New amendment draft ordered
ISLAMABAD, August 16 2006: President Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday (15) directed the ministry of law to redraft the proposed amendments to the Hudood laws by incorporating some of the proposals forwarded by the coalition members. The directive, sources said, was issued after a grand meeting of the ruling coalition members chaired by the president at the President House. Senior members of the ruling PML and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz attended the meeting.
The meeting decided to try to table the redrafted amendments to the law during the ongoing National Assembly session and that the ruling coalition would support it in debates and in the house committee. President Musharraf is learnt to have impressed upon 180 MNAs and senators of the ruling coalition that the Hudood Ordinance could neither be repealed nor any law be allowed to be framed that was repugnant to Islamic injunctions.
The sources said that a majority of the participants deemed it wrong to punish a man or a woman just because a case was registered under the Hudood laws, adding that they wanted all people detained without sufficient proof to be released without any punishment. Stressing the need for protecting women’s rights, the president said that it was incumbent upon the legislators to bring all laws in conformity with true Islamic teachings.
When a woman legislator of the ruling PML suggested repealing the Hudood Ordinance entirely, the president is reported to have said: “You need to use common sense.” The president said that the main purpose of amending the Hudood laws was to protect women’s rights but laws repugnant to the teachings of the Holy Quran and Sunnah could not be enacted.
The president said some articles of the Hudood ordinance were not in accordance with the true spirit of the Holy Quran and Sunnah and there was general consensus among scholars of various schools of thought that they needed to be amended. Sources quoted the president as saying that they were trying to “protect the rights of our mothers, sisters and daughters and we must not shirk away from safeguarding their judicial rights.
Source: Dawn
Date:8/16/2006
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