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should be repealed because it discriminated against women: “The Hudood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 on
honour-killing was watered down to include a mitigating clause. This
meant that honour-killing could go on and the victims would be the women
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 punishment of
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 the
Islamic 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 and the
unprotected minorities. It is sad that our legislators so easily set
aside an effort to improve a bad law. *