"""Ziaul Haq’s Islamisation and creation of shariat courts gave the opponents of land reforms — including the religious establishment — a golden opportunity to challenge them. In Haji Niamatullah v. NWFP government, the imposition of a ceiling on landholdings was declared un-Islamic. In December 1980 the Federal Shariat Court decided petitions against land reforms in Muhammad Ameen v. Islamic Republic of Pakistan (PLD 1981 FSC 23). It declared that it did not have the sufficient rights to declare it unconstitutional and even then it was not un-Islamic in any way to impose a ceiling on landholdings. Appeals were filed and the Shariat Appellate Bench of the Supreme Court delivered its final judgment on the issue on August 10, 1989 in Qazalbash Waqf v. Chief Land Commissioner (PLD 1990 SC 99). The lead judgment, written by Mufti Taqi Usmani, held that the right to land in Islam is absolute, that Islam has imposed no quantitative ceiling on land or any other commodity that can be owned by a person, that any such limits are prohibited by shariah, that a temporary limit may be imposed in times of emergency, that illegitimately acquired land is illegitimate and that forceful acquisition of land is haram. In short, ceilings on landholdings imposed by the Land Reforms Regulation, 1972 and Land Reforms Ordinance, 1977 were un-Islamic and acquisition of land under the said laws was ab initio illegal. With this case, the classic definition of land reforms in the form of ceilings on landholdings came falling down and the doors for reform were closed forever. The judges who dissented with the majority opinion based their opinion on the Islamic notion of social welfare and necessity to alleviate poverty.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 22:20:43 +0000
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