REPLY TO THOMAS JUSTIN KAZE

Submitted by Fazal Hbaib Curmally (Pakistan), Sep 27, 2006 at 01:25

Dear Thomas,

Greetings.

You have a right to believe an act as you choose in the matters of your belief. Emphasis is on the word your.

There is a flaw in the Hudood Ordinance of 1979. It was as I said an Ordinance and not legislated but merely legalised later. This law is is peculiar to Pakistan and in the present context as I am unaware of how this law is applied in other Islamic States. Today there are 5 such States that claim to use The Quran-e-Karim as their mainspring for law. These state are, in alphabetical order, Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania and Pakistan.These States claim to be Islamic Republics.

Just consider if you will.

First off, there is no dfferentiation between rape and Adultery in this piece of of a very badly thought out Law. One act is with consent whilst the other act is forced upon someone and is an act of violence. The Hudd as is described in the Quran-e-Karim, defines adultery and the punisment for it.There is no mention of a law for Rape in the Quran-e-Karim.Therefore it cannot be described as Hadd. Now the Hudood laws are not a complete set of laws and only very few conditions are dealt with in the Quran e Karim herefore, man made laws or laws that fall under Criminal laws apply. Now to impose the same requirements of witnesses for both the acts of rape and adultery, is a traversity. A woman being raped cannot have 4 witnesses to the act of rape. She can have four accessories to the crime because were she being raped and 4 witnesses saw the act and did not move to stop it, they became accessories to the act and not mere witnesses. This is a simple bit of common law.

Now, marriage in Islam is a civil contract. There is nothing holy about it. The act of adultery, a party to the contract has broken the contract they entered into and because of that the person is unworthy of his or her commitments and has harmed the other party therefore is punished.

Please don't mistake the Ulema for Islam. The Ulema are the learned in only one of the 5 schools of Islamic Law. The five schools ate the Hanafi, Sha'afi,Maliki , Hambali and the Jafa'afri or the Shia school of law. So no one legal school can claim to represent Islam. They represent their school of law only.

I am a Pakistani and the Constitution of my country insists that the only sources of Islamic law shall be the Quran-e-Karim and the Sunnah or the actions of the Prophet. The Hadith or the sayings of the Prophet are not accepted in their entirity by the 5 schools and they have hadiths that are peculiar to them.

I have explained a situation to you. I am not trying to do anything more than that or ask of a comman decency of not making fun or trying to degrade anothe person's belief. I trust the positio is clear.

With regards

Fazal Habib Curmally

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