Word: hudood
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...expect that she'd be the one punished. But a judge in the ultraconservative Northwest Frontier province exonerated the man and last month convicted Zafran Bibi of adultery. Her sentence: death by public stoning. In Pakistan, victims of sex crimes are subject to harsh Islamic laws known as the Hudood ordinances. For a rapist to be found guilty, four adult male Muslims have to witness the crime, or the rapist must confess. If the court rules there was consent, the woman can be convicted of adultery, as Zafran Bibi was. Although no stoning sentence has ever been carried out, human...
President Pervez Musharraf says that he has no plans to do away with the Hudood laws. Tampering with them would enrage the religious conservatives. But two weeks ago, after Musharraf promised the death sentence would not be carried out, a Peshawar court temporarily suspended Zafran Bibi's death sentence and is considering her appeal. For human-rights activists, the reprieve doesn't go far enough. "As long as such laws are on the books, people will suffer," says Afrasiab Khattak, chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. --By Hannah Bloch
...Pakistan is sometimes a bizarre blend of the modern and the archaic, nowhere is the archaic more powerful than in the way the country's legal system treats women who accuse men of rape. The problem lies in the so-called Hudood ordinances, a series of Islamic decrees that are enforced in tandem with the country's secular legal system. Human rights activists say these laws blatantly discriminate against women. For a rapist to be convicted, for example, his crime has to be confirmed by four adult male Muslim eyewitnesses, or the rapist must confess. If the court rules that...
...Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has emphasized his commitment to women's rights, but his government hasn't tried to modify or scrap the Hudood ordinances, which were put in place more than 20 years ago by a previous military dictator, Zia ul-Haq. Human rights activists say the laws, and their abuse, help promote the very extremism that Musharraf is trying to fight in Pakistan. When Musharraf first learned of Zafran Bibi's case during a meeting with foreign reporters in Islamabad earlier this month, he was startled. "Is that the law? Now? I don't even know...
...Musharraf concedes that he has no plans to do away with the Hudood laws. Tampering with this code would enrage Pakistani religious conservatives, with whom Musharraf is engaged in a delicate dance of challenge and accommodation. "He cannot change it," says Malik Hamid Afridi, a former prosecutor in Kohat. "There is no force other than God. There is no change to the Koran. There are no amendments." But near the Kohat court, a prosecutor who reluctantly helped to convict Zafran Bibi disagrees. "Of course women suffer more because of our customs, because there is no freedom for women," he says...