THE Federal Shariat Court’s (FSC) recent ruling to criminalise ‘attempted suicide’ runs contrary to ‘Mill’s Harm Principle’, a bedrock value of any modern ‘liberal democracy’.

In ‘Hammad Saeed vs Federation of Pakistan’ (2026), the FSC struck down the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act, 2022, whereby Section 325 of the Pakistan Penal Code, 1860, and corresponding entries in Schedule II of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898, which had been omitted, were revived, criminalising ‘attempted suicide’.

The FSC did not feature in the original text of the 1973 Constitution; rather it was later established during Gen Ziaul Haq’s regime through President’s Order No. 1 of 1980. Subsequently, an entire Chapter 3-A was inserted in Part VII of the Constitution to give the FSC constitutional cover to “examine and decide the question whether or not any law or provision of law is repugnant to the Injunctions of Islam”.

The establishment of the FSC was part of Gen Zia’s Islamisation exercise, which provided what John K. Cooly calls in Unholy Wars (1999) the social and cultural environment needed for the “raising, training, equipping, paying and sending into battle against the Red Army in Afghanistan a mercenary army of........

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