MMA would never let the government to pass Women Protection Bill: Hussain Ahmed

[Awesome]

ISLAMABAD: MMA central leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmad has reiterated that Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) would never let the government to pass Women Protection Bill (WPB) in the Parliament.

He observed this while talking to Online here Sunday.

He said that MMA would protest over Bajaur and Dargai incidents in the NA session today (Monday) while MMA has already submitted privilege motion against Sher Afgan Niazi over his statement for calling the parliamentarians uncivilised.

He reiterated that MMA would not let the government to pass the select committee Women Protection Bill (WPB) in the parliament.

http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?159764

 

[Bull]

Ok he says he wont let it pass.But why? whats the reason he states for voting against it.

 

[Awesome]

They say its against the Islamic limitations of Zina. But right now the amendment does not even repeal the law, it amends it to provide relief for actual, real victims of rape.

Islam makes a clear distinction between Zina-bil-raza (consentual) and Zina-bil-Jabr (forced). To prove Zina Bil Jabr we need 4 pious men as witnesses. This is being removed in the amendment and plus there will be an option to try the case under Islamic or Civil law.

 

[Spring Onion]

The Bill has been passed with heavy majority so no need to take pain

hurraaaaaaaah

 

[sparten]

Jana, the rest of the country got a bone to pick with the frontier. Why on God's green earth did you guys vote for them. Peshawaris, the coolest people in Pakistan, they voted MMA.

 

[Contrarian]

The Bill has been passed with heavy majority so no need to take pain

hurraaaaaaaah

cheers!

though i believe a modified version was passed to appeal both sides.

What was demanded by the public was not passed in its entirety.

 

[sparten]

The bill is in essesnce the same.

 

[niaz]

Any sane and rational person will agree that the Hudood Ordinance as passed by Zia had done great injustice to women. What is suprising is the stance of JI under Qazi Hussein Ahmad. Is this the same party that was started by Maulana Maudoodi?. I flirted with it during my student days as one of my close friends from Bhera was an active member. I still remember the saying that Islam has beard but beard doesnt have Islam and found the Maulana, whom I had the honour of meeting in person, to be a great scholar and a very reasonable and rational human being.

Regret to say the Qazi Sahib in particular and MMA in general are making an issue out of nothing. Isnt it against the spirit of Islam and justice to let the guilty party scot free because 4 witness are not availbale but punish the victim because she has admitted a sexual act. Isnt this against 'Adl', mentioned so often in the holy Quran? How is Islam being compromised if you punish the guilty under the penal code when the case can be proven by DNA and other circumstanceial evidence but 4 witnesses are not available.

In my opinion the MMA and their followers are just a bunch of ignorant village mullahs who insist on living in dark ages and and willing to fight any one not agreeing to their interpretaion of Islam. These are the people who have given a bad name to Islam and indirectly acting as agents of the non Islamic forces.

 

[Lahori paa jee]

MMA is working for the establishment. This Maulana Fazl ur Rehman is a GHQ's man and he has never let his masters down, be it the 17th amendment, NWFP/Baluchistan governments, Prime Ministers impeachment, bugti's murder and now WPB.

Maulana is enjoying coalition governments in one province and complete rule in NWFP. Running with the hair and hunting with the hound seems maulana is best at.

On 17th amendment, any fool would have guessed Mushy wont give up uniform once the time comes. How innocent these Maulvis pretended to be.

Now that WPB has been passes, Maulvi's bluff has been called. But Maulana is still reluctant to let his masters down.

I don't know if any of you has seen Maulana Fazl ur Rehmans motorcade. Being the leader of opposition he has same privileges as the Prime Minister

Read this article by Ayaz Amir

Alas, holy bluff called

THE Women’s Protection Bill, now passed by the National Assembly, brings about some badly-needed changes in the Hudood laws, one of Gen Ziaul Haq’s many poisoned gifts to the nation.

For example, it proposes to treat adultery, something which exercises an extraordinary hold on the Muslim imagination, as an offence under the penal code rather than under so-called Islamic law. Although conservative sections of opinion would strongly disagree, it is a step in the right direction.

The politics of this bill, however, is more important than any substance it contains. The clerical fathers gathered in that most prominent monument to national hypocrisy, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), had threatened to quit the assemblies if this bill was passed. Well, the National Assembly has passed it and so will the Senate in due course. But, lo and behold, although the holy fathers have angry looks on their faces — they could give lessons in acting to professional actors — they haven’t left the assemblies.

Nor, count on it, will they do so. Part of this system, they know which side their bread is buttered.

Past masters at bluff, the maulvis of the MMA have had their bluff called this time. Their threat to resign from the assemblies, delivered in all seriousness, was not taken seriously enough, the bill was pushed through and although the emancipation of Pakistani womanhood is not about to happen tomorrow — it will take more than minor changes in the law to bring that about — the maulanas are left looking sheepish and shifty. For this reason alone the passage of this bill needs not only to be welcomed but celebrated.

Pakistan’s ruling general — fourth in a line of saviours the nation could have done without — was quick to slip into celebratory mode, in a TV and radio speech hailing the passage of the bill as “historic” and vowing to do more for women’s rights. It has taken him seven years to bring about the modest progress enshrined in this bill. How many more years before he takes another step in the same direction?

Indeed, Pakistan’s holy fathers are not the only ones great at bluster. The caudillo too falls in much the same category, his ‘liberal’ rhetoric far outstretching his ability to actually deliver anything. Given all the frantic and extended talk about ‘enlightened moderation’ we have been hearing since the great conversion after Sept 11, the whole of the Hudood ordinance, the poisoned chalice Gen Zia gave Pakistan, should have been repealed by now.

But afraid of arousing mullah ire, this was never attempted. Indeed, in his celebratory address after the passage of the Women’s Bill Musharraf labelled those calling for the wholesale repeal of the Hudood ordinance as extremists of another kind — liberal extremists. Hmm, strange logic, to say the least.

The Hudood ordinance was passed in February 1979 (and I say this not lightly) to suck up to Saudi Arabia. This was two months or so before Mr Bhutto’s hanging when Gen Zia found himself isolated and treated almost like a pariah on the international stage.

In truth, Zia did nothing for Islam, everything to keep himself in power, for this purpose putting Islam to the service of hypocrisy. A lifetime has passed since Zia departed from the national stage. Why must the Pakistani nation still put up with the chicanery-in-the-name-of-faith he left behind as his most enduring legacy?

He was the father of Afghan ‘jihad’, say his admirers. Well, we could have done without that jihad because it did us more harm than good. Even if this argument is discounted, how is it possible to ignore the divide between the foot-soldiers of that jihad who passionately believed in their cause and those generals and senior army officers who made themselves fat and rich on its proceeds?

No general sent his offspring for that jihad. Indeed, it is not a little remarkable that the progeny of its leading champions sit comfortably in the cabinet of ‘enlightened moderation’. (Javed Chaudhry’s column on this subject a few days ago in the Express was very good.)

There is something else to celebrate in the Women’s Bill as well: the all too visible discomfiture of the ruling party president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, whose heart and instincts were with the maulanas but who, bowing to necessity and pragmatism, swallowed his scruples and went along with the bill when the caudillo made it clear that it had to be passed.

Our present democracy is Army House-centric and when a decision is taken there, the ragtag bishops, knights and horses who make up the caudillo’s party, the Q League — the civilian front of this quasi-military government — are quick to fall in line.

This is the first rebuff or reverse — I would hesitate to call it defeat — which wily Shujaat has suffered in a long time. When the religious column in passports was to be deleted he insisted it be kept and, despite Gen Musharraf’s discomfort, had his way. Not this time and it showed in his face when the ayes had it and the bill was passed.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, however, looked quite pleased with himself. A look of triumph? I wouldn’t go so far because he keeps his feelings in check. But in the snake pit which is Islamabad — a city dedicated to nothing so much as intrigue and backstabbing — a minus for Shujaat is automatically a plus for Shaukat.

Not that they are at daggers drawn with each other, Shaukat too smart, and Shujaat too clever, for anything so obvious. But is it too much to imagine that Shaukat, instead of being beholden to Shujaat who helped him get elected from Attock, would like to be his own man? Such is the nature of power.

Under-estimated by many when chosen prime minister — prime ministers in the Musharraf dispensation being chosen not elected — Shaukat is cool and unflappable with a sharp sense of humour. Not a person to be taken lightly. Pretenders to the second position in the republic — and there are a few, ask Humayun Akhtar, ask his cousin Jahangir Tareen — beware.

I once called him “wooden” which he probably still is in public, the public arena not being his forte. But in private, it’s a different story.

Far be it from me to announce the eclipse of Shujaat and his cousin Pervaiz Elahi, the Punjab chief minister. But they are at the zenith of their relevance and glory. From now on it can only be the same plateau or, chillingly, downhill.

Everyone has a time and place. Consider the actual coup-makers who fended for Musharraf when his plane was still in the air and confusion reigned supreme on the ground. Where are generals Aziz, Mahmood, Usmani today? Gone, all gone, into obscurity if not outright oblivion.

The Chaudries are not more important than them, nor more important than the Taliban who were ditched the moment it suited the horse riders of Islamabad. The Chaudries (to echo Othello) have done Musharraf some service and will still have their uses as we swing into election year and the caudillo pursues the goal —about which there can be no compromise — of getting himself ‘elected’ president in uniform for another five years. But they would be foolish to think they are indispensable. No one is.

As for the maulanas, they have received the comeuppance they deserve. It has been a long time in coming but better late than never. On the Frontier skyline — thanks again to the follies associated with uniformed rule — we face other dangers: not least a homegrown version of Talibanisation. It will need all our collective vision and courage to meet this danger, but let us at least recognise the phenomenon for the ominous thing it is.

Tailpiece: Stalin said, “The people who cast the votes do not decide an election, the people who count the votes do.” We have seen this principle at work in our various referendums — Zia’s in 1984, Musharraf’s in 2002 — when vote-counting was more decisive than vote-casting.

Might the same principle have been at work in the recent Supreme Court Bar Association election? The day of the polling Muneer Malik emerged as the winner. A few days later when the outgoing president, the redoubtable Malik Qayyum, ordered a recount and did the counting himself, Muneer had lost and his rival Raja Haq Nawaz had won. The matter is now before the Supreme Court. With his sharp eye and keen sense of humour, My Lord the Chief Justice is sure to appreciate Stalin’s wit. A pity if the bar is divided and unable to speak with one voice as national elections approach and the nation has to make sense of the tricks that come with a Pakistani election.

 

[araz]

I have no sympathy with these Pseudo islamists like Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who is a self serving and devious liar. All that he and his clan can think off is how to create trouble and rift for their political gains. He goes and sucks up to the American Ambassador one day and slams them in public the other( and admits to the Ambassador that his statement was for public consumption only). The sooner we are rid of these thieving Mullahs the better. May Allah protect us from all evil, Bearded and otherwise! Amen.
Back to the topic after a good rant!!!!! the important thing to understand is that the Hudood Ordinance has been a source of great injustice to women of Pakistan.I think Allah,s SWT laws are designed for the greater good of Mankind, however the way this Law was originally drafted was grossly misused.as such everybody should have made an effort to understand where things went wrong and try and rectify the problems.Whereas I think Allah,s SWT Laws should be implemented in all Islamic states, people should try and ensure that they are not subjected to misuse. As such there was a dire need to reasses the situation. Iam glad this has been done. However, Islamic Laws should be the remit of Theologians and not the Parliament, therefore I hope, Musharraf will have the sense to refer this to the Islamic Ideological council and take their advice on the matter.
WA Salam
Araz