…The
most controversial specific instance of misdirected ”Islamisation” concerns rajim,
the punishment of stoning to death for illicit sexual intercourse.
As part of
his Islamisation program, Zia, by President’s Order 3 of 1979, amended the
Constitution to set up Shariat, or religious, benches in Pakistan’s four provincial
high courts. Designated justices were both high court judges and members of the Shariat
benches until March 1981, when the functions were separated. There is now a federal
Shariat court, the provincial versions having been abolished.
Six months
ago the Shariat court ruled that the government’s 1979 law of rajim –
stoning to death for offences such as adultery – was not Quranic law and was
therefore unIslamic. The Zia Administration is appealing that verdict on the ground that
the judges, as the President told Asiaweek, “didn’t do their homework.”
Zia, in short, believes that the punishment is Islamic. It is a confusion that in recent
months has exercised Muslim minds from West Asia to Southeast Asia, and to get to the
bottom of it, Asiaweek’s O’Neill last week visited Parwez, 78, in his
book-lined study in Lahore. This is what Chaudhri Ghulam Ahmad Parwez said:
“The
first thing to know, when you call a thing Islamic, is: What is the authority for it? When we say
‘This is constitutional,’ there is an authority for it – the Constitution.
It presupposes the existence of a constitution that forms an authority to say what is
constitutional and what is not.”
“There
must be a common authority for all Muslims. When they
call themselves Muslims it means they accept Islam, and if there is one common authority
for Islam, then that must be the common authority by which all Muslims decide whether
something is Islamic or not – whether it is the law of rajim or some other laws or
rules of the state.
“Islam
is not a religion. It is a code of life, a system of living. Islam is about the nation of
the community: It presupposes the existence of a state.
“What is
the authority? It may be the Shariat court, it may be the President of Pakistan, it may be
a common man. If we define that, half the problem is solved. If there is one common
authority, it does not matter what the Shariat court says is Islamic, or what I
say is Islamic. Have you asked this question of the President?
“Thinking
based on common sense is very near the Islamic laws. The authority
is the Quran. It is the only authority: immutable. When one accepts that, one
becomes a Muslim, and one remains a Muslim for as long as one accepts it. It is not a
question of this view or that view.
“Even in
secular laws, when we say something is ‘legal’ we mean ‘It is according to
this or that law.’ That law must exist. It presupposes the existence of some law
which is acceptable to all the parties. So when we talk about
Islam – whether in India or Singapore or Pakistan, whether it is an ordinary
Muslim or a head of state or a ‘divine mullah’ – we
must say: ‘This is the authority.’ And the only authority for being Islamic is
the Quran.
“It is a perfect
authority. No addition or subtraction can be made because, according to the Quran, Allah
said it is complete. Nothing against it can constitute an authority for being Islamic.
What is not there is not Islam. The Quran says that even the Prophet
had not the authority to make any change; the Prophet himself says in the Quran, ‘I
am not authorized to make any changes.’
“Some
people accept authorities other than the Quran. They accept
the Traditions of the Prophet, which I call history. Then there is fiqa [jurisprudence].
Some jurists, about 1,000 years back, constituted certain laws. They are man-made laws,
and the state enforced them at that time as the laws of government. They are not Quranic. Whatever in those laws is according to the Quran we can accept as
Islamic because they are according to the Quran. If a non-Muslim state makes
a law which is according to the Quran, we will say, ‘That law is according to the
Quran.’ If a Muslim state makes a law which is against the Quran, we will not accept
it as Islamic.
“No
state in the world accepts the Quran as the final and only authority: they all
accept these jurists’ laws, fiqa, or the Traditions attributed to the Holy Prophet
– history! Yet it is possible to have an Islamic state. The
Quran is there. Unchanged, immutable, in the same form in which, according to our belief,
it was revealed by God, given by the Prophet to the people. Not a single comma therein has
been changed.
“The
Quran has definitely given the punishment for zinnah [illegal sexual intercourse]: only
stripes [lashes]. It is clearly given. Rajim is not Quranic.
“When
the government enforced this law of rajim, it did not say there was any secularism in it.
It says secularism is against Islam. For everything, they say ‘It is Islamic.’
“Since
the majority of people in Pakistan accept these laws [fiqa] as Islamic, the government
says they should be accepted as Islamic. The court has said it is
not a question of majority or minority. Even if one Muslim proves this is against
the Quran, it becomes against the Quran. Those who challenged this law in the Shariat
court have proved it is against the Quran. That is why the law must be repealed.
“A state can be called Islamic only if it acts according to
the Quran. If some higher court says that laws accepted by the majority of the people in
this country are Islamic laws, then does this law promulgated by the government become
Islamic? If the appeal is successful it will become the law of the
land. But it will not be an Islamic law.”
Nobody has
yet been stoned to death in Pakistan, though there have been floggings aplenty, and
President Zia hints that it will never come to that. But as the ageing, ailing Parwez
points out, “That is strange, because if this is an Islamic state and these are
Islamic laws, they must be enforced – whatever the consequences.”
… A
quotation by Hazrat Ali, the Fourth Caliph, son-in-law of the Holy Prophet, it said:
An
unIslamic government may last awhile, but tyranny cannot endure.
No comments:
Post a Comment