New Pakistani rape laws anger Islamists

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan’s lower house of Parliament passed amendments to the country’s rape laws Wednesday, ditching the death penalty for extramarital sex and revising a clause on making victims produce four witnesses to prove rape cases.

Consensual sex outside marriage remains a crime punishable by five years in prison or a $165 fine, said a parliamentary official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

International and local calls for change intensified after the 2002 gang-rape of a woman, Mukhtar Mai, who was assaulted after a tribal council in her eastern Punjab village ordered the rape as punishment for her 13-year-old brother’s alleged affair with a woman of a higher caste.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf praised lawmakers for passage and urged the government-controlled Senate to approve the amendments within days. He also criticized Islamic fundamentalists for their “unnecessary” opposition and claims that his government was acting against Islam. “I have taken a firm decision to change these unjust rape laws as it was necessary to amend them to protect women,” Musharraf said in a televised address to the nation.

Islam The Religion Of Love and Peace? Bullshit.. Sounds more like the Religion of Organized Legal Rape.

“We reject it,” Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a top Islamist opposition leader, told reporters after the vote, which he described as a “dark day” in Pakistan’s parliamentary history. Rahman and other Islamists vowed to devise a strategy to block Senate passage of the bill. Islamic political groups have previously staged mass rallies to denounce moves by the military-led government deemed contrary to Islam.

They won’t rally against murder but they will rally against a change in the law that actually makes the woman a victim of rape as opposed to the instigator. Amazing..

Two Thumbs Up for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf although it would have been nice to see rape completely outlawed.