THE holy Quran is the supreme constitution and the source of all laws for Muslims all over the world. All our previous constitutions, including the much mutilated ones, assign sovereignty over the entire universe to Almighty Allah alone. And the people of Pakistan can exercise the authority within the limits prescribed by Him as a sacred trust.

Thus there is nothing to prevent the people and its representatives to exercise this trust for the greatest good of the greatest number. Change and renewal are the sine qua non for a civilization to grow and progress. A liberal interpretation justifying equal treatment of minorities, including women, falls within that ambit.

Unfortunately our bigoted and benighted approach has foreclosed all options of establishing a just, enlightened and egalitarian society, thereby inviting opprobrium of the West. Women have been relegated to the status of sub-humans by the regressive legislation imposed by General Ziaul Haq in the name of Islam, and continued afterwards for fear of offending the clergy.

The New York Times in its Op-Ed of November 27, 2002, by Thomas L. Friedman under the caption “Defusing the Holy Bomb” has highlighted the plight of the Muslims all over the world. In this article, President George W. Bush purports to address leaders of the Muslim world. In his words, all the problems afflicting the Muslims “have to do with the rise within your midst of a deeply intolerant strain of Islam....” He goes on to say, that the present situation of the Muslims “is a response to your failing states, squandered oil wealth, broken ideologies and generations of autocracy and illiteracy”.

The president advises the Muslim leaders that “the decent, but passive Muslim Centre must go to war against this harsh fundamentalism” instead of allowing the inevitability of a civilizational clash with horrendous consequences. Among the problems highlighted by him are “no faith will make rote memorization of ancient texts, separation of critical enquiry and dissent, subjugation of women and a servile deference to authority the recipe for anything other than civilizational decline”.

Friedman is not alone in condemnation of our mindset. It is time we took the criticism seriously. After all, we cannot design the world to order. Nor can we freeze ourselves in a time warp. Islam has no priesthood. The laws of inheritance and the value of their evidence negate the claim that women have better rights under Islam. Not only that, the claim to be one Ummah is far from a fact. We are divided among nation states. Even Arabs do not speak with one voice.

Resort to Shariah law is one such area, which evokes a negative response from the West, particularly the punishment like stoning to death. Without accomplishing much, such provisions offend against the sense of decency and justice of the West. Since these punishments are in actual fact not carried out, there is no wisdom in provoking the West into condemning our Shariah as a whole, and the Muslims.

Criminal law in Sharia falls under three separate categories: a) Hudood laws, known as Quranic offences; b) Qisas and Diyat, (the laws of homicide and hurt); and c) Ta’zir, (crimes punishable at the discretion of the judge).

Hadood Ordinance, including “The Offence of Zina” (rape) is one such piece of legislation, which cloaks brutality and requires a critical review. It was in 1979 that the military ruler Mohammad Ziaul Haq issued the ordinance, providing for punishment as ordained by the holy Quran under Hadd. This ordinance defined zina was as wilful sexual intercourse between two persons not validly married. Punishment prescribed for rape was stoning to death at a public place or punishment with whipping numbering 100 stripes at a public place and with such other punishments, including a sentence of death, as the court may deem fit.

The manner of stoning to death has also been prescribed in the ordinance. Such of the witnesses who deposed against the convict may start stoning him and, while stoning is being carried on, he may be shot dead, whereupon stoning and shooting shall be stopped.

The age for the punishment is 15 years or above. If the offender is not an adult he may be punished with imprisonment for a term extending to five years and also by awarding whipping not exceeding 30 stripes.

To prove an offence, confession would be enough. In the alternative, four Muslim adult male witnesses (female witnesses have been treated as incompetent or unreliable) must give evidence. In case any of the four witnesses resiles from the testimony, the offender will still be punished, but with only 30 stripes and minimum of four years imprisonment.

In our feudal society, largely rural, women are treated as no more than a property and are usually punished to humiliate their male relatives. The law provides an opportunity for the convoluted sick individuals of our society to place a woman in such a position that even if she is raped, she is left to face charges of adultery. It is impossible for a rape victim to find four male witnesses to testify that she was subjected to rape. Her willingness is assumed by the mere fact of her pregnancy.

Abuse of the ordinance in a society infested with feudal mindset is widespread. It is not unusual to persecute divorced wives or girls who refuse to accept the parent’s diktat. “Karo kari/siah kari” is used to justify murder of enemies as well as expendable female members of the family. Illiteracy, stark poverty and widespread corruption among the police and the magistrates make miscarriage of justice all but certain.

A staggering 70 per cent of the women prisoners in Pakistan are detained under the Hudood Ordinance, according to figures collected from various organizations. According to an earlier report of the Human Rights Commission (1993), around 75 to 80 per cent of all women prisoners faced charges under Hudood Ordinance. Suspects of Hadd offences are in most cases the poor and the illiterate. In Punjab alone out of 789 women prisoners, 387 were held under Zina Ordinance. Over the past two and a half decades, thousands have been sentenced under this ordinance, and many more are awaiting trial.

According to the Human Rights Commission, there were 717 reported cases of sexual violence in 1997 in Lahore alone; sixtyfive per cent of the victims were minor girls and 30 per cent were victims of gang-rape. According to this report, after every 12 hours four women were raped and one was gang-raped. The instance of rape increased three-fold in 1996 over the figure for 1995.

The female victim of rape is presumed to be guilty because pregnancy is proof enough. The first such case after the imposition of Hudood Ordinance was that of Fahmida who was a minor at that time. Another case was that of a minor Jehan Mira raped by two male relatives. She was herself sentenced to 100 lashes. Sahiwal’s Safia Bibi, unable to identify her rapist for being blind, was given a punishment of 30 lashes.

Then there was a recent case of Zafran Bibi of Kohat who was rescued from stoning to death as a result of national and international outcry. Nigeria is going through similar convulsions on account of a woman having been sentenced to death by stoning for having mothered a child out of wedlock.

Mukhtara Mai of Muzaffargarh (Meerwala), gang-raped by four tribals under ‘judicial’ retribution decreed by a tribal panchayat on June 22, 2002, is another case which would have attracted severe punishments for the victims under Hudood Law, had the case not received wide publicity both here and abroad. Jirgas or non-official courts routinely decide cases in rural areas and order execution, demolition of houses, expulsion from homes, stoning to death and the barter of girls through summary trials.

Meerwala is a village in Tehsil Jatoi, District Muzaffargarh in central Punjab. On June 22, 2002 a tribal jirga met and pronounced punishment of gang-rape by four persons on a 35-year-old woman named Mukhtara Bibi. She was taken to a nearby room when the assembly watched from the outside and four men went in and raped her and turned her out half naked. She suffered this fate because her accusers, belonging to a relatively more powerful tribe, suspected her 14-year-old brother, Abdul Shakoor, to have relations with one of their women, Salma. The punishment on Mukhtara Bibi was in addition to the punishment Abdul Shakoor received at the hands of the tribals who not only sodomized him but also cut him with knife and through the use of their influence had him jailed. Had the event not received wide publicity the criminals would have gone unpunished. Abdul Shakoor would still be in jail and Mukhtara Bibi condemned to eternal dolour and disgrace.

Human Rights organizations, including women’s organizations, have since raised a hue and cry against the Hudood Ordinance and its abuses. Since 1985, there have been a number of democratic as well as undemocratic governments and yet “the law” has not been repealed. All it requires is another ordinance by the present all-powerful ruler. After all, the ordinance is the embodiment of a general’s notion of Islamic law, which he promulgated without even involving various Ulema or circulating the draft. According to Dr. Faqir Hussain, former secretary of Pakistan Law Commission, it should have been repealed immediately. It has achieved nothing except bad name for the country.

But the courage required to undo the damage is circumscribed by expected fury of the clergy, and an insatiable desire to hang on to power for as long as possible. The good of the people is far from the minds of the rulers. It should not be difficult for an un-elected individual exercising absolute and untrammelled power over 140 million people of this country to undo the damage to half its population through an ordinance. The sheer number of ordinances issued lately for purely political purposes has put Wah Ordnance Factory to shame. Why not one more ordinance for a good cause?

E-mail:sshusain@hotmail.com

THE UNFPA’s State of the World Population 2002 released last week should give much food for thought to policy makers in Pakistan. The first eye-opening information it gives us is that Pakistan’s population stands at 148.7 million.

The national census four years ago had put the head count at 130.5 million. If we accept the 1998 data as authentic — it was the product of a massive and costly exercise — the demographic growth has been phenomenal. That is not all. According to the UNFPA projections, Pakistan will have a population of 344.2 million in the year 2050 and we will be the fourth most populous state in the world after India, China and the US, in that order. What is most worrying in this mass of figures is the very high population growth rate (2.5 per cent) which is higher than many other heavily populated countries such as India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and China.

So the moot point is why Pakistan’s family planning programme has been such a failure? True, it is now explicitly recognized that population growth is very closely linked to the economic and social progress of a nation. But this has to be accompanied with a visible effort in the family planning sector because the two are very closely interrelated. Large families, apart from other factors, hamper economic development.

The UNFPA report specifically identifies investment in health, education and gender equality as being vital to creating an impact on the fertility rate of a country. It has generally been observed that the higher the level of education of the people, especially women, the better their health status and the less the social prejudice against women, the smaller is their family size. The statistics quoted for Pakistan in all these areas are so dismal that it comes as no surprise that the total fertility rate (the average number of children that would be born to a woman in her reproductive years) is dismayingly high at 5.08.

Pakistan’s failure to educate its citizens 70 per cent of women and 41 per cent of men are illiterate and provide them a modicum of health care has resulted in not producing the “population effect” on economic growth. But one single factor which has had the most profound impact on the fertility rate is the low status of women in our society. This has been documented regularly in reports published by many international agencies and the data produced have not registered much of an improvement over the years.

By not empowering women and giving them the dignity that is due to them, the state and society have virtually ensured the failure of the family planning programme. It is difficult to quantify the esteem and value of women in social and economic terms — housework and the unpaid labour of women are not a component of the GNP while in economically productive employment women invariably receive lower wages.

But the UNFPA report, and the earlier one of the UNICEF’s State of the world’s children, 2002, give data which clearly establish the social prejudice against women. This is reflected in the wide gender gap in education, health and other areas of life which logically should not have been there if women had not been discriminated against.

How does the low esteem of women translate itself into high birth rates? It has been found, especially in those classes of society which are educationally deprived, that the family and social pressures on parents to produce sons are immense. Sons are not only a status symbol and are the flagbearers of the family name, they are also regarded as an economic insurance, especially in old age. Given these attitudes, it is not strange that the size of the family is determined by the sex of the children the mother produces and in which sequence. Hence, it is plain that the two-children family norm promoted by the Population Division will never be popular until the girl child gains widespread acceptance — even when she does not have a male sibling.

While this is an important element in the success or failure of the population programme, another aspect to be considered is the contraceptive delivery system. Without adequate contraceptive prevalence (only 20 per cent in Pakistan according to the UNFPA), it is not possible to service the needs of the people.

The fact is that considerable awareness has been created over the last few decades through information, education and communication strategies of the family planning projects. Today it is said that 97 per cent of men and women have considerable awareness about contraceptives and the importance of the small family norms. A very large number of them even want to plan their families but do not have access to any contraceptive services.

This unmet need in Pakistan is a testimony to the failure of the population programme. The problem is that these are issues which are not addressed earnestly and no solution is sought for the challenges they pose. Where solutions are available, they are not explored because vested interests vehemently oppose any change in strategy.

For instance, the UNFPA, under its previous executive director, Dr Nafis Sadiq, had strongly recommended the merger of the health and population set-ups because investments in reproductive health are regarded as crucial accompaniments of investments in disease control. It is believed that it is cost-effective and credible to have health care providers who enjoy public confidence to look after the reproductive health and contraceptive needs of their clients without any extra investment. For many years this idea was resisted tooth and nail by the powers that be in Islamabad.

Although the health policy announced in 2001 by the Musharraf government accepted in principle the rational approach proposed by the UNFPA, the service infrastructure and budget continue to be segregated.

Taking the broader picture one must ponder not just the consequences of this short-sighted approach to the population sector. It is more important to analyze the causes of this mindset. Some of the factors leading to a high population growth rate are pretty palpable notably, poverty, social backwardness, economic underdevelopment and low status of women. Each of these accentuates the others and collectively they make their impact on the population growth rate.

It is, however, interesting to note that the countries which are not doing too well in the population sector also lack political maturity and democratic institutions. This is not by sheer coincidence. The political will and commitment a government displays in promoting the social well-being (which would include family planning) of the people is directly linked to the fact of its political power base. If it is a democratic and representative government rooted in participatory traditions, it would be under popular pressure to adopt policies which promote social welfare and advancement of the citizens. Its dependence on popular votes in a democratic dispensation would make it impossible for it to overlook popular needs.

In undemocratic societies it suits the vested interests to perpetuate high population growth rate and the concomitant poverty. People mired in poverty with large families are so hopelessly trapped in the survival struggle that they have no time and energy to participate in political life. They cannot sustain movements which destabilize unpopular governments. In states with low literacy rates and poor education levels, governments can be exploitative and oppressive because the citizens lack the education and skills to challenge the government with a poor human rights record.

From the UNFPA’s report one can identify the high fertility rate countries as the ones which would never qualify as models of good governance. For instance, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Bhutan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and occupied Palestinian territories in this region have TFRs of more than five. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa also have high TFRs.

With all the socio-economic factors so closely interlinked in a vicious circle, a calculated effort is needed to break it. Whether the political government will have the time and commitment to attend to issues such as population growth, gender equality, education, health care, we will have to wait and see.

Since demography is so directly concerned with numbers and statistics, it should be pointed out here that practically all the data given by the UN agencies differ from what the government sources give out. Needless to say, the government paints a rosier picture. Some of the figures stated by the UNFPA are also believed to be too optimistic. For instance, the maternal mortality rate of 200 per 100,000 births as stated by the UNFPA is challenged by professionals in the field. Dr Sadiqa Jafari, the chairperson of the committee on maternal health, says that from her experience she finds the rate is actually much higher but is under-reported in the absence of any scientific system of data collection.