Pakistan, May 19 -- The Federal Shariat Court's ruling on attempted suicide has reopened an old wound in Pakistan's legal conscience. By striking down the 2022 repeal of Section 325 of the Pakistan Penal Code, the court has restored a colonial offence that treated a person who survived self-harm as an accused person before they could be treated as a patient. The bench held that decriminalisation was repugnant to Islam, and there can be no quarrel with the principle that Islam protects life and forbids its destruction. The real quarrel, nonetheless, lies elsewhere: whether the protection of life is served by dragging a broken person into the criminal process.

Like it or not, Section 325 was a British penal provision drafted in an age when...