New rules for an old game

Lawyers say that the name of religion is being used for a practice that is largely tribal in nature. 8220;They are using Islam but thepractice prevails only in tribal areas,8221; said a lawyer in Islamabad, where the case is being heard. Another area of concern is the issue of consent for marriage.

Religious and tribal leaders argue that consent of the woman is not required for marriage; that a male guardian8217;s her wali8217;s nod will do just fine.Commenting on the issue in The News, a leading English language daily, religious leader Maulana Yusuf Ludhianvi says: 8220;If the nikah marriage contract of an immature girl has been conducted under the supervision of her father, she has no right to cancel it. The same law applies to a nikah arranged by her grandfather.8221;

This thorny issue was laid bare in 1997 in the famous Saima Waheed case. In March 1997, the Lahore High Court allowed Saima Waheed to marry the man of her choice, turning down her father8217;s plea which said matter could only be settled through a wali.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan had then pointed out that while one judge was in favour and another judge against, the thirdjudge in the three member bench gave a decision in favour of Saima Waheed 8220;but with his reservations.8221;

The judge then said that while, as per Pakistan8217;s family laws, he was bound to allow Waheed to marry as she wished, he had reservations about women using this option, as it bred 8220;permissive behaviour in society.8221; With increasing politicisation of the judiciary, human rights activists feel that the family laws may also face changes in the years to come. A study of the judiciary on the basis of judgements given in the past ten years shows that it is becoming more conservative in its approach, says Zohra Yusuf, secretary general of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Yusuf says religious organisations are also attacking the right of women to divorce their husbands. This week8217;s case of Samia Sarwar, a 29-year-old mother of two who was shot dead in Lahore for seeking a divorce, is a case in point.

Sarwar, who was from Peshawar, comes from an educated middle-class family. Her mother is agynaecologist, her father an industrialist. And yet, she was killed, in the presence of her mother, with the consent of her father, for tainting the family8217;s honour.

The reaction has been predictable: religious organisations have published advertisements in local papers sponsored by leading Peshawar industrialists in which the Human Rights Commission has been attacked for violating the honour of the Sarwar family by having provided legal assistance to Samia Sarwar.

In the midst of all this is the disturbing apathy on the part of the Nawaz Sharif government. The government allowed the father of Riffat Afridi, the Pathan girl from Karachi who married out of her community, to be released on bail within days of his attack.

In another case, the government looked the other way when a member of the Punjab provincial assembly and Sharif8217;s PML-N party had his daughter kidnapped from a Karachi shelter home for marrying against the family will. It was the intervention of the Lahore High Court which led to therelease of the woman and her husband.