm) which is not mentioned in the Quran. (Rajm is a part of the hudood although hudood have to be proved to have been ordained clearly in the Quran.) The Quran prescribes only a hundred lashes for the offence and the exegetes are not in agreement on the force applied to lashing. The criterion in judging a bad law is in the possibility of its enforcement. The truth is that in Pakistan half the Islamic laws in force have not been enforced, like the cutting of hands and blood-money for manslaughter, to name just two. The ones that are enforced are used only as unfair means of punishing women andthe unprotected minorities. It is sad that our legislators so easily set aside an effort to improve a bad law.

Story Courtesy: Daily Times of Pakistan

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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

good.. now the women can complain to the female members of parliament for shooting this down..

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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

Well, I guess, when you wish to put someting out to pasture, you should have something better to replace it. The writer presents none.

And if replacing the current Hudood laws meant that one should implement western set of laws, that is just asking for trouble.

How many thousands of young men in the States alone have their lives ruined by vengeful girlfriends. Either they come on record in which case they are denied financial aid in colleges and educational institutions or are rotting in jails for years. Boy meets girl, they have sex, boy breaks off, girl goes to police, boy arrested and is later ruined.

The purpose of the Hudood laws is to make sure that no wrongful accusations are made. It is no secret that in Pakistan kids raised without values indulge in this gf/bf phenomena and partake in all kinds of hanky panky. Removing Hudood laws will not make much difference. It will lead to further abuse.

Simply raising good Muslim sons and daughters with values will do the trick. Everyone wishes for the government to do this and that. How much are we ourselves willing to do?

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Whats sad is how this present government for all of its talk..essentially allied with regressive elements to shoot the bill down..

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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

Whatever. This is just another clear example of how desis just do NOT see women as human beings. We're friggin property.

Lajawab, how about replacing Hudood laws with Islamic Laws?

Hudood Laws are NOT entirely Islamic. You don't need 4 witnesses to prove a rape.

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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

Four witnesses of a rape? How can there possibly be four witnesses, unless they were partaking?! :rolleyes:

That law is ridiculous! It serves no purpose at all. :mad:

It would be a good idea for the scholars to sit together and review the laws so they can come up with something fair.

Many punishments are understandable however, our Prophet (pbuh) carried them out himself as did the Sahaba (ra). They are so severe because of the nature of the crime.

Like getting lashed for slandering another person, slander destroys other peoples lifes, as long as slander is repeated often enough, people start believing it, wether it’s true or not. And fornication is one of the worst crimes one can possibly do, stoning (or lashing in cases of the unmarried) and cutting off the hand of the thieves, etc. it’s all meant as examples too for the rest of us, so we won’t do them ourselves/again.

And it’s all less than the punishment those people would get in the Hereafter! Perhaps, when people really repent out of their souls, the suffering of those punishments helps to reduce their punishments in the Hereafter, possibly even gets them forgiveness of Allah.

There are good reasons they were prescribed and our Prophet (pbuh) wouldn’t have used them if they were unnecesary. He came as a mercy for mankind, he wouldn’t have punished people this severely without proper reasons.

But they should be used in a fair way. Nowadays people mostly use them to put down other people.

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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

What a point !!!:bukbuk:

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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

Frightened moderation shown by the ruling PML govt, goes to show how entrenched these ideas are in our society.

Blasphemy law has been misused many times to the detrimant of our minorities, su=imilalry, Hudood laws have been misused to exploit women and the poor. Real issue here is whether one can find four witnesses to crime such as rape? When a woman files rape charges, she has already confessed to adultery and has to prove that she was raped? Something is wrong here, very wrong.

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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

Well the rape issue is not the only stupidty that comes of this law. I think under this law, if a woman runs away from her family with a man she wants to marry, and her parents are forcing her to get married somewhere else, her father can place a case against the daughter. I think accusing her of fornication, even though no sex took place? Its something strange and illogical like that.

Nevermind the fact that she might have good reason for running away.

Also I read somewhere earlier that one of the implications of this law is that if a woman accuses a man of rape, and for whatever reason, the male is allowed to accuse her of lying, and I guess because the law is not being applied right, stats are showing its usually the victim that gets the punishment. That's why women who get raped are afraid to come out and reveal what has happened. I guess its probably because the onus is on the female to come up with the 4 witnesses, but the male can just easily say "she's lying".

Can you believe it? Rape victims get punished.

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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

Good on MQM on at least trying to fight the jahil thinking of most Pakistanis, even if it failed.

And where is the supreme court in all of this? Too busy with important matters like kite bans to worry about hudood law.

Can we expect anything less from a system where people live of the table scraps of army generals?

Lajawab, hudood laws is misused against women rape vicitms not men and it is an unjust law. It is baised against women and your "what if" argument makes little sense. Even If the bias were to shift a little against the men, it wouldn't really be all that bad for Pakistan considering that currently women are the opressed.

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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

I read it somewhere, so I wont take credit for it:

Laws made by adulterers for adulterers.

likewise

Laws made by rapists for rapists.

You'd be surprised how many of these so-called gov't officials and higher ups have committed crimes against women, whether its rape, human traffiking, kidnappings, torture, adultery, or even sexual slavery.

Sad?
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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

The saddest thing about this whole sordid affair about Hudood laws, is that it is ultimately Islam which gets the bad name. The people responsible will have a lot to answer for.

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Re: Hudood -the divine law?

ISLAMABAD, Dec 10: The government is considering amending Hudood laws in consultation with various religious and political groups to remove discriminatory articles, especially against women and human rights. This was stated by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) stalwarts while speaking at a seminar organised by the party to commemorate international human rights day at the PML House on Saturday.

Interestingly, the National Assembly had rejected by majority a private member’s bill sought to be moved by a MQM legislator Kunwar Khalid Yunas on Wednesday. The bill, the lawmaker said, was seeking to amend the Hudood Ordinance to remove sections discriminatory to women.

Party’s Secretary-General Mushahid Hussain Syed said that human rights violations occurred in Pakistan and in the Muslim world because the law meant for every one was applied only against the weaker and poorer sections of the society while the government machinery protected influential members of the society from application of law.

On the international scene, he said, innocent people were detained and held without explicit charges at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghuraib detention centres even without courts trial which was worst type of human rights violation.

He said we must raise our voice against these excesses against the humanity by super power or any other power wherever it was done.

Hussain said that the PML had realised that there were some discriminatory sections in the Hudood laws which need to be amended and for this purpose Chaudhry Shujaat had held meetings with the eminent legal experts and had also wrote to the president.

He said need was being felt that these laws should be amended in consultation with all stakeholders in a way that discriminatory sections of the law against women were removed.

The PML secretary-general, who was chairman of sub-committee of the parliamentary committee on Balochistan, said that his committee had completed a 132 pages complete report to undo the discrimination which was exercised with the people of Balochistan so far.

Wasim Sajjad sub-committee, which was dealing with the constitutional aspects of the issue, he said was still busy in finalisation of the report.

Hussain said that the recent Makkah OIC summit had drawn a ten year action plan in light of the report of OIC commission of eminent persons of which he was a member from Pakistan.

Mushahid Hussain Syed said that the proposal to rename and reactivate the OIC and to make it a true organ of the Muslim Ummah would go a long way in strengthening human rights in the Muslim states.

The basic idea of the said report, he said, was to enlarge scope of political liberties, human equality, civil and social rights and transparency.