LAHORE: Jamaat-i-Islami chief Syed Munawar Hasan has said that nobody should be worried about the demand for enforcement of Sharia in the country because the 1973 Constitution already declares the holy Quran and the Sunnah as the supreme law of the land.

The issue of Sharia will form the core part of the ongoing talks between the government and the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), according to Mr Hasan.

“Look, there was no formal announcement by the Taliban about not accepting the Constitution or about the enforcement of Sharia in the country.

“An issue is being created on the basis of assumptions by those who don’t want to see the ongoing negotiations succeed. The media should play the role of a responsible segment of society and avoid giving space (and time) to those creating an issue on the basis of some assumptions,” he told Dawn on Saturday.

Earlier, while addressing a conference at Mansoora, his party’s headquarters, Mr Hasan said it had already been laid down in the Constitution that no law repugnant to the Quran and the Sunnah should be enforced in the country.

He said that Sharia was not something to be afraid of. The demands for its enforcement were neither new nor unconstitutional. “Sharia is simply the divine law for the guidance and betterment of humanity,” he remarked.

The Jamaat chief said those who got irritated each time Sharia was mentioned were in fact rejecting the Constitution. And those who were talking against ‘Mullahism’ and ‘Talibanisation’ were simply giving vent to their anger against Islam.

Had the rulers enforced the 1973 Constitution in letter and spirit, the country would have overcome its crises by now and realised its objectives, Mr Hasan said.

He was of the opinion that those who were accusing the TTP of violating the Constitution had themselves been violating it for the last 66 years in one form or the other.

“Those crying hoarse for democracy neither allowed democracy to flourish nor allowed the democratic institutions to be strengthened. The military dictators ridiculed both the Constitution and the judiciary,” he remarked.