KARACHI, Dec 10: A religio-political organisation has given a strike call for Dec 15 to protest against the Protection of Women Act, terming the law anti-Islam and a licence to promote obscenity and ‘sinful society’.

The Majlis Tahaffuz-i-Hudood Allah (MTHA) on Sunday launched its protest movement by holding a rally at the Sharea Quaideen and announced a countrywide mass-contact campaign to let people know how it “violates Islamic values and harms the Islamic identity of the country”.

The MTHA urged ulema and people to unite and foil attempts of secular elements against the Islamic ideology of the country.

Addressing participants of the rally, Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rehman said policies of President Gen Pervez Musharraf had failed, including his economic agenda as was evident from the State Bank’s report.

He said the policies of ‘foreign rulers’ had lost popular appeal in their own country, but were being followed by the Pakistani government.

He said only the US and the UK had lauded the government efforts to amend the Hudood Ordinance.

He alleged that the government, at the behest of western powers, had made the amendments which were against the Holy Quran and Sunnah.

He said President Gen Musharraf, following his political isolation, was trying to get attention of the US and was hoodwinking the West on the pretext of “religious extremism”.

The MMA leader said amendments to Hudood Allah could never be acceptable to the people of Pakistan and asked the West to hold direct talks with religious parties because the rulers had lost popular support.

Qari Mohammad Hanif Jalundhri, Prof Ghafoor Ahmad, Maulana Saleemullah, Dr Abdul Razzaq, Maulana Abdul Malik, Maulana Ajmal Qaderi, Mufti Zarwali Khan and Maulana Omar Sadiq also spoke at the rally.

Participants were holding banners inscribed with slogans “Amendments to Hudood Allah not acceptable”. They did not carry flags of any party.

A statement released at the end of the rally said the Hudood Ordinance had been amended under pressure from the West and warned the government that religious scholars and masses would resist any effort to implement the “western agenda”.