ISLAMABAD: The head of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CCI) has said that he is willing to review the country’s blasphemy laws that critics say are frequently misused and have led to the deaths of many, to decide if they are Islamic.

Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani, chairman of the CCI, told Reuters he was willing to reopen the debate and see whether sentences as harsh as the death penalty were fair.

“The government of Pakistan should officially, at the government level, refer the law on committing blasphemy to the Council of Islamic Ideology. There is a lot of difference of opinion among the clergy on this issue,” Maulana Sherani said in an interview at his office located near the Parliament House. “Then the council can seriously consider things and give its recommendation of whether it needs to stay the same or if it needs to be hardened or if it needs to be softened.”

Maulana Sherani, who has hit the headlines in recent weeks after the CCI obstructed a bill to deter child marriages, did not disclose his own position.

Blasphemy laws mandate the death penalty, although no sentence has been carried out. Critics say the law is abused in poor, rural areas by enemies falsely accusing others to settle personal scores.

Those acquitted in blasphemy cases have often been lynched.

Child marriage: In recent years, the council has ruled that DNA cannot be used as primary evidence in rape cases, and supported a law that requires woman alleging rape to get four male witnesses to testify in court before a case is heard.

The decision by the CCI’s members this month to block a bill to impose harsher penalties for marrying off girls as young as eight or nine has angered human rights activists.

Senators have since debated whether the council, in its current form, is right for the modern democratic Pakistan that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said his country must represent.

Maulana Sherani, a member of parliament representing the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl and head of the council since 2010, defended its recommendations, saying it was his job, as mandated by the constitution, to ensure the laws of the land were in line with Islam.

The council’s advice is not binding.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2016