04 January 2005	Tuesday	22 Ziqa'ad 1425

ISLAMABAD, Jan 3: People's Party Parliamentarians (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Khan Babar has submitted a private member's resolution in the Senate making a declaration that the punishments prescribed under the Hudood Ordinance 1979 for adultery are not Islamic.

The resolution states, "This House is of the view while Islam prescribes Hadd punishments for certain offences, the punishments prescribed under the Enforcement of Hudood (Punishment for Zina) Ordinance 1979, are unIslamic."

Talking to Dawn on Monday, Senator Babar said during the second PPP government of Benazir Bhutto a commission was set up to examine the laws, which were discriminatory against women and to make recommendations.

The commission, headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Aslam Nasir Zahid, finalized its report in 1997 after three years of deliberations and consultations with a cross section of the people and minute examination of the Hudood Ordinance, he said.

The commission recommended that the Hudood Ordinance be repealed, as they were neither Islamic nor in accordance with the Constitution. The PPP senator said the Hudood Ordinance were man made and not based on Quranic injunctions about Hadd.

However, he said, whenever objections were raised against the Ordinance promulgated by Gen Ziaul Haq, the extremist religious elements immediately accused its critics as western inspired wayward and as against Islam and Quran.

Mr Babar said sometime back when Justice (retired) Aslam Nasir Zahid and some religious scholars criticized the ordinance at a seminar in Islamabad, a religious party had warned the sponsoring NGO of dire consequences of tinkering with Islam and Islamic laws.