[selimthegrim]

295AB were put in the penal code by the British. 295C is due to Zia, and the current prime minister, during his first term in 1990-1, oversaw the removal of life imprisonment as an option leaving only the death penalty.

The hardliners' response to your last argument gets tied up in something like "the British took us away from true Sharia" or something along those lines. On talk shows you hear "This is a law from Quran and Sunnah, not a man-made law"