Islamabad, 16 August (AKI/DAWN) - President Pervez Musharraf has directed the ministry of law to redraft the proposed amendments to the Hudood laws incorporating some proposals from coalition members. The directive was issued after a grand meeting of the ruling coalition chaired by the president. The Hudood Ordinance - passed under the dictatorship of the late General Zia-ul-Haq - means women could be sentenced to death if found guilty of having sex outside marriage. While religious hardliners seek to preserve what they see as divine rules, civil society and womens's organisations have struggled to pressure successive governments to repeal them.

The meeting decided to try to table the redrafted amendments during the ongoing National Assembly session.

President Musharraf is learnt to have impressed upon 180 parliamentarians and senators of the ruling coalition that the Hudood Ordinance could neither be repealed nor any law be allowed to be framed that was repugnant to Islamic injunctions.

The sources said that a majority of the participants deemed it wrong to punish a man or a woman just because a case was registered under the Hudood laws, adding that they wanted all people detained without sufficient proof to be released without any punishment.

Stressing the need for protecting women’s rights, the president said that it was incumbent upon the legislators to bring all laws into conformity with true Islamic teachings.

When a woman legislator of the ruling Pakistani Muslim League suggested repealing the Hudood Ordinance entirely, the president is reported to have said: “You need to use common sense.”

The president said that the main purpose of amending the Hudood laws was to protect women’s rights but laws repugnant to the teachings of the Holy Quran and Sunna could not be enacted.

The president said some articles of the Hudood ordinance were not in accordance with the true spirit of the Holy Quran and Sunna and there was general consensus among scholars of various schools of thought that they needed to be amended.

Sources quoted the president as saying that they were trying to “protect the rights of our mothers, sisters and daughters and we must not shirk away from safeguarding their judicial rights.