GROWING numbers of Pakistani women are organising in protest over a dramatic increase in rape, discrimination and judicial assault. In one case, Safia, a 16-year-old blind girl, was sentenced to 15 public lashes and three years in gaol when, as a result of a double rape, she gave birth. To the court this made her an adulteress.
Women's Action Forum, an increasing active, political pressure group, point to at least five cases since March of public humiliation of women - stripped naked and paraded through village streets - where police arrived too late and the authorities failed to take appropriate action.
These incidents, together with a 38% increase in crimes against women in the last three years, and frequent public floggings of women for alleged adultery are an indication of the turn taken by the process of Islamicisation in Pakistan.
Women charge that the government has relegated them to second class status. Through a host of recent directives and laws they have become subject to growing abuse, in a nation where religion's learned men appear to have been superceded by the vengeful Maulvis and Pesh Imams, the equivalent of the parish priests of Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries.
A new law of evidence, approved by the cabinet this summer, and awaiting General Zia Ul-Haq's signature, equates the testimony of two women to that of one man. And, under the controversial Qisas and Diyat law, "blood money" paid as compensation to a murder victim's family, would be for women, half that paid for men.
The orthodox Islamic Ideology Council even went so far as to advise that 30 kilos of silver would be just compensation for the murder of a man and 15 kilos for a woman, leading women activists to ask if the price would vary with the fluctuation of the market. The Maulvis immediately branded them as "apostates" and said they were unfit to marry.
The legislation has galvanised Pakistani women - particularly bright, educated, urban women - and unprecedented numbers have taken to the streets. The violence which has been meted out to them by baton charges and lathi clubs in the streets of Lahore and Karachi is now the subject of lawsuits in Pakistani courts.
Last week was the 33rd anniversary of the death of Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan. I asked his 77-year-old widow, the redoubtable Begum Ra'ana, if the plight of today's women was what her husband and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the country's founder, had envisaged for Pakistan.
"This is totally in contradiction to what they fought for, what they dreamed of," the founder of Pakistan's first women's organisation said. "But, with this dictatorship of the army meddling about in politics and religion, what can you expect? Zia Ul-Haq has gone so far as to tell us what to do, how to dress. This has nothing to do with religion. He says we have to put the Chadors around us, that we have to cover our heads. Why should we? Where is the ideology which founded Pakistan?
"Would the founders of Pakistan have permitted the chopping off of limbs, the flogging of citizens, including women? Never, Never. They're using Islam and the archaic interpretations of bigots. The next thing you know, they'll have us walking on different sides of the street."
Shahida Jamil, a Gray's Inn barrister, shuddered when she spoke of Safia's case. Safia was raped by a father and son who employed her as a maid. Under Pakistan's extraordinary Zina Ordinance, rape must be substantiated by four male witnesses, and the victim must be able to "identify" the man involved. Safia was helpless before a Pakistan court. She was unable to identify the man who attacked her-the court refused to accept as evidence the fact that she was blind. And the fact that she had borne a child out of wedlock meant that she was an adulteress. She was sentenced to a public flogging and three years gaol. That was the end of the case.
After six months of sustained protest and demonstrations by Pakistani women and lawyers, Safia was quietly acquitted by the federal Shariat court, the highest Islamic tribunal now ruling in Pakistan. But despite the public outcry, neither man was punished.
"We just don't know how many Safias are out there," said Shahida Jamil with a sweep of her hand. "Everything this regime has done highlights the sexual aspect of women. We have become objects, and it is little wonder there has been such an astronomical increase in rape, in public humiliation, and, generally, in crime . . . They are destabilising the very roots of this society."
The sight of floating, ghost-like figures of women, shrouded in the tent-like Burqa is becoming a common sight even in sophisticated urban centres. Female television newscasters must swathe their bodies, and cover their heads. For a brief interlude they were not permitted to wear make-up, until the stations were faced with sponsors' protests.
"Sinful, sinful," shout the Maulvis at every opportunity. They have now recommended the death penalty for prostitution - but only for women. Any male customer involved is judged merely to have been enticed by Pakistan's "Jezebels".
One Maulvi in Karachi, unable to find any justification in the Koran, went so far as to quote from Genesis, during a Friday sermon, on how, for centuries, women had always proven to be the downfall of men.
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