Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization - Conclusion

Conclusion

Islamization was sometimes used as a political process. Zia's interpretation of Islam may have contributed to the rise of fundamentalism, obscurantism and retrogression. Since the death of General Zia in 1988, inconsistency and instability has prevailed in Pakistani laws.

Instability means that the law is frequently changing or is under threat of change because of differences of opinion among the ruling factions. Three of the most obvious inconsistencies in Zia's Islamic law are:

• Those between legal norms and socially observed norms;
• Those between statutory legal norms and the norms applied in practice in the courts (e.g. Hadd is difficult to implement as confession, retraction of confession and strict standards of proof make it difficult to execute);
• Those between different formal legal norms (e.g. non-compliance with the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance is compromised by the courts but is strictly punished under the Zina Ordinance). Another example of this contradiction is that the constitution assures women equal status on the one hand but, on the other hand, they are greatly discriminated in criminal law.