by Saleem Rizvi
No matter how powerful and compelling the arguments may be, in the face of a predetermined and/or preconcluded decision, the outcome would remain the same; the outrageous slaughter of justice at the hands of its guardians. The notion of letting the strongest decide who shall survive raises many problems. Instead of using legal jargon, I thought a literary touch to this discussion may help enlighten souls better. The moral of the story implicitly covers the ongoing off-going deal making discussions between Benazir and Musharraf and its possible potential outcome. Consider the treatment of the problem offered by Don Marquis in Archy and Mehitabel 40-42 (1973):
A Spider and a Fly
I heard a spider and a fly arguing.
“wait” said the fly “do not eat me. I serve a great purpose in the world”
“you will have to show me” said the spider
“I scurry around gutters and sewers and garbage cans, said the fly and gather up the germs of typhoid influenza and pneumonia on my feet and wings then I carry these germs into the household of men and give them diseases all the people who have lived the right sort of life recover from the diseases and the old soaks who have weakened their systems with liquor and iniquity succumb it is my mission to help rid the world of these wicked persons I am a vessel of righteousness scattering seeds of justice and serving the noblest uses.”
“It is true” said the spider, “you are more useful in a plodding material sort of way than i am but I do not serve the utilitarian deities. I serve the Gods of beauty. Look at the gossamer webs. I weave they float in the sun like filaments of song if you get what i mean. I do not work at anything. I play all the time. I am busy with the stuff of enchantment and the materials of fairyland. My works transcend utility. I am the artist a Creator and a demi God. It is ridiculous to suppose that I should be denied the food I need in order to continue to create beauty. I tell you plainly mister fly it is all damned nonsense for that food to rear up on its hind legs and say it should not be eaten.”
“You have convinced me” said the fly, “Say no more” and shutting all his eyes he prepared himself of dinner and yet he said “I could have made out a case for myself too if I had had a better line of talk.”
“Of course you could have” said the spider clutching a sirloin from him, “but the end would have been just the same if neither of us had spoken at all.”
I am afraid that what the spider said is true and it gives me to think furiously upon the futility of literature.
Crl.P.325/2008
(Bail Matters / Before Arrest) (SJ)
Muhammad Akbar & others Vs. The State
Mr. Ejaz Muhammad Khan
Sh. Muhammad Naeem
This matter is before the Court presently. And it is about another crazy judicial device used in Pakistan by the rich and the powerful, unless they have some reall hell to pay.
The device, “bail before arrest”.
A pocket veto that the rich and the powerful acquire so that they even do not even get to “get arrested”.
The judicary in Pakistan has knowingly allowed this device and other relics of the past era to manipulate the outcome. The purpose, to deny justice, to deny justice to deny justice.
Did I say it enough times?
Not enough!
The son of doctrine of necessity is “short order of judgement” commonly used in the higher courts in Pakistan when there is no obvious emergent appeal before the court. If no emergency exists to pronounce the judgement; no reason exists to give a two sentence judgement which supports no law or reason.
This tool has been used over and over, and over the years to deny justice.
This tool is not deployed in vacuum. When joined with it’s older sibling, the “bench system”, where there is no judicial oversight and guarded by the thuggery of the notorious “contempt of the court” (which gets going to silence the grieved), these tools are all designed to deny justice, to deny justice, to deny justice. Did I say it too many times?
Not enough.
Invariably, the short order is followed by a long delay for the pronouncement of the decision wherein and whereby the ground conditions have been changed (or are forced to change) and thus any “crafted” decision is merely for publication.
No person should lose life, liberty, property or an office with the blatant, uncontrolled and unrestraint abuse of short order.
A full explanation of the decision, based on law and facts, is the constitutional right of every person who seeks justice.
Doctrine of necessity …. Javed Hashmi meets Benazir !!
The two rival factions come together to fight a common war ?? or to consolidate power to topple the regime ??
and when and if they do so , what then ??
will they start the fight over the remains of the war ??
Necessity is the mother of all inventions , what will they come up with this time ??
More bank balances , more money flying out of the country , more properties abroad ??
Pejamistri,
I hate to see it, but I completely agree with you.
I am following the “Dual office case” here.
http://pejamistri.wordpress.com
It seems “Doctrine of necessity” is going to change cloths, but the end result will be the same even if no 20th July had occured.
Salamalikum
Rafay Kashmiri sahib, in my humble opinion you are not correct to refer to Islamic history to prove this concept of necessity. Or, at the very least you were too general. You say:
Doctrine of necessity dates back among muslim arab era
of early Ummayad, to consolidate their power and its transition to their progeniture, they avoided Al qayas and
Al Ijma’a already exisited in Islam along side Ijtehaad.
One of the most important things while speaking about Islam is that a broad brush shouldn’t be used especially when there are dubious people ready to accept any dirt throw on Islamic scholarship. As the hadith goes, the sincere rulership died out pretty quickly and as you pointed out some rulers tried to influence weak scholars to get some favors just as Mush got his “scholars” (fake scholars such as Ghamidi, et el.) to approve The Women’s Protection Bill. By broadly using “Umayyad” rulers and scholars of the time you have included a shahabi (Muawiyah ibn abi Sufyan) and Abdul Aziz ibn Umar (widely known as the fifth rightly-guided khalifah) and thousands of other sahabah and ta’been. This is injustice. However, what’s abduntantly clear and should be known is that those weak/ruler-serving scholars were always opposed and they have contributed nothing to scholarship (nothing related to them is known/preserved) because they were busy gaining favors from the rulers instead of teaching and preaching. And, hence history do not know them or their works.
Secondly, you might have confused the dates of when the door of ijtihad was closed. It was around the 5th Hijri century and not around the time of Umayyad period. Thirdly, it should be known the shariah (the laws and implementation of laws) was never distorted or touched or played with by these rulers…they weren’t as bad as what we’ve got today.
It was a vulgar corrupt replacement for Ijtihad a long procedure and had its very solid consensus, to avoid open discussions in public or among shoura, Ummayadde
practiced a sort of “Khalifa- alim privileged, private &
divine consultations” and thus decided.
Actually, I don’t understand what you are saying here. But, again, you have the dates mixed up. In fact, this was the highest time of scholarship and discussion…the time of sahabah and tabi’een.
The Khalifa also sometimes asked alim to fabricate some hadiths in his favour in order to “fulfill the necessity, the divine one.”
Please prove it. This is indeed a major accusation to be left without evidence. In fact, in hadith sciences/terminology, there is a term called “mowdoo” meaning forged/fabricated, and they are well known as such at that time (and passed along) because the way ahadith were collected was very scientific and sincere. But, this is not the evidence that a scholar at the behest of a ruler came up with a hadith. Rather, some vile person came up with it to satisfy his desires but Allah preserves His religion and such forgeries are few and known, and nobody gives them a worth.
Those alims who refused were executed and sent to
paradise or disgraced in public, tortured as in case of
Imam Humbal & others.
And, this is another reason why I think you have the dates mixed up. The early Ummawi rulers you are talking about were much better than the Abbasi rulers. Imam Hanbal was born in 164 AH, well past the Ummawi period. Additionally, you must know all the four Imams and their contemporaries and the ta’been and taba’ ta’been flourished under the rulers you broadly accuse of doing “doctrine of necessity” and connect them to rulers of today.
Secondly, in fact, Imam Ahmed was beaten NOT because he didn’t do favors for al-Ma’mun (the Abbasi ruler at the time) but because al-Ma’mun was influenced by the bogus Mu`tazilah (Mu’tazilite) creed. Imam Ahmed stood against it to preserve the right Islamic creed (aqida) and paid the price for it. The sad part is today we might not mind a person like al-Ma’mun who, although clearly wrong, was at least passionate about Islam and governed by the shariah despite the wrong creed.
I think unintentionally you might have painted a rather confusing picture. The rulership and certainly the scholarship was thousand times better and effective than today. That’s not to say that there aren’t many scholars today who would remind of the pervious golorious ones!
…..history repeets itself….
-once the Prince of Denmark said ;
“there is something rotten in the state of Denmark”
it did occur in a play by W.Shakespere,
now the “princess of Pakistan”/BB is saying something alike ,but just about Pakistan……..