Tahir Wasti asks some interesting questions in an analysis of the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation in today’s DAWN.

According to the 1973 Constitution, as it was originally drafted, to legislate law in consonance with the Quran and Sunnah is the task assigned to parliament. Even when Zia amended the constitution and established the federal sharia court (FSC) and granted it the power to examine laws on the touchstone of the Quran and Sunnah (Article 203D), the FSC was bound to refer the matter to the president to make amendments in case the court found any law or its provision repugnant to the injunctions of Islam.

The FSC is not empowered to make law and proclaim that this law will now be applicable. In the absence of such a provision, when qazis will declare any law un-Islamic, they will also assert what the Islamic law is. Then, their version of Islamic law will begin to apply.

To pass on this burden of legislation to qazis is delegating their responsibility to individuals who will enforce their personal interpretation of Sharia on others. It is beyond comprehension as to how and on what basis the parliament can pass on its role of legislation to another body of the state, more so when the authority is passed to individuals, who have neither technical education nor the experience of dispensation of justice, keeping in view the fundamental human rights enshrined in our constitution.

Anyone who has not been educated about the Pakistani constitution and various other fundamental procedural statutes and their principles cannot dispense justice that is in consonance with our basic law and the treaties that Pakistan has signed in the UN. Sharia under Section 2 (j) of this Regulation means: ‘the injunctions in Islam as laid down in Quran, Sunnah, ijma and qiyas’. Now what are these injunctions? Where is codification of these injunctions? Most lay Muslims believe that whatever law, ritual and custom they practise in their everyday life, including wife-beating, killing in the name of honour, depriving women of higher education, are based on these four sources of law.

Read the rest here.