CII rules women’s protection law ‘un-Islamic’

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Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) that advises the government on the compatibility of laws with Islam on Thursday declared a new law that criminalises violence against women to be “un-Islamic.”

The Women’s Protection Act, passed in Punjab Assembly last week, gives unprecedented legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence. It also calls for the creation of a toll-free abuse reporting hot line and the establishment of women’s shelters.

But since its passage in the assembly, many conservative clerics and religious leaders have denounced the new law as being in conflict with the Quran, as well as the constitution.

“The whole law is wrong,” Muhammad Khan Sherani, the head of CII said at a news conference, citing verses from the Quran to point out that the law was “un-Islamic.”

Maulana Shirani said that the Women Protection Bill of Punjab and KP assemblies was thoroughly discussed in the two-day session of CII and after studying all its articles the bill was termed against Islamic teachings and Constitution of the country.

He said that “Islam also faced difficulties in the past tenures of PML-N”. He deplored that its name is Muslim League but it works like non-Muslims. He said that constitutionally no assembly of the country could make a law which is against the basic principles of Islamic teachings.

The 54-year-old council is known for its controversial decisions. In the past it has ruled that DNA cannot be used as primary evidence in rape cases, and it supported a law that requires women alleging rape to get four male witnesses to testify in court before a case is heard.

The council’s decision this January to block a bill to impose harsher penalties for marrying off girls as young as eight or nine has angered human rights activists.

The new law establishes district-level panels to investigate reports of abuse, and mandates the use of GPS bracelets to keep track of offenders.

It also sets punishments of up to a year in jail for violators of court orders related to domestic violence, with that period rising to two years for repeat offenders.

Fazlur Rehman, the chief of one of Pakistan’s largest religious parties, the Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam, said the law was in conflict with both Islam and the constitution of Pakistan.

“This law makes a man insecure,” he told journalists. “This law is an attempt to make Pakistan a Western colony again.”

In 2013, more than 5,800 cases of violence against women were reported in Punjab alone, the province where Wednesday’s law was passed, 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.

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  1. Emotional Abuse can be categorized as a form of bullying. For all cases, emotional violence and its consequences are severe both for the perpetrator and the victim. What Is Emotional Abuse?
    Emotional abuse is a form of abuse which encompasses psychological or mental mistreatment of one person at the hands of another. Despite its serious and harmful nature, it is often under-reported and downplayed due to its subtle nature, and can include any sort of chronic behavior that causes mental distress or emotional trauma that jeopardizes the psychological well-being of another person.

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