Founder leader of the banned Lashkar-e-Tayiba and head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa Hafeez Saeed has flayed the bill passed by the Pakistan National Assembly to amend the purported Islamic law on rape that requires victims to produce four male witnesses, saying it was not in accordance with Quran and Sunnah.

"No one has the authority to alter divine law; not the Parliament, nor the Senate," a JUD statement quoted him as saying.

He said the Protection of Women's Rights Bill was approved in the National Assembly 'purely on the basis of a majority and is not in accord with the Quran and the Sunnah.'

In his address to the nation on Wednesday, President Pervez Musharraf defended the bill, saying allegations that the bill has not met the injunctions of Quran were 'false.'

"This was a false allegation. I assure the entire nation that no Pakistani can ever think of enacting law that is repugnant to the Holy Quran and the Sunnah. This law is fully in conjunction with the Holy Quran and the Sunnah, and there is no violation," Musharraf had said.

Saeed said: "The only true spirit of the Quran and the Sunnah was the one interpreted and established by the pious predecessors and no one had the right, or the authority, to interpret it, or try to recast it, according to one's own wishes."

Neither an individual, nor an institution, nor the National Assembly, nor the Senate, have any authority to modify or amend the laws and principles of Islamic Shariah (Code) as commanded by Allah in the Quran, or by the Prophet through his Sunnah (words or deeds), he said.

Saeed said Islam protects the rights of men and women equally, without discrimination.