ISLAMABAD, Aug 21: A government bill seeking to protect women from misuse of Islamic Hudood laws met a tearing resistance from its bitter opponents on Monday when it was tabled in a chaotic National Assembly and later referred to an all-party select committee for scrutiny.

The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance of six Islamic parties rejected the bill as “un-Islamic”, vowing to resist it inside and outside parliament and many of its members tore up copies of the draft after it was introduced in the house by Law and Justice Minister Mohammad Wasi Zafar.

In a clear show of differences between the major opposition parties on the issue, the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) won approval of the ruling coalition for its proposal to refer the Criminal Law (Amendment) (Protection of Women) Bill to a larger select committee representing all parliamentary groups in the house rather than a usual standing committee.

The MMA staged a token walkout in protest after the house majority voted for the proposal along with the Pakistan Muslim League-N, while Pashtunkhawa Milli Awami Party chief Mahmood Khan Achakzai and PPP member Abdul Mujeeb Pirzada joined them to follow the unity pledge of a combined opposition committee drafting a no-confidence charge-sheet against prime minister Shaukat Aziz.

Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain asked all parties to give names of their two members each for the select committee by 9.30am on Tuesday before he adjourned the noisy proceedings that were also marked by angry exchanges between members on the two sides of the political divide and opposition calls for the prime minister to resign when he came to the house.

The bill seeks amendments in the Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance and the Offence of Qazf (Enforcement of Hadd) Ordinance of 1979 as well as the Pakistan Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Dissolution of Marriages Act of 1939 to provide what it calls “relief and protection to women against misuse and abuse of law and to prevent their exploitation”.

It says its objective is also to “bring in particular the law relating to zina (rape and adultery) and qazf (false allegation of zina) in conformity with the stated objectives of the constitution and the injunctions of Islam”.

The two hudood ordinances about zina and qazf are among the four decrees enforced in 1979 by then military ruler General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq as part of his controversial Islamisation programme — the other two being about theft and drinking.

The amending bill could not be introduced on Friday because the ruling coalition could not collect enough members to make a quorum of one-fourth, or 86 members, of the 342-seat house. But Monday’s sitting was unusually well-attended by both the ruling coalition and opposition parties, though it seemed it was the work of more than the normal parliamentary whip to collect so many members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and its allied parties.

“Go, go” and “resign, resign”, opposition members chanted as the prime minister entered the house in the early stages of the sitting when some opposition members had tabled identical privilege motions about what they called a wrong statement made in the house by a minister about a recent alleged detention of a woman journalist in Leyyah town of Punjab.

The select committee proposal came first from PPP secretary- general Raja Pervez Ashraf and was later endorsed by party chief Makhdoom Amin Fahim, who spoke between unusually angry exchanges between PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and opposition leader and MMA secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

The Maulana called the bill “contrary to Quran and Sunnah” as he announced its rejection by MMA which, he said, would resist the move inside and outside parliament and accused the PML chief of not keeping a promise to discuss the matter in a broad-based joint committee of ruling and opposition parties before bringing a bill to parliament.

Chaudhry Shujaat acknowledged his contact with the MMA leader and offered apologies for any lapse but assured the house that he would not support the draft if it were against the Quran and Sunnah though he would support it if it sought improvement in a man-made law.

Several ruling coalition members protested against the MMA Members’ action of tearing up the copies of the bill and throwing its pieces around the hall.

A statement of objects and reasons accompanying the 30- clause bill says that the primary object of amendments was to “make zina and qazf punishable only in accordance with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah, prevent exploitation, curb abuse of police powers and create a just and egalitarian society”.

It said while the offences of zina and qazf were mentioned in the Holy Quran, the two 1979 ordinance relating to them made a number of other act punishable although the Quran and Sunnah neither defined these offences nor prescribed any punishment for them.

“On no principle of qiyas can the punishments for zina and qazf or the procedure identified for their proof can be extended to these offences,” it said.

It said any offence not mentioned in the Quran and Sunnah or for which “punishment is not stated therein is Ta’zir which is subject to state legislation”. “Accordingly, all these offences have been removed from the two Hudood ordinances and inserted in their proper places in the...PPC,” it said.

The statement said no change had been made in the language of the statutory definition of any of these Ta’zir offences or the punishment for them, except the deletion of the punishment whipping.

It said the definition and punishment of rape was being incorporated in the PPC because there was no “hadd” for the offence of zina-bil-jabr (rape). “The gender neutral definition is being amended to clearly provide that rape is an offence committed by a man against a woman. As consent of the woman is a defence to the charge of rape, it is being provided that such consent would not be a defence if the woman is less than 16 years of age.”