Govt may refer blasphemy laws to CII for review: Sherani

ISLAMABAD: Chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani on Thursday said he was willing to review the blasphemy laws that critics say are regularly misused leading to the death of hundreds.

In an interview with Reuters at his office, the Maulana said he was willing to reopen the debate and see whether sentences as harsh as death penalty were fair.“The Government of Pakistan should officially refer the law on committing blasphemy to the CII. There’s a lot of difference of opinion among the clergy on this issue,” Sherani said.

“Then the council can seriously consider things and give its recommendation of whether it needs to stay the same or if it needs to be hardened or if it needs to be softened,” he said.Donning traditional black robe, Sherani, who had hit the headlines in recent weeks after his council obstructed a bill to deter child marriages, did not disclose his own position.

Sherani, a member of parliament representing Pakistan’s largest Islamist party, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, for some embodies Pakistan’s struggle to balance modern, democratic ideals with pleasing conservative religious bodies demanding the imposition of strict Islamic law.

In recent years, his 54-year-old council has ruled that DNA cannot be used as primary evidence in rape cases and supported a law that requires a woman alleging rape to get four male witnesses to testify in court before a case is heard. His members’ decision this month to block a bill to impose harsher penalties for marrying off girls as young as eight or nine has angered human rights activists.

Senators have since debated whether the council, in its current form, is right for the modern democratic Pakistan that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said his country must represent.Sherani, head of the council since 2010, defended its recommendations, saying it was his job, as mandated by the Constitution, to ensure the laws of the land were in line with Islam. The council’s advice is not binding.

“The state should only be concerned up until a point with the question of marriage,” he said. “After reaching the age of maturity (puberty) the child has the right to reject a union.”Sherani said there were many un-Islamic laws on the statute book that he was advising the government to overturn, including presidential pardons for a murderer.

Many of Pakistan’s problems, including violence against religious minorities, were the result of the government failing to be sufficiently Islamic and instead pandering to the West, he said.“The present government is a defender of the interests of the West,” Sherani said. “Don’t equate what the government thinks to what Islam is.”