Hello. It's me, with the same point for the umpteenth time.

As this tweet mentions, people really believe that Islam requires 4 male, pious, eye witnesses for rape.

If you are one of those people or you know one of those people, here is a thread for you: https://twitter.com/Rehan_ulhaq/status/1304482940030791680

Islam doesn't.

Islam requires 4 pious, male, eye witnesses for zina. The idea being, that zina only becomes a cause of concern for the state in case of public indecency. Thus public sex or porn. There is no reason otherwise that 4 pious, men could be eye witnesses to it.

The ruling is to discourage normalization of public indecency by instituting stoning as a punishment. If zina takes place behind close doors, there are no 4 male, pious, eye witnesses. Thus, in such a case stoning does not apply.

Another reason 4 male, pious, eye witnesses were

Made mandatory, is to ensure that no woman's character can be questioned to malign her. If a woman is accused of zina, you need to bring 4 pious, male, eye witnesses who have had a clear view of the moment of intercourse. Failure to do so results in the lashing of the accusing

party. If you manage to bring in three male, pious eye witnesses and can't bring a forth, you are still subjected to the same punishment. Again emphasizing the need to *really* think before maligning a woman's character.

In case of rape: If 4 pious, male eye witnesses can be produced, the man will be stoned to death.

In absence of these 4 pious, male eye witnesses, the hudd will not apply. But the qazi is to to judge the case based on all other evidence presented to them and then deliver

a judgement, that while won't be stoning, should be severe enough to deter anyone in society to do so again.

A woman is not punished. In case intercourse is established between two parties, the woman's cry for help is enough to deem it rape.

The reason we are stuck in this hellscape where a measure taken to protect people from being unnecessarily maligned in society resulted in SEVERAL rape victims terrified of coming forward in fear of being jailed for adultery is because Mr. Mard e Momin, Mard e Haq was a curse

delivered from the seventh sky itself.

When Zia-ul-Haq's government introduced the Hudood ordinance for zina, it made no caveat for rape. As I have said in previous discussions: urdu did not have a word for rape.

So for years, if female survivors reported their rape, this

bastard child of modern law and hudood ordinance that didn't seperate rape from zina would place the burden of proof on her and would ask her for 4 male, pious eye witnesses to arrest a man for rape.

However, the woman's report was taken as an admission of intercourse and she

Was jailed for zina herself. Unable to produce 4 witnesses and not wanting to go to jail for zina after having lived through the horrors of rape, women stopped reporting their rapes at all.
(Which is why such low levels of rapes reported in Zia's time. Not public hangings)

The problem emerged when the woman got pregnant after her rape. Because pregnancy means sex. Again, in order to not be jailed for zina, women admitted to being raped. Which again resulted in the 4 male, pious eye witness conundrum. A failure of which either resulted in no man

Being convicted. Or if a man was known to have affections for the woman, a history of being kind to her, or was just seen a treating her with humanity, he was arrested and forced a false confession of zina out of.

Imagine the trauma taking place here. Imagine being raped. Imagine being criminalized for it. Imagine not telling the state out of fear of being sent to jail while facing IMMENSE social stigma. Imagine realizing you are carrying the child of the monster who did this to you.

Imagine this child becoming the reason for you to be sent to jail for having a horror committed on your body. Imagine every man around you being scared of treating you like a human being in fear of being convicted alongside you.

Imagine the impunity it grants the man. Imagine a

monster knowing it can do whatever to your body and get away with it while you suffer. Imagine all of this happening in the name of morality and religion.

Imagine looking at God on the Day of Judgement and telling Him you told everyone He designed for this to happen.

That a law meant to protect society from public indecency and character assassination was used to brutalize women and you told everyone it was God's word. What are you planning to do?

Anyway. So a bunch of women stepped out on the streets and demanded that this be put an end to.

They were called westernized. And be-haya. And anti-state. And bad women. Because we have a proud history of that is a country.

But they marched. And protested. And campaigned. And screamed. And eventually got the law to recognize rape as being different from adultery.

That is when zina-bil-jabr was introduced to our vocabularies. It still required 4 eye witnesses to prove rape. But at least women weren't criminalized for being raped any longer.

Two and a half decades later, the Women Protection Act was passed in the national assembly that

recognized other methods of proving rape. Most prominently the DNA. And after a whole generation of men nevet being arrested for being monsters and women living in perpetual fear of them, did we finally abolish the 4 male, pious muslim eye witness condition.

It will do well for you to look up who tabled that bill, who voted in favour and who voted against it.

Now. Look a woman in the eye and tell her that this country protects her without feeling guilt crawl through your chest.

(My source on all of this is my early twenties in Jamaat-e-Islami's Quran Institute that taught Maulana Maududi's intepretation of Islam and a basic study of history of the Hudood Ordinance in Pakistan. So none of this is "liberal islam". You are free to look up both things.)