The CII’s latest

The ‘model’ Women’s Protection Bill proposed by the Council of Islamic Ideology – after it disapproved of two such bills introduced by the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments – is a mixture of proposals which are sensible but redundant, those which are unenforceable and many which are prima facie ridiculous. The CII came up with this bill after the KP government – under the ‘Naya Pakistan’ champions – agreed to the CII’s advice not to enact its own Women’s Protection Bill. The Punjab government, though, passed its own bill into law. The proposals ‘allowing’ women to own and pass on property or marry who they wish, banning ‘honour’ killings, permitting participation in politics and investigating acid attacks are entirely unobjectionable and unnecessary. That is because existing laws already give women – and everyone else – the right not to be murdered. It is also ironic that the first Muslim-majority country to elect a woman as the head of state would need a clarification that women can participate in politics. Then there are the proposed laws which should be rejected because they curtail women’s rights and are entirely unenforceable. They also include women having to breastfeed for two years, a notion which has no basis in science and would require the government to monitor child-rearing.

Easy though it is to laugh at so many of these proposals, there are some even sillier ideas floating around. The CII wants to allow husbands to ‘lightly’ beat their wives and presumably the very CII which has endorsed domestic violence will get to define how light a beating is permissible. The council would also ban women from receiving foreign officials and state guests – which would end up contradicting the other injunction that women can participate in politics. Co-education after primary schooling and not allowing female nurses to look after male patients are among the other dangerously silly ideas which would end up not protecting women so much as hurting them. The problem with the CII is that it is an archaic body whose idea of women’s rights is deeply patriarchal. We can be sure that parliament and the provincial assemblies, although hardly bastions of equality, will reject most of these proposals. But this CII document is emblematic of the problem the country faces. The reason women have so few rights is rooted in culture as much as law. Forced marriages, acid attacks and everyday harassment exist not because the law permits them but because enough people accept them and ignore the law. The CII, instead of trying to create new laws, should be a creating a new mindset. That, alas, would require this body, which has only one woman member, to be more representative of the country whose morality it wants to police.