The Law In The Islamic Republic Of Pakistan
The law of Pakistan is the law and legal system existing in The Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Pakistani law is based upon the legal system of British India; thus, ultimately on the common law of England and Wales. Pakistan as an Islamic Republic also has been influenced by sharia law. Upon the list of the dominion of Pakistan in 1947 the laws of the erstwhile British Raj remained in force. At no point in Pakistan’s legal history was there an intention to begin the statute book afresh.
During the region of General Muhammad Zia Ul Haq, elements of Islamic sharia law were incorporated into Pakistani law, leading to the institution of a Federal Shariat Court (FSC). In some Federally and Provincially Administered Tribal Areas [(FATA) and (PATA)], a system of law employing traditional methods persists at the local level, disputes are settled by a jirga, a council of tribal elders. The Penal Code incorporates a number of Islamic law(sharia) provisions. The judicial system encompasses several different court systems with overlapping and sometimes competing jurisdictions that reflects differences in civil, criminal and Islamic jurisprudence. The Federal Sharia’s bench of the Supreme Court serves as appellate courts for certain convictions in criminal court under the Hudood Ordinances; judges and attorneys in these courts must be Muslim.
The federal sharia’s court may overturn any legislation judged to be inconsistent with the tenets of Islam. On March 2005, however, the supreme chief justice ruled that the federal sharia court had no jurisdiction to review a decision by a provincial high court even of a federal sharia court have had initial appellate jurisdiction. The legal system is derived from English common law and is based on the much-amended 1973 constitution and Islamic law (sharia).
The supreme court, provincial high courts and other courts have jurisdiction over criminal and civil issues. The president appoints the supreme courts chief justice and formally approves other supreme court justices as well as provincial high court judges on the advice of the chief justice. The supreme court has original, appellate and advisory jurisdiction, and high courts have original and appellate jurisdiction. The federal Shariat court determines whether laws are consistent with Islamic injunctions special courts and tribunals here particular types of cases such as drugs, commerce, and terrorism. Pakistan’s penal court has limited jurisdictions in tribal areas, where laws largely derived from tribal customs.
Islam was the basis of the creations and the unification of a separate state, but it was not expected to serve as the model of the government Muhammad Ali Jinnah made his commitment to secularism in Pakistan clear in his inaugural address when he said, “You will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to the Hindus to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.”“The vision of the Muslim majority state in which religious minorities would share equally in its development was questioned shortly after independence.”
The debate continued into the 1990’s amid questions of the rights of Ahmadiyya’s (a small but influential sect considered by orthodox Muslims to be outside the pale of Islam), issuance of identity cards denoting religious affiliation, and government intervention in the personal practice of Islam. Laws passed in the 1980’s give the victim of a murder of other violence, or the victim’s heirs the right to inflict an equivalent harm. At the same there is a legal alternative in payment of blood money, which enables wealthy Pakistanis to avoid punishment by paying money. Under the law, only half of the amount must be paid if the victim is female.
