Effect-of-qisas-and-diyat-laws-on-criminal-justice

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SHARED BY ZAFAR KHIZER

One out of every three murderers walks free after striking a deal because of Qisas and Diyat laws in Pakistan.No person has ever been convicted of the murder under qisas, according to the article below. Here is one story published by Economist in 2006.
“Your correspondent recently paid a visit there to a politician, Anwar Kamal Marwat, a florid gentleman of military bearing and parliamentary leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in the NWFP assembly. By chance, Mr Kamal had that evening returned from a distant jirga, or tribal council, involving several hundred elders from Pakistan and Afghanistan, representing several dozen Pushtun tribes and their constituent clans. The jirga had been convened to settle a blood-money claim against the Marwat tribe, which Mr Kamal leads, incurred in April 2004.

For several years previously, the Marwat had been feuding with their neighbours, the Bhattani, another small Pushtun tribe. The tit-for-tat offences were quite piffling, said Mr Kamal—a spot of thieving or kidnapping of fighting-age males. Then some Bhattani hotheads abducted two Marwat girls; and Mr Kamal went Pushtun-postal. Leading an army of 4,000 Marwat fighters, equipped with artillery, he levelled a Bhattani town, killing 80 people, including the two unlucky, but nonetheless dishonoured, girls. Neither the bloodletting, nor the jirga that followed it (which stung Mr Kamal and his tribe for $60,000), seem even to have been mentioned in the Pakistani press.”

3 thoughts on “Effect-of-qisas-and-diyat-laws-on-criminal-justice”

  1. The medieval state of mind that describes the actions of the likes of overlords like Kamal is a salient part of the problem that impacts the law and order situation. The system of justice is so riddled with inconsistencies between the dictates of the british raj and the hodgepode of Islamic precepts that nothing works. The regal sense of entitlement of people like Kamal Marwat is the closest thing to the law of the jungle. These men kill with impunity, declare what little life is worth in blood money and how the sense of misplaced honor is the catalyst for blood feuds with no compromise. It is the virus infecting the Muslim psyche that shatters reason and rationality to the point that the adversaries would much rather annihilate each other rather than compromise. This mindset is playing havoc on local, national and regional levels of the world of Islam for the forseeable future.

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  3. No powerful can go to jail after murdering anyone under Qisas law. And religious people cannot see anything wrong with a religious law. Church did not see it either for hundreds of years while they were burning scientists and people alive for just reading a scientific book. Thinker’s Forum should start a debate on it.

    http://dawn.com/news/1041780/pardon-for-shahzeb-killers-triggers-debate

    “Three passions, simple but overwhelming, should govern our lives:
    1- The longing for love, 2- The search for knowledge, and 3- Unbearable
    pity for the suffering of mankind.” Bertrand Russell

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