Idara-e-Amn-o-Insaf Lahore

(Idara-e-Amn-o-Insaf Lahore is the Lahore branch of the Committee for Justice and Peace in Pakistan.)

Twenty-five years back, in the process of Islamisation of the s o c i e t y , h u d o o d l a w s w e r e promulgated in Pakistan by the military ruler General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq and Islamic Shariah was imposed by enforcing Islamic punishments in the form of hadd. Hadd is a punishment as ordained by Islamic injunctions. Those punishments provide stoning to death, whipping and amputation of hands and feet. According to state declarations, those steps were taken to make Pakistan an Islamic state, in which people would lead their lives according to the injunctions of Islam, and to deliver justice to the people, especially women.

During these 25 years of Islamisation not only minorities but also women were subjected to state oppression because of retrogressive and sectarian legislation. The country's progressive circles, minorities and women organisations have been raising their voices against this retrogressive and oppressive legislation in the name of religion. The federal government has constituted three commissions so far on the subject, respectively headed by Zari Sarfraz, Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid and Justice Majida Razvi. 

The National Commission on the Status of Women under the leadership of Razvi constituted a 14-member  special committee to thoroughly examine the Hudood Ordinances of 1979. That special committee concluded that the four Hudood Ordinances patently contained conceptual inaccuracies, textual errors, discrimination on gender and religious lines and flawed application of law that have caused gross injustice to the people. 

The committee recommended immediate repeal of the hudood laws. The national commission adopted the recommendations, which were forwarded to the federal government and the president for implementation. In consequence thereof, President Pervez Musharraf has made a few public declarations that the hudood laws needed review and more consideration.

Realising the need to lobby for the recommendations for the repeal of the Hudood Ordinances and for opening public debate and opinion making, the Idara Lahore organised a seminar on "Hudood Ordinances and Other Discriminatory Laws against Women and Minorities" in Lahore on June 24. It was attended by a cross section of the society.

Abid Hassan Minto, a renowned lawyer and the president of the National Workers Party, told the seminar that derogatory norms, practices, customs and traditions of the patriarchal society were part of the feudal system. The system is not only oppressive but is the cause of retrogression that retards the process of social development, Minto said. Therefore, the hudood laws and the feudal system should both be abolished, he said.

Terrorism and religious extremism are the natural outcomes of the "unholy alliance" of the military rulers and the religious clerics in Pakistan, Minto said. Such a situation has not only subjected the minorities to repression, but also made the whole nation the victim of that oppression, he said. 

Razvi, meanwhile, noted that 80 per cent of female prisoners were convicts under the Hudood Ordinances. The incidents of violence against women have increased beyond proportions after promulgation of these laws, added the chairwoman of the National Commission on the Status of Women.
Yet removing flaws and errors in these laws is not possible, as it is like an old cloth that will tear further if mended at one place, she said. The national commission had recommended for the repeal of the hudood laws and the matter is now with the president and the federal government, she noted. 

Syed Afzal Haider, a former president of the High Court Bar Association in Lahore and a former law minister of Punjab, discussed the subject from
d i f f e r e n t a n g l e s o f I s l a m i c jurisprudence. Haider said the Holy Quran did not prescribe the punishment of rajam, stoning to death. The remote reference found in the Sunnah, the life of holy prophet Muhammad, has not been interpreted in its historical perspective. He said Islam laid much emphasis on forgiveness rather than punishment. 

The religious clerics have made Islam m e r e l y a r e l i g i o n o f s e v e r e punishments. Those punishments should be repealed, said Haider, who is also a member of the special committee under the national commission on women to review the legislation.

Naeem Shakir, the Idara Lahore chairman and a member of the special committee, said many Muslims in Pakistan were swayed by religious sentiments and stood up against those who indicated that the hudood laws failed to deliver justice and demanded for their abolition. "They think as if we were disturbing divine laws," said Shakir, a lawyer.

Yet these laws were framed by draftsmen of the Ministry of Law under the advice of a Saudi religious scholar who was especially engaged by Zia. The laws were never put before any forum o f a s s e m b l y f o r d e b a t e o r consideration. Treating these laws as divine is not only a misconception but
creates a lot of problems, Shakir said. 

Pakistani women and the minorities remain subjected to the rigours of the Hudood Ordinances, as their testimonies under these laws have been
rendered inadmissible for the offences laid in those laws, especially rape and adultery. According to the standard of evidence, to prove the commission of an offence of adultery or rape it requires to have four adult male Muslim eyewitnesses. Such a standard throws women and the minorities out of the witness category and thus they are discriminated and marginalised, he said.

Moreover, only that the witnesses are supposed to be leading a life according to the ordained injunctions of Islam, the victims of rape are unable to produce such kind of evidence to punish the perpetrators and are roped in on their own statements, which will be treated as confessions. That is why
female victims are put in jail while the perpetrators are at large and free to harm more victims, Shakir said. In the religious fervour to Islamise the society, Zia also brought non-Muslim citizens under the application of Islamic Shariah and that is state oppression against the minorities, he said.

Other speakers, Professor Neelam Hussain from SIMORGH and Uzma Saeed from Aurat Foundation, also urged for the repeal of the hudood laws. The activists from the two women groups said the promulgation for such laws by the military regime and prescribing punishments of the medieval era were, in fact, meant to create general scare and to legitimise an undemocratic government. 

The participants unanimously passed the following resolutions at the seminar:

We demand for the repeal of Hudood Ordinances and strongly support the recommendations of the National Commission on the Status of Women. We urge the p r e s i d e n t a n d t h e f e d e r a l government to bring an end to the state oppression and stop the policy of appeasement, which is the main
hindrance in doing away with discriminatory legislation. 

We urge the government to stop applying Islamic Shariah on non-Muslim citizens and bring an immediate end to discrimination against them by repealing all sectarian legislation. 

T h e s y l l a b i o f e d u c a t i o n a l institutions that generate the sentiment of hate and socio-religious intolerance religious extremism and violence in the name
of religious jihad should be substituted with such literature that fosters love, brotherhood and socio-religious tolerance.

We urge the government to take immediate steps to demilitarise the state and the society. We further urge to disarm and ban different religious outfits operating in the country under different names. 

We strongly urge the government to take immediate steps to stop killing of people especially women in the name of honour by abolishing all
those norms, practices, customs and traditions in the name of karo-kari or in any other name. 

We strongly feel that many of our economic and social ills are due to the feudal values and system that retard the process of social development and therefore demand immediate abolition of the feudal system in the country. 

On the decisions of jirga (council of local elders) women are subjected to physical and sexual violence as a punishment for disobeying and going
against oppressive and discriminatory traditions and customs. And for the past many years there has been a growing trend towards such killings. We urge the government to take immediate measures to stop these inhuman acts. 

We urge the government to award exemplary punishment to the killers of Javed Anjum and Samuel Masih who lost their lives under blasphemy
law and hate sentiment against Christians.