Here's a very interesting discussion about Islamic law and Pakistan's legal system...

http://www.crescentlife.com/articles/social%20issues/rape_laws.htm

This discussion examines what the Qur'an (Koran) has to say about Islamic law, and compares that to existing laws in Pakistan. I think it's important as well as enlightening to see the extent to which (and the ways in which) Islamic laws have been bastardized in service to political and other kinds of power agendas in Pakistan. Here's an example:


"C. Drafting Problems in the Zina Ordinance

1. The same brush: why rape as a form of zina? As we have seen, the Qur'anic verses regarding zina do not address the concept of nonconsensual sex. This omission is a logical one. The zina verses establish a crime of public sexual indecency. Rape, on the other hand, is a very different crime. Rape is a reprehensible act which society has an interest in preventing, whether or not it is committed in public. Therefore, rape does not logically belong as a subset of the public indecency crime of zina. Unfortunately, however, the Zina Ordinance is written exactly counter to this Qur'anic omission and it includes zina-bil-jabr (zina by force) as a subcategory of the crime of zina.42

Where did the zina-bil-jabr section in the Ordinance come from then, if it is not part of the Qur'anic law of zina? We will see later that in Islamic jurisprudence addressing zina, there is significant discussion of whether there is liability for zina under duress.43 But the language of the zina-bil-jabr section in the Pakistani Ordinance does not appear to be drawn from these discussions. (That is, it is not presented as an exception to zina in the case of duress.) Rather, the zina-bil-jabr language is nearly identical to the old common law of rape in Pakistan, the borrowed British criminal law in force in Pakistan before the Hudood Ordinances. The old common law Pakistani rape statute read:

A man is said to commit "rape" who, except in the cases hereinafter excepted, has sexual intercourse with a woman under circumstances falling under any of the following descriptions:–

First.-–Against her will.

Secondly.-–Without her consent.

Thirdly.--With her consent, when her consent has been obtained by putting her in fear of death, or of hurt.

Fourthly.-–With her consent when the man knows that he is not her husband, and that her consent is given because she believes that he is another man to whom she is or believes herself to be lawfully married.

Fifthly.–-With or without her consent, when she is under [fourteen] years of age.

Explanation.-–Penetration is sufficient to constitute the sexual intercourse necessary to the offence of rape.

Exception.–-Sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under [thirteen] years of age is not rape (Pakistan Penal Code 1860, sec. 375).44

With the exception of the statutory rape section (under "Fifthly"), the language specifying what constitutes rape is almost identical to the zina-bil-jabr language under the Hudood Ordinance. Even the explanation that penetration is sufficient to constitute the necessary intercourse is the same. Did the Pakistani legislators, in writing the zina-bil-jabr law, simply relabel the old secular law of rape under the Muslim heading of zina (as zina by force–-jabr), and re-enact it as part of the Hudood Islamization of Pakistan's laws–right along with the four-witness evidentiary rule unique to zina? If so, this cut-and-paste job, albeit, a well-intentioned effort to retain rape as a crime in Pakistan's new Hudood criminal code, reveals a limited view of Islamic criminal law, which, as illustrated, ultimately harms women."


Interestingly, this site:

http://india_resource.tripod.com/grpakistan.html

...which criticizes Pakistan's Hadood laws (although it fails to understand the extent to which the Hadood laws are in violation of Qur'anic law), blames the problem, at least in part, on US interference:

"Women are thus paying an especially high price for the US's support of dictatorial regimes in Pakistan who have cynically allied with the most regressive of the Islamist forces to inflict highly discriminatory Islamic Hadood laws on Pakistan's hapless women."