A start

Oh my, I never thought I'd see the day when extremely religious countries take a step forward into modern day judicial systems.

Pakistan's lower house of parliament voted on Wednesday to amend the Hudood Ordinances, the country's religious-based laws that govern rape and vice.

Before, women who reported rape were compelled to produce four male witnesses to the crime or face charges that they had committed adultery. If the law passes the upper house, it will replace that burden of proof, deemed both virtually impossible and misogynistic, with standard evidentiary procedures.

Wednesday's vote was a chance for lawmakers to show that secular law trumps religious edict in Pakistan. But this small victory for secularism comes only a day after provincial legislators in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), a stronghold of conservatism, passed a bill establishing an Islamic accountability bureau - a kind of vice and virtue squad with analogies to the Taliban.

The bills passed this week promise to reheat the existential debate about what Pakistan stands for and how it projects itself to the world: whether it is driven by "enlightened moderation" or the tenets of religious conservatism.

I have always been offended by this one particular law. The others about stoning for adultery and lopping off of limbs for various sundry offences.... OK, those I can live with. But this old rape law? It gets my goat every single time. EVERY single time.

4 witnesses? All 4 must be male? There is NO WHERE on this planet you're going to find 4 male witnesses to a bloody rape.

Pakistan still have a long way to go pertaining to women's (and children's) basic rights and I doubt this new law has any actual teeth. But the fact that it was passed at all? In this backward and troubled country? Amazing. And hopeful.


More please. And soon.