A very curious case has been adjudicated by the
Peshawar High Court involving a man who is
alleged to have printed Quranic verses with some
changes (tehreef) in them. The man was hauled up
by the police and brought before a judge in
Peshawar who gave him life imprisonment. Earlier,
the same accused had been let off when the
witness against him repudiated his statement. But
after many years the same man turned around and
revived the case and got the accused in trouble.
The honourable High Court has now acquitted the
man of the charge.

The life sentence at the Sessions Court was
awarded on the basis of 12 witnesses and the
fatwa of a local cleric. While handing down the
acquittal, the High Court said that the
government should constitute a body of religious
scholars and authorise it to issue official
fatwas on grave issues, and that the practice of
unofficial fatwas should end. The cleric whose
fatwa was made the basis of a life sentence was
in favour of doing taweez with Quranic text
written on pieces of paper, but when the verse
apparently got changed in the process he
recommended severe punishment to the man. Another
sad fact is that the case was taken off the first
time but after six years the police arrested the
accused again because the plaintiff said he had
withdrawn the case earlier under police pressure.

We are sure that the honourable High Court made
its recommendations (about the need for an
official body of religious scholars or muftis to
issue fatwas) in jest, since Pakistan has a
functioning Federal Shariat Court attuned
especially to forestall the evil habit of issuing
fatwas. If the government appoints a grand mufti
then it is inevitable that he will be used for
the government’s specific political purposes,
thus bringing Islam into disrepute. What, for
example, would happen if the fatwa of the mufti
were to be set aside by a court? Will the lower
courts be bound by it; and what will be the upper
courts’ jurisdiction with regard to the fatwas
thus issued?

It is a matter of great concern that the police
should have registered a case against the man
accused of tehreef on the basis of a fatwa. In
fact there was no need for the fatwa at all
because it is not within the ambit of law. The
Sessions Court should have deemed it
inadmissible. But it did not, confirming that
there is a deep socio-pathological element
involved here. Over the years our judiciary has
become mentally soft on the clergy. Indeed, it
would not be far wrong to say that in some cases
our judges in the lower courts have assumed
without any legal grounds that they are equal to
the classical identity of a mufti appointed by a
Muslim sultan.

The fact is that all manner of fatwas have done a
lot of harm to our society. They are responsible
for gradually cutting the ground from under the
jurisdiction of the state. Fatwas have been
obtained by the powerful to intimidate the less
privileged and the muftis themselves belong to
religious organisations involved in jihad and
they are in a position to enforce the fatwa with
coercion. For example, when the Jaish-e-Muhammad
was riding high and had its 17 offices in Lahore
under the patronage of certain intelligence
agencies in Islamabad, its gun-toting youths made
their pocket money through the enforcement of
fatwas.

In Karachi the business of fatwas is rampant.
Even if in some cases they are helpful in ending
a dispute and getting one party to accept
arbitration, it is essentially suicidal for a
state to allow this activity. Pakistan’s
sectarian curse is based on dozens of fatwas
issued by our Deobandi seminaries in 1986. The
greatest apostatiser of them all, Maulana Haq
Nawaz Jhangvi, gave the fatwa of takfeer in 1985
and challenged the courts to hear him out and
prove his fatwa wrong. When the state did not
act, the Shias began to be killed. Many fatwas
were also issued about the citizens of other
countries, asking the people of Pakistan to kill
them wherever they saw them.

The fatwa is simply impermissible. Whosoever
issues a fatwa commits a crime because he is
issuing a judgement and asking the receiver of a
fatwa to implement it. It is like opening a
parallel court. The matter of fatwas brings to
our notice the gradual erosion of state
institutions in the face of social disorder, just
like the diyat case where a killer can go
scot-free after paying blood money. In many cases
when a prisoner has been considered eligible for
blood money but cannot pay the aggrieved party he
languishes in jail forever. Here again “Islam”
has been exploited simply to keep someone
permanently in jail. Therefore the Supreme Court
has done well to ask the government to set up a
fund for payment of diyat for those prisoners who
don’t have the money to buy their freedom.