KARACHI, July 13: The Pakistan Peoples Party has rejected the Hasba Bill in the NWFP and termed it a full frontal attack on Pakistan as a moderate Muslim state. In a statement, released by the media cell at Bilawal House, Sherry Rehman MNA of the PPP, said the bill was a “concerted political confrontation by orthodox forces to challenge the essence of the Pakistani state as envisioned by its founder, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

“At no point was the state ever supposed to become a theocracy, which is what this push is about,” she said.

She adding that in such an arrangement, “Islamist rightists would gain ascendancy, and enforce an intolerant version of Islam where pious statements would mask a naked greed for power and arbitrary interference in the fundamental human rights of the individual and justice system of the state.”

The Hasba Bill, she emphasized, was in direct violation of the constitution, which provided very clearly in Article 20 for every citizen to have the freedom to profess, practice and propagate his/her religion.

The plan to impose a mohtasib or ombudsman, whose word was above all law, pointed to the totalitarian intent of the Hasba Bill, which would then seek to Talibanise the Pakistani society through a culture of repression and violence against women.

Instead of worrying about primary goals universal to humanity, the NWFP government had chosen to divert attention from its own failures in attaining any of these goals to embroil the Pakistani society in a pointless debate about hasba and virtue policing, said Ms Rehman.

The creation of a Hasba Police was not about enforcing Islam, as Pakistan was not just home to Sunni Muslims, but Shia Muslims as well as minorities, she said.

It was about assuming wide-ranging, controversial powers that were directly in contradiction not only with the spirit of Islam.