Time to scrap Council of Islamic Ideology

Ceding space to archaic ideologists is not what a progressive Pakistan needs

The CII comprises fossilised clerics trying to dictate to people living in 21st century. They continue the futile attempt to push the wheel of history backwards. While the performance of the Council since its inception has been uniformly dismal, under Shirani it has surpassed past records. The government spends millions on this outdated fixture. There is a need to seriously consider if the candle is worth the oil.

If one was to name those who have contributed to projecting a negative image of Pakistan, CII would stand high on the list. The Council has taken several retrogressive stands that indicate its primitive thinking.

Pakistan is a developing country visualised by Jinnah as a modern democratic state cherishing Islamic welfare ideals. It faces serious problems that it is trying to resolve. The CII only adds to difficulties in their resolution.

Population growth has to be controlled if Pakistan is to deliver on raising per capita GDP, and provide health and education facilities to citizens. Population control requires providing Pakistan’s female population with access to basic family planning services.

If one was to name those who have contributed to projecting a negative image of Pakistan, CII would stand high on the list. The Council has taken several retrogressive stands that indicate its primitive thinking.

The CCI is dead set against family planning. The clerics maintain it is un-Islamic and the family planning programme should be withdrawn. According to them the bigger the population, the greater the blessings of Allah! If someone asks who will feed the people, pat comes the reply, “the Almighty”.

Women need to work side by side with men to develop national economy and make Pakistan a prosperous country. This requires treating women as equal partners with full rights. To the clerics’ chagrin the equality between man and woman is enshrined in Pakistan’s constitution. They are ill at ease with constitutional provisions like ‘All citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law. There shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex alone. No citizen otherwise qualified for appointment in the service of Pakistan shall be discriminated against in respect of any such appointment on the ground only of sex… Steps shall be taken to ensure full participation of women in all spheres of national life’.

Violence against women is all too common in Pakistan and exists in a number of forms that include domestic violence, sexual abuse and harassment, acid attacks, honour killings, restricted freedom of movement to downright barring of women from casting their votes in the elections.

The husband, it is taken for granted, can torture his wife. The CII stonewalled the Domestic Violence Bill which was unanimously passed by National Assembly in 2010. The presumption was that if husbands were stopped from beating their wives they would take recourse to divorce thus pushing the divorce rate up.

To give an idea of the scale of the problem, in the city of Lahore alone, police registered 113 cases of rape from January 1 to August 31 last year. In the same period, police in the provincial capital of Punjab registered 32 gang-rape cases.

Excesses against women like these have never bothered the CII. The clerics look at women from a purely male chauvinistic angle. A wife is man’s property who he is supposed to have purchased. She is no more than a plaything for man. The CII is unhappy with the prevailing family laws which require a husband to seek the permission of his wife before acquiring a second, third or fourth wife. The CII has therefore declared family laws against the injunctions of Islam. The gift to Pakistani women from CII comes on the eve of the world-wide celebration of the International Women’s Day.

The husband, it is taken for granted, can torture his wife. The CII stonewalled the Domestic Violence Bill which was unanimously passed by National Assembly in 2010. The presumption was that if husbands were stopped from beating their wives they would take recourse to divorce thus pushing the divorce rate up.

The CII is deadly against women.

Excesses against women like these have never bothered the CII. The clerics look at women from a purely male chauvinistic angle. A wife is man’s property who he is supposed to have purchased. She is no more than a plaything for man.

The archaic mindset of the CII clerics opposes any relief to women who suffer from male domination, outmoded customs, traditions and injustices. In Pakistan rape, including gang rape, is a common way to take revenge or give vent to sadistic tendencies. It is by no means absent in the Western societies either, though its rate might not be as high as in the Islamic Republic. Modern science has provided a fool proof way to pinpoint the perpetrator in the form of the DNA test. The CII however rejects the DNA test as primary evidence in rape cases. It rejected the Women’s Protection Act of 2006, which provided relief to innocent victims of Zina Ordinance. The CII insists that the woman must produce four witnesses to prove she has been raped. Where will a house maid find four witnesses if subjected to humiliation and torture by master of the house in the absence of his family?

Child marriage is a curse all over South Asia. Girls are thus handed over to settle blood feuds, to pay off debts or to seek favours from the powerful. Jinnah was one of the leaders of the British India who fought against the custom. He said he would even stake, if necessary, his standing with his Mumbai electorate on the issue.

On Tuesday the CII declared that laws limiting the age of marriage for both the bride and groom were un-Islamic and should be rectified. According to Shirani, the “Nikah of even minors can be solemnised, but only with the consent of their guardians and ‘rukhsati’ can take place only after the minors attain puberty.”

In other words a girl child’s nikah can take place even at the age of four or five. This precludes the need to seek the girl’s consent. A young girl can be married off to a man double her age if her parents agree.

It doesn’t matter to CII clerics that Pakistan is signatory to international conventions barring child marriage. When asked if the CII ruling would violate international conventions signed by Pakistan, the officials said the conventions could not be violative of the Constitution or Islam and that some clauses did not apply to Pakistan.

The mischief done by the CII observations is that these feed and strengthen the extremist tendencies in society. Extremism in turn strengthens terrorism.

The CII is only an advisory body. Even the arch reactionary Ziaul Haq shrank back from enforcing some of its mindless rulings like the one against family planning. Such is the state of our politicians that the Women’s Protection Bill which was unanimously passed by the NA remained stuck up in a pusillanimous Senate. The bill was passed only after knocking out four crucial clauses as directed by the Federal Shariat Court, another outdated fixture.

As the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) had put it, the FSC verdict negated all positive initiatives taken by the government and took the nation back to square one. The commission appealed to the government to take a firm stand against this ‘retrogressive judgment’ which was only an attempt to use religion for political purposes. “In effect the Hudood Ordinance which had tormented and caused hundreds of innocent women to languish in jails and destroyed their social and family lives was being resurrected by the judgment.”

The mischief done by the CII observations is that these feed and strengthen the extremist tendencies in society. Extremism in turn strengthens terrorism.

It is time the PML-N government guard the Parliament’s turf from extraneous incursions. Unless it does so it is going to find its authority being seriously abridged. The Parliament has enough members who besides having a better knowledge of law and Sharia also keep their fingers on the pulse of the masses. They are best suited to interpret the injunctions of Sharia in line with the needs and aspirations of the people of Pakistan. There is a need to say good bye to the CII which over the years has acted as a hindrance in the development of society.