Licence to Rapists

[Tehman Khan]

A series of events in the past few weeks have again highlighted the injustices being committed against women in the name of Islam in Pakistan. Recently, the three accused of raping an 18-year old woman at Jinnah’s Mausoleum were set free by a court in Karachi. The court refused to entertain the DNA evidence, which reportedly proved the guilt of the accused, and gave the accused the benefit of the doubt because the victim could not produce four eyewitnesses to the rape. Weeks later, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) decreed that the DNA evidence in the absence of four righteous men as witnesses to rape is not sufficient for conviction under Islamic law.

While women are being discriminated in Pakistan and elsewhere in the name of Islam, there is nothing Islamic or divine about the man-made laws in Pakistan. Take the case of the Hudood laws in Pakistan, which were enacted by the then military dictator General Zia to Islamicize Pakistan’s legal system. A close scrutiny of the laws reveals that the Hudood laws, which also cover offenses related to rape, are in fact a legacy of the British Colonial law. As these laws stand today, they discriminate against women rather than protecting their rights. Furthermore, the refusal to embrace modern-day forensic evidence is a divergence from the Islamic tradition where similar techniques have been used by the Muslim jurists to resolve disputes in the past.

In a well-researched paper published in 1997, Professor Asifa Quraishi explains that the rape laws in Pakistan are anything but Islamic. Drawing exclusively from Islamic sources and Quranic injunctions, Professor Quraishi makes the following points. First, the Quranic injunctions are restricted to zina (consensual sexual act by adults outside of marriage). There is no mention of rape in Quran. Secondly the intent of the Quranic injunctions was to prevent lewd behavior in public and to limit instances of false accusations. The requirement to produce four witnesses who had explicitly witnessed the sexual act is possible only if the act is being committed in public and in nude. This suggests that “unlawful sexual intercourse will be prosecuted by the state only when it is publically indecent.”

The noble Quran forbade Zina (fornication) in Surat Al-'Isrā' (17:32) and prescribed the punishment in Surat An-Nūr (24:2). The noble Quran then reads:

Those who defame chaste women and do not bring four witnesses (shuhada) should be punished with eighty lashes, and their testimony should not be accepted afterwards, for they are profligates. (24:4)

The Quranic speech is clear and without confusion. The requirement to produce four witnesses, and not just male witnesses, is required by the Quran to prevent false accusations of fornication against women. The Quran does not ask for four male witnesses, but General Zia’s Hudood ordinance did when it required “at least four Muslim adult witnesses, about whom the Court is satisfied, having regard to the requirements of tazkiyah al-shuhood …”

The Quranic intent had been to protect the rights of women against false accusations. General Zia’s Hudood Ordinance accomplished exactly the opposite. Firstly, it unnecessarily confused rape, a violent crime, with fornication. Secondly, the Hudood ordinance has made it impossible for a rape victim to get justice in Pakistan. Under the Hudood Ordinance, the Courts require four “adult male” eyewitnesses to rape. When a female victim fails to produce four male eyewitnesses, she is then charged under Tazeer for fornication. If the woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape, the rapist/s gets a walk, while the woman is charged with fornication using pregnancy as a proof.

Man-made law

How is it possible that the very Quranic injunctions that were supposed to safeguard women’s rights were reversed by General Zia to discriminate against them? Professor Qurashi offers the answer to this riddle by exposing the plagiarist jurists commissioned by the military dictator to draft the Hudood Ordinances. She reproduces the texts of the Hudood Ordinances enacted by General Zia, and the earlier British Common Law of rape. I have reproduced below verbatim the two texts to demonstrate that what was presented to Pakistanis as the divine law was in fact a cut-and-paste from the British Common Law. Even the explanation to what constitutes as rape is identical in the two texts.

[Maria Iqbal]

Hmm true. We chant 'mazhab mazhab' all the time, but don't actually follow its teachings.. In a way, imposition of shariah can prove to be quite unfavourable, where men usually enjoy the immunity granted to them by laws. During one of my stays in Saudi Arabia, I once went to collect some reports in a local hospital (with Mehram off course), only to learn about the consequences of horrendous crimes committed by frustrated Saudi Arabians, the product of forced restrictions. A nine months old baby was brought in. She had brutally been physically tortured by her biological father. There was also this teenager (boy) who had been gang-raped by his playmates. He was in such a critical condition that a knife was found inside his genital. There were such other cases that nobody dared to report out of fear.

May the soul of morality rest in peace.

[Anønymøus]

There should be court for the courts, in order to be justice served. Especially in Pakistan people shout about "Free Judiciary" and I have read that even Chief Justice of Pakistan is bias after studying his son money laundering case. Are the judges illiterate so they do not believe on DNA reports? By continuously serving this type of justice, they are inviting a revolution against system, which I also foresee in coming time in Pakistan.