LAHORE: An all-parties conference convened by Jamaat-e-Islami and attended by powerful religious groups asked the government on Tuesday to retract the “un-Islamic” law that gives unprecedented protection to female victims of violence.
The Women’s Protection Act, passed by Punjab Assembly last month, gives legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence. It also calls for the creation of a toll-free abuse-reporting hot line, women’s shelters and district-level panels to investigate reports of abuse and mandates the use of GPS bracelets to keep track of offenders. Domestic abuse, economic discrimination and acid attacks made Pakistan the world’s third most dangerous country in the world for women, a 2011 Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll showed.
But since the law’s passage, many clerics and religious leaders have denounced it as being in conflict with the holy Quran and the constitution. On Tuesday, representatives of more than 35 religious parties and groups came together for a conference called by the Jamaat-e-Islami and condemned the law as un-Islamic. “The controversial law to protect women was promulgated to accomplish the West’s agenda to destroy the family system in Pakistan,” read the joint declaration issued at the end of the concrescence. “This act … is redundant and would add to the miseries of women.”
The passage of the new law was welcomed by rights groups, but spirits have since dampened as conservative voices have increasingly called for its retraction. On Monday, JUI-F chief Fazlur Rehman said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had promised him at a meeting that he would address the reservations of religious parties. “Nawaz Sharif heard our reservations against the Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence Act 2016. He promised to amend the law so that it doesn’t contravene the teachings of the holy Quran,” Fazl told journalists at his residence.
Earlier this month, Council of Islamic Ideology, a religious body that advises the government on the compatibility of laws with Islam, declared the Women’s Protection Act un-Islamic. A prominent lawyer has also filed a petition in the top Sharia court, asking it to strike down the law.
Fazlur Rehman said on Tuesday that although violence against women is not permissible in Islam, there are several points in the law that contradict teachings of the holy Quran and Sunnah. Addressing the session, he said, “The government is making public only sugar, and hiding the poison in the law.” Speaking to the media after the meeting, the JUI-F chief said, “The prime minister heard our reservations against the law. He promised to amend the bill so that it does not contradict with the Quran and Sunnah.”
He said that the prime minister had promised to form a committee which would look into the reservations of the religious parties, including the JUI-F.
Lawmakers in Punjab last month gave unprecedented protection to female victims of violence, in a bid to stem a rising tide of gender-related abuse in a country ranked as the world’s third most dangerous place for women. The new law criminalises all forms of violence against women, whether domestic, psychological or sexual, and calls for the creation of a toll-free abuse reporting hot line and the establishment of shelters. In 2013, more than 5,800 cases of violence against women were reported in Punjab alone, according to the Aurat Foundation, a women’s rights advocacy group. Those cases represented 74 percent of the national total that year, the latest for which data is available.
