ISLAMABAD (AFP) - As Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf tries to push through changes to Islamic rape laws, a groundbreaking television series has been credited for helping to open up the issue.
Muslim scholars, clerics and academics recently appeared on prime time debates broadcast by privately-run Geo Television to discuss whether or not such laws should be rooted in the Koran.
"This debate was a part of our commitment to make effective use of our channel to talk about issues which our society has long been banned from discussing" Geo's managing director Azhar Abbas told AFP.
On Monday Pakistani opposition lawmakers stormed out of parliament, shouted "Death to Musharraf" and tore up copies of a bill proposing amendments to the quarter-century-old "Hudood Ordinances."
"Hudood" means "limits" in Urdu.
Since Islamist military dictator Zia-ul-Haq introduced the strict laws in 1979, talk of repealing them has been virtually taboo in this conservative country and has highlighted the split between hardliners and liberals here.
The main law up for amendment is that women must produce four adult Muslim male witnesses to prove an act of rape. Women who fail to prove rape can be jailed or even sentenced to death for adultery.
Rights groups say the laws, which run parallel to Pakistan's British-inspired penal code, place an almost impossible burden of proof on female victims. Women are more unwilling to report rapes as a result.
Sparked by cases including that of Mukhtar Mai -- who was gang-raped on the orders of a tribal council in 2002 and later brought her attackers to justice -- Geo launched its show "Zara Sochieye" ("Just Think") in June.
Geo is one of dozens of TV stations to have mushroomed under recent media reforms introduced by military ruler Musharraf, many of which feature previously unheard of criticisms of the government and the establishment.
"Our aim was to educate the masses as to how the Hudood Ordinances were affecting the lives of women and common people," managing director Abbas said.
But not everyone was happy to see religious matters debated on TV.
Pakistan's hardline religious parties defend the laws as divine and accused Dubai-based Geo of furthering the agenda of western aid groups.
"We have learnt that Americans have paid hundred of thousands of dollars to Geo through NGOs to launch this media war on the Hudood Ordinances," said Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, vice president of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, an opposition alliance of six top religious parties.
The religious parties are highly influential in Pakistan -- particularly the northwest along the Afghan border -- despite receiving only a small proportion of votes in elections.
Geo's Abbas dismissed the charges of US funding as "ridiculous".
Meanwhile other Muslim leaders said Pakistan's so-called Islamic laws have little or nothing to do with Islam's teachings.
"Eighty-one out of the ordinance's 1101 clauses are not related in any way to the Koran and Sunnah (the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed)," said Muhammad Tufail Hashmi, a prominent religious scholar.
Musharraf, a key western ally, tried to overhaul the Hudood Ordinances soon after he took power in a bloodless coup in 1999 but he was stymied by the religious right.
In July he changed the law to effect the immediate release of all women prisoners held on bail in crimes other than murder, robbery and terrorism. Under the Hudood Laws, adultery was a non-bailable offence.
Figures are inconsistent and there is no central government tally, but officials say at least 1,300 women are in Pakistani jails, many of them held under the Islamic laws. More than 500 have been freed so far.
But Musharraf faces a tougher task to get parliament to back the latest amendments, which will reportedly remove the requirement for four witnesses for rape, and make it necessary to have four people testify to any alleged act of adultery.
Pakistan's conservatives have not admitted defeat yet in their campaign to keep the Hudood laws. "We will see what changes the government has proposed in the parliament and only then will we decide our course," hardliner Ahmed said.
Musharraf himself has in the past sparked his own controversy on the issue. Last year he was heavily criticized for saying that many Pakistani women thought that getting raped was an easy way to get a foreign visa.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060830/lf_afp/pakistanwomenjustice_060830141053