After TV series, Pakistan rethinks rape, sex laws

More than 1,000 female prisoners are expected to be released this week on bail in Pakistan following a decision by President Pervez Musharraf to review a controversial set of laws affecting women.

Many of the female inmates are awaiting trial for violations under the Hudood Ordinances, which stipulate harsh penalties for extramarital sex. The laws require a woman who claims that she was raped to produce four pious male witnesses. Otherwise, she stands to be charged with adultery – an offense that can carry a death sentence by stoning. The ordinances have also been used as a weapon against women who defy marriage choices made by their families.

President Musharraf promised five years ago to amend the Hudood Ordinances, only to backtrack in the face of opposition from hard-line Islamic groups. However, a groundbreaking television series has taken the issue to a wider set of religious authorities. The overall verdict of this unprecedented public debate – that the laws are not rooted in the Koran – appears to be giving Musharraf the cover needed to consider changes.

"We have launched this campaign in accordance with our commitment to enlighten people about all those issues, which have remained a taboo, though they have strong bearings on common people," says Azhar Abbas, the director of news at Geo television, which ran the series last month. "We just want to make people know about the issue. We just want to place the issue in the right context regardless to the outcomes of the debate."

Talk of repealing or modifying the ordinances had been a taboo since their promulgation in 1979 by Gen. Zia ul-Haq, a military dictator who undertook an Islamacizing of the nation. Efforts by the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to modify or repeal the laws foundered on the assertion that they are drawn from the Koran and the Sunnah (the sayings of Mohammad). Hudood means "limitations or boundaries" in Urdu.

Geo TV, one of a handful of new private stations that have sprung up in recent years under more liberal media laws, decided to tackle head-on the question of whether the Hudood Ordinances are divine or merely man-made. Under the title "Zara Sochieye," or "Just Think," the station brought together Islamic scholars, clerics, muftis, and jurists for a hard-charging back and forth. (For transcripts and more, go to www.geo.tv/zs/.)

The scholars, from diverse schools of Muslim thought, came to a consensus that the law is flawed and needs amending.

"The biggest flaw in the ordinance is that it does not distinguish between fornication and rape," said Mohammad Farooq Khan, a religious scholar. "It has shut the doors of justice for the rape victims, who, in practice, are not able to produce four witnesses for testifying on their behalf, as the law commands for."

Jurists with an experience of hearing odd Hudood cases also shared their views.

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