Most of us would identify themselves as prolific social-media users, hence it would not be a long shot to assume that just about everyone in Pakistan knows about the Council of Islamic Ideology’s interpretation of a Women’s ‘Protection’ Bill.
A lot of notable stuff happened this week, ranging from the Smithsonian Museum returning Maori remains to New Zealand, to the fact that PEMRA actually banned contraceptive commercials for being against societal norms, so why does this specific news about CII’s proposed Bill has so much discourse around it? Well, simply because it has to do with the esoteric creatures that are women. It’s not really a matter of argument, the fact that women occupy most of the discussion in Islamic Counsels, because of how dangerous they are. People assume that the CII’s Women Protection Bill is simply a bill to protect women, but they are committing a grave mistake, the bill is actually to protect men from the vile influence of women.
Satire aside, why should the new bill be shot down? Well, I’ll get straight to the point and not beat about the bush here, Pakistan is a very conservative country, where matters of religion are often downright rejected by authorities. The fear that they may commit a mistake and be charged under the Blasphemy law, is enough to scare the authorities away from these realms. The Bill allows a man to ‘lightly’ beat his wife, if the circumstances require it. While the part where the bill allows the man to beat his wife goes against basic human rights that itself, its the fact that the man can now get away with domestic violence, by simply quoting the bill, and then saying that the ‘circumstances required it’, and all charges would be dropped by our über-efficient police force.
As Akbar S. Ahmed discusses in his open letter, the blasphemy law is often used for personal, vindictive purposes. Nothing has been put in place to prevent the same abuse being put to works by husbands on their wives. Domestic abuse is already a major problem in Pakistan, with somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of women being subjected to various forms of domestic abuse . In simple terms, like the blasphemy law, the CII’s Protection Bill will often be used by husbands as a way to legitimise domestic abuse, in domestic and legal settings, robbing women of a substantial legal leverage.
This discussion doesn’t even involve what the bill implies by ‘light beating’. While Maulana Sherani did clarify that light beating meant that no bones could be broken, it still will be abused. Interesting, being burned by a heated rod, or even stabbed results in no bones being broken, hence could be classified fair game under the proposed bill.
Another ignored point in the bill is the fact that a women cannot use contraceptives without her husband’s permission, effectively making a woman’s vagina and womb the property of the male that she has a civil union with. This is not helped by the fact that contraceptive commercials which could highlight the advantages of contraceptives have been banned by PEMRA. This could result in lower overall welfare for females.
It’s rather baffling why Islamic Councils are almost always concerned with women, as if this specific gender is the reason for all the woes of humanity. Be it the all-men Islamic Council that discussed Women’s Right, or the fact that a simple bill that brought Pakistan’s constitutions unto speed with that of the countries that also follow the International Human Rights convention received so much flak for given women too many rights. Perhaps we should split the country up into male and female majority wings. We can’t really subjugate Bangladesh anymore, so time to make do with what we got.
