Top Imams Veto Chemical Castration for Rapists: It’s ‘Un-Islamic’
'body mandated to interpret and ensure all Pakistani laws are in line with Islam'
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Pakistan’s Islamic Council of Ideology has repealed the new anti-rape law clause, which allows convicted rapists to be punished by chemical castration.
Maleeka Bukhari, Pakistan’s parliamentary secretary on law, said:
“The Islamic Council of Ideology had objected to the punishment of chemical castration for rapists for being an un-Islamic practice, so we decided to remove it from the law."
According to the U.S. government-funded VOA, Pakistan’s Islamic Council of Ideology is “a constitutional advisory body mandated to interpret and ensure all Pakistani laws are in line with Islam."
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“It would have been unconstitutional to pass the law as all laws must be under the Sharia [Islamic law] and the Islamic holy book the Quran,” Bukhari noted on Friday according to Sputnik, a Russian state-owned news agency reported.
“Therefore, we can’t pass any law that goes against these values,” Bukhari added.
Neon Nettle reported:
The law went into effect on November 17 and included a provision for “faster trials of suspected sexual offenders."
According to the law:
"Chemical castration is a process duly notified by rules framed by the prime minister, whereby a person is rendered incapable of performing sexual intercourse for any period of his life, as may be determined by the court through administration of drugs which shall be conducted through a notified medical board.”
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“The prime minister’s remarks came amid a national outcry stemming from the September 2020 assault on a woman, who was dragged out of her car and raped by two men at gunpoint in front of her children, when her car was stalled on the side of the road,” VOA recalled on Friday.
The incident ignited an uproar, and the public demanded that Islamabad enforce stiffer penalties for sex offenders to deter rape.
“The way there is first degree, second degree, third-degree murder, this [rape] should be graded in the same way, and when there is first degree [rape], castrate them,” the prime minister told reporters at the time.
“Operate on them and make them unable to do this.”
“In Pakistan, at least 11 rape cases are reported daily with over 22,000 rape cases reported to police across the country in the last six years,” Asian News International (ANI) reported on October 18.
“Only 77 accused of the 22,000 cases were found to be convicted, and the conviction rate is sadly around 0.3 percent,” the Indian news agency observed.
Chemical castration involves using medication to reduce testosterone and has been used for pedophiles in Indonesia since 2016.
The same method has also been used on child rapists in Poland since 2006.
