March 8th is International Women’s Day.  On this occasion, we would like to draw attention to a story out of Pakistan, where legislators in the Punjab have tried to improve the status of women.  Taking note of the abusive nature of many traditional family arrangements there, the legislature passed a law that would establish a 24-hour hotline for women to call if they were abused by their husbands.  Those calling the hotline would be rescued and removed to government shelters without their husband’s permission.  Sometimes — but not always — the husband might even be forced to leave his own home for beating his wife.

Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology declared the law to be a violation of sharia.  They demanded that it be submitted to them for a formal review before it could be put into practice.  If lawmakers fail to do so, they threatened to issue a formal finding that the lawmakers were engaged in blasphemy — an offense punishable by death.

Even where the council does not formally rule that blasphemy has occurred, their informal charge that a political figure is blaspheming Islam is often enough.  The governor of Punjab was assassinated following such a confrontation with the council.

The danger is real enough that an earlier attempt to protect women from becoming child brides by raising the age of consent to 18 was abandoned after the council declared it to be blasphemy.

The Islamic Council says that the protections of sharia are enough for women in Pakistan.  Statistics show what those protections really mean:

In a report last month, the British Home Office noted Pakistan has been ranked as the “the third most dangerous place in the world for women,” referring to a 2011 Thomson-Reuters survey.

In 2014, more than 600 Pakistani women were killed in so-called “honor” killings, including 362 in Punjab province, the Home Office noted.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which supported the bill approved by the Punjab Assembly, has  estimated as many as 70 percent of Pakistani women are victims of domestic violence.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan are activists, of course, and one may question their statistics as it is in their political interest to inflate the figures.  However, a similar group of activists in the United States puts the number of women suffering from domestic violence at 1 in 3, or 33% — less than half the rate claimed by the group in Pakistan.  In part that is because the United States has clear laws opposing such violence.  The United States also has domestic violence shelters and a host of legal protections ensuring that women are free to leave an abusive relationship.

Groups aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic organizations are doing their best to seduce Western powers into accepting Islamic standards on blasphemy.  Western protections for women can only be undermined if they succeed.