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| India-Pakistan |
| Govt accuses clerics of backtracking on women's bill |
| 2006-11-22 |
| The government on Tuesday accused a group of religious scholars who reviewed the Protection of Women Bill prior to its passage through the National Assembly of backtracking from a signed statement that the bill was not against the principles of Islam. “I have a signed statement of the ulema, who said that principally there was nothing in the bill against the injunctions of Islam,” said Senator Tariq Azeem, minister of state for information, at a seminar organised by the Communicators Foundation to discuss the bill. Brandishing a copy of the signed statement, Azeem said that the ulema, who discussed the bill for eight days, had concluded that the bill was not un-Islamic. They had proposed some amendments to the bill to eliminate other discriminatory customs against women. He said Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) president, moved another bill in the National Assembly (NA) to include all those recommendations. |
| Posted by:Fred |