You too will perhaps not have the energy or the wherewithal to pursue the case for the years and decades it will take possibly to bring the culprit to justice. I wish I could hang the fellow here and now.'' And it was this desire for quick and assured justice that, he claimed, prompted him to introduce the Shariat Bill that would make Quran and Sunnah the supreme law and ensure speedy justice as in the time of Prophet Mohammad.

The parents of that child may have felt better for a moment. But their optimism would be momentary if they came to know the reality and the whole truth. Pakistan has toyed withShariat laws before. General Zia had tried to justify his autocratic rule in the name of seeking to establish Nizam-e-Mustafa.

The problem with Shariat laws is that they were devised in a different age and for a different people to solve a vastly different set of problems. The word `rape,' for instance, finds no mention at all in the Holy Quran. The concept of child-rape is totally alien to both the Quran and the Sunnah (sayings and conduct of the Prophet). Perhaps this heinous crime is a modern sickness. A rape did take place during the Prophet's time. He immediately got the rapist stoned to death, despite certain extenuating circumstances in his favour. The latter had himself confessed to the crime even though the woman had, in her confusion, wrongly accused someone else.

Such summary justice is no longer possible, certainly not in contemporary Pakistan. Pakistani society today bears no resemblance to the Muslim society led by the Prophet. Can you imagine someone, a rapist, in Pakistan coming forward tobe stoned to death to atone for his crime and save an innocent person wrongly meeting the same fate? Islam considers falsehood the mother of all crimes and the most heinous of all.

But can one find a Muslim in Pakistan who refrains from lying to honour his faith? It would be very difficult indeed to find a Pakistani Muslim believing his fellow Muslims to be truthful. If one cannot buy a police officer or judge who happens to be honest, one can buy any number of witnesses to prove any accusation against anyone, as long as one has the financial resources to do so. What the ordinary people of that country should understand is that a sick mind in power can misuse the best of laws to pursue its own nefarious games. A law can be only as good as its guardians.

Some of the Islamic laws are becoming obsolescent because the Muslims did not follow the Quranic methodology for keeping them consistent with contemporary requirements. It is not without reason that most Muslim societies including Pakistan have alreadyabandoned Islam's penal laws.

The spirit of Islamic law is, of course, universal. And it can still guide a society claiming to be Muslim in formulating its laws. But this society will have to take into account present-day conditions and requirements. If it does not, the result would not be different from what happened in General Zia's Pakistan. Women complaining of rape were themselves punished for adultery; for, though they could not prove rape (perhaps they did not have enough money to buy police officers, judges and witnesses), adultery was found to be inherent in their complaints. The Prophet must have been turning in his grave.