News:
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the patron-in-chief of the Pakistan People’s Party, on Saturday, 16th of February 2014, slammed the Taliban for trying to drag the country back to the “stone-age.” He said, “The Taliban want to impose the law of terror in the country, but I want to tell them, if you have to live in Pakistan you will have to follow its constitution”. [Indian Express, 18 February 2014]
Comment:
Since the start of the negotiations process between the Raheel-Nawaz regime and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, a strong discussion in the media has been started regarding the constitution of Pakistan, as to whether it is Islamic or un-Islamic. The government contacted leading Ulema to get their Fatawa’s that the 1973 Constitution is an Islamic constitution. Similarly almost every political party that calls for Islam, declared the 1973 constitution as Islamic. They even went a step forward and declared that Sharia is being implemented in Pakistan.
There is no doubt that the current constitution of 1973 is built on British India Act 1935 and The Indian Independence Act of 1947. After the creation of Pakistan, a discussion started in the legislative assembly as to how to make the constitution an Islamic one. This discussion resulted in the shape of Objective Resolution and it was made the part and parcel of the constitution. In this resolution, it was declared that sovereignty belongs to Allah, but in the very next sentence, the authority to legislate was handed over to parliament. So the constitution is rooted in man making law according to his whims and desires, not in the commands and prohibitions of Allah سبحانه وتعالى. The current constitution is for democracy and contradicts Islam and its state, the Khilafah.
Knowing the desire within the Muslims to fulfill the dream of their forefathers in establishing Pakistan for the sake of Islam, successive regimes have played lip service to Islam. Article 221 (1) was introduced stating that no law will be legislated which is contradictory to Islam, instead of stating that every law can only extracted from Quran and Sunnah. According to Article 228 an Islamic Ideology Council was formed which has to only recommend changes in the laws to make them Islamic. The council’s recommendations are not binding on the parliament. Therefore, since its inception, the council has submitted more than six thousand recommendations, but none have been passed by the parliament. Also, a Federal Shariah Court was established under article 203D (1) but it has been barred to hear constitutional petitions and its verdicts can be challenged in Supreme Court of Pakistan. The promulgation of the Federal Sharia court itself is an evidence that other courts are non-Shariah.
The people of Pakistan now know that the current constitution and the entire system established under its protection are not from Islam. They know that because under this constitution of democracy, Riba is Halal, concentration of wealth is increasing, obscenity and vulgarity is being promoted, cases linger on for years and even decades in the courts and even then justice is not delivered, the poor are taxed beyond that which they can bear, the public property of the Ummah is being privatized, sanctity of life and property are not guaranteed and Kafir Harbi countries are allowed to operate military bases, intelligence offices and embassies to spread their mischief.
Under this situation, Ummah only considers Islam as its refuge and the desire of establishing Islam is increasing day by day. It is the deception of the Kuffar and their agents that you can change hundreds of articles of the constitution and thousands of laws in order to make them Islamic, if you have the majority in the parliament. The need of the time is radical change, abolition of democracy and its constitution and the immediate implementation of Islam comprehensively and exclusively. And this can only happen with the establishment of Khilafah.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir by
Shahzad Shaikh
Deputy Spokesman of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Wilayah Pakistan