PESHAWAR, Pakistan, 16 July 2005 — Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf yesterday asked the country’s Supreme Court to rule on whether a Taleban-style law is constitutional, officials said.
Musharraf interceded after the Islamist-ruled regional legislature in North West Frontier Province passed Thursday a bill enforcing strict adherence to Islamic teachings.
The court said Musharraf had asked the court to decide whether the so-called Hisbah, or accountability bill, was “unconstitutionally overboard and vague and suffers from excessive delegation.” “The Supreme Court of Pakistan has issued notices to the government of North West Frontier Province and secretary of the provincial assembly to appear and assist the court,” Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan told reporters.
Under the legislation a watchdog will be set up with sweeping powers to reform society in accordance with “Islamic values” and enforce the observance of such values in public places.
Critics say the ombudsman is similar to the Taleban regime’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
Provincial Law Minister Malik Zafar Azam said the assembly would stand up for the new legislation. “We will strongly defend the law in the Supreme Court,” he said in the northwestern city of Peshawar, where hard-line legislators yesterday distributed sweets to celebrate what they said “victory against secular forces.”
Gen. Musharraf severed his country’s links with the ultraconservative Taleban in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and has led a campaign against religious extremism in Pakistan.
The central government has been opposing the bill since it was introduced earlier this month. The bill was brought in by an alliance of Islamic parties which withdrew support for Musharraf in December 2004 when he refused to shed his dual military-civilian role.
The religious alliance swept to power in October 2002 on a wave of anti-Western resentment over the toppling of the Taleban and promised to enforce Islamic law.
It has already banned men from training or watching women athletes and ordered civil servants to pray five times a day.
Also yesterday, Musharraf launched a new campaign against extremism in the country following last week’s London attacks, in which three of the four suicide bombers were ethnic Pakistani Britons.
The president told an unprecedented gathering of some 200 senior police officers from all over Pakistan that they must remove hate material including booklets, pamphlets and computer disks from local markets.
“You must ensure that this material is not available in markets, at the latest by December this year,” he said, according to an official statement.
He also asked the police to crack down on militants outfits who were trying to resurface under new names after he banned most of them since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
He said the government would not allow any militant organization to collect donations in any form or to address public meetings.
Musharraf said the new measures should not be seen as anti-religion but were meant to curb the “extremist minority” harming Pakistan’s interest and tarnishing the image of Islam.
