ISLAM SHARIA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL PROHIBITION OF TORTURE IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

The prohibition of torture has recently been discussed in detail amongst academicians, at governmental level and especially in legal circles around the world. The questions of the possible limits of the prohibition of torture, and whether torture is or should be allowed to ward off serious dangers in the war against terrorism, remained the center point. The present work contributes to this debate by looking at the topic from a new starting point focusing on Pakistan. In the case of Pakistan, the prohibition of torture has been discussed in the constitutional law of Pakistan and its relations with Islamic legal system, in the light of a historical process and examined in relation to the cultural understanding of human dignity. In this way, the jurisprudential question about the absoluteness of the ban on torture is placed in a wider context of cultural and legal-philosophical dimensions of Pakistan.