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July 23, 2006
Pakistan: Musharraf Claims Hudood Laws Need to Become "Islamic"
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in an outstanding piece of double-talk, claims his campaign against the Hudood ordinances is an attempt to make them "Islamic": Hudood to be made 'compatible' with Islam: Musharraf
Islamabad, July 23 (IANS) In a stinging criticism of his one-time mentor and former president, Zia-ul-Haq, who created the controversial Hudood laws, President Pervez Musharraf has said his government was striving to make them 'compatible with the spirit of Islam'.'The government is endeavouring for the Islamisation of the Hudood Ordinance so that it could not be abused. This ordinance will be brought in conformity with the spirit of Islam,' Musharraf told a convention.
The News quoted the president as telling a nurses' convention that his government would eliminate all discriminatory laws against women.
'This is the first government, which is not only ensuring due rights of the womenfolk but also integrating them into the national mainstream so that they could get equal chances of progress and development.'
His last month's order annulling the laws, promulgated as ordinances in 1979 at the height of the Islamisation of Pakistan during the dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq, has meant freedom for an estimated 1,300 women incarcerated in jails across the country.
You've got to admire Musharraf's nerve. The problem with the Hudood laws is that they are eminently Islamic, not that they are not 'truly' Islamic. For example, the Daily India article goes on to explain one of the laws:
The worst provision, under the Zina Ordinance, requires them to cite four witnesses if they suffer rape.The law's enforcement has led to rape victims being punished for naming their perpetrators, but unable to prove the charge for want of witnesses.
The Koran, in turn, states: Koran 24:4-5 (Dawood translation)
Those who defeame honorauble women and cannot produce four witnesses shall be given eighty lashes. Do not accept their testimony ever after, for they are great transgressors - except those among them that afterwards repent and mend their ways. God is forgiving and merciful.
That's where the 'four witnesses' requirement comes from. If a woman accusses a man of rape, she automatically admits unlawful intercourse took place. Once she is unable to provide four witnesses--which, were there four witnesses, would be accessories to the crime--she becomes responsible for a crime; either illegal intercourse, or defaming the man. The logic is maddenning, but it is Islamic. As much as we symphatize with Musharraf's goals, there is no need to buy his pro-Islamic propaganda.
Posted by Ruy Diaz at July 23, 2006 3:21 PM
Comments
Regarding the 'islamicity' of punishing rape victims either as fornicatresses or slanderers: Musharraf is correct, that this is not Qur'anic/Islamic.
(1) Q 24:4-5 has to do with men who falsely accuse women of adultery (zina); to use it to protect men from false accusation by women is a fair interpretation of the text, I think, but it is not in the text itself. I say 'fair' because the Qur'an presumably intends to protect all people, male or female, from false accusations.
(2) The four-witnesses requirement is intended as an evidentiary requirement for consensual zina, nor coercive zina. This interpretation is well-supported through hadith on the subject of both consensual and coercive zina. It is also supported through an inferential reading of the Qur'an and the legal principle that a person cannot be held morally accountable or legally liable for something (s)he did under duress.
(3) No classical work of Islamic law that I have ever read, nor any hadith source, considers an accusation of rape to be a confession to zina.
I appreciate your coverage of these issues and am trying to engage. I hope I'm not speaking to the wind.
Posted by: pomegranate13 ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.westernresistance.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 19, 2006 1:39 AM
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