Why stop at triple talaq: Activists - By DAMINI - The Hindu - [ Yeh to hona hi tha!]

Yeh to hona hi tha!

 http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/why-stop-at-triple-talaq-activists/article9269098.ece

CITIES » DELHI

NEW DELHI, October 26, 2016

Updated: October 26, 2016 05:32 IST

Why stop at triple talaq: Activists

DAMINI NATH

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  Fight for equality:Women activists want the Prime Minister to do more for women.— File Photo: V.V. Krishnan (SEE ALSO Page 14)
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Women’s rights activists ask the Prime Minister why he did not talk of wider concerns of equality

Prime Minister Narendra Modi coming out strongly against the practice of immediate divorce or tripletalaq in some Muslim communities had women’s rights activists asking why he had not talked of wider concerns of equality.

On Monday, the Prime Minister addressed the ‘Bundelkhand Parivartan’ rally, which was seen as an election rally of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

With the State heading to polls in 2017, Mr. Modi spoke out against triple talaq , saying that it was ruining the lives of Muslim women. Though his government’s stand against the practice has been clear, as seen in the affidavit it filed in the Supreme Court recently, this was the first time the Prime Minister was so vocal about the issue.

“Real equality”

Ranjana Kumari, a women’s rights activist and the director of the Centre for Social Research, said, while she welcomed Mr. Modi’s opposition to triple talaq , issues of “real equality” had not been touched upon.

“The women’s rights movement has been asking for all personal laws to be abolished. These laws are inherently patriarchal. Whether it is Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Jain, personal laws discriminate against women,” she said.

Referring to the Women’s Reservation Bill that has been pending in Parliament for six years, she said, “If women were better represented in Parliament, these laws would have been repealed long ago.”

‘BJP issue’

Other activists said the Prime Minister jumping into the debate, which was reignited last year when the Supreme Court started hearing a matter on triple talaq , could actually hurt the cause.

“For the Prime Minister to make this an election issue, it makes it harder for the Muslim women leading the fight against triple talaq . They have to fight this battle with the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board as it is and then the perception that it’s a ‘BJP issue’,” said Kavita Krishnan, the secretary of the All-India Progressive Women’s Association.

She added that though triple talaq should be abolished, any change would come only because Muslim women’s groups had been fighting for it.

‘Sex-selective abortions’

“What about Hindu women’s right to inherit property? The law is in place, but it is being violated. What about the injustice meted out to women in Muzaffarnagar and Gujarat. The Prime Minister’s silence on these issues exposed a blatant double standard,” said Ms. Krishnan.

Though Mr. Modi did appeal to the media to stop making triple talaq a “Hindu-Muslim” issue and he came out against sex-selective abortions by Hindus, activists maintained that his speech ended up isolating Muslims.

The All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), which has told the Supreme Court that though triple talaq is a sin, it is permissible within sharia , said that the Prime Minister had given the debate a political colour.

Kamal Faruqui, a member of the AIMPLB, said that if the Prime Minister was serious about equality for women, he should have spoken about a “divorce Act applicable across religions”.

“Using an election platform to talk of social reform is not right. The Prime Minister has politicised the issue. We are not bothered about politics, but we are concerned about our future generations,” he said.

He added that the AIMPLB was “open to social reform” and had come up with a model nikahnama, or marriage contract, that protects the rights of women in cases of dispute or divorce.

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Why Hindutva wants Uniform Civil Code - By Aakar Patel - The Asian Age

Does BJP deliberately wants trouble as author suggests, or its Muslim baiting is either election strategy and/or diversion from Kashmir problem.

http://www.asianage.com/columnists/why-hindutva-wants-uniform-civil-code-599

Why Hindutva wants Uniform Civil Code

Aakar Patel

The Uniform Civil Code is gathering momentum and this is happening in two phases. The first is action against ‘triple talaq’. The second issue is the matter of polygamy, which is where the real interest of Hindutva lies.

India is today under a party with an ideology, which is called Hindutva. This ideology has three demands: The abolishing of Article 370 of India’s Constitution, the construction of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple at Ayodhya and the enforcement of a Uniform Civil Code.

All the three issues require something from the minority communities. Article 370 requires Kashmir’s Muslim majority to give up their constitutional autonomy, the temple requires Muslims to give up their mosque, and the Uniform Civil Code requires them to give up their personal law.

For this reason it is possible to view these demands as being negative and the product of a majoritarian impulse, rather than positive. I mean that they appear to be not as well-intended as those demanding the changes make it appear. This is validated by what happened to the temple movement once the mosque had been torn down by Hindutva. The movement collapsed because it was more negative, meaning against the mosque, than positive, meaning in favour of the temple.

In the matter of Article 370 there are many legal issues that prevent full integration of Jammu and Kashmir, but the intent of the ruling ideology can perhaps be glimpsed at by the state of Kashmir today. The current episode of national pride over action against Pakistan has dominated events in the Valley. But sooner of later we will be forced to take a look at how to manage the situation there.

The Uniform Civil Code is currently gathering momentum and this is happening in two phases. The first is action against “triple talaq”, which the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, dominated by men, wants to retain. Triple talaq is a quick divorce option for men which many Muslim nations, including Pakistan, do not permit. The government wants to make it illegal and the courts are on its side.

Should this happen, we should get ready for a number of arrests. The second issue is the matter of polygamy, which is where the real interest of Hindutva lies. It is felt that polygamy is the instrument through which Muslims reproduce faster than Hindus and at some point will become a majority. The incidence of polygamy is actually higher among Hindus than Muslims according to the data, but the perception is powerful enough to drive this demand for the Uniform Civil Code.

The historian Ramachandra Guha wrote a few days ago about why liberals and leftists (I think he meant communists but I could be wrong) should support the Uniform Civil Code and oppose polygamy. He classified their opposition to the Hindutva demand as being one of these seven things:

The reforms of Hindu personal law in the 1950s were not as progressive as they are made out to be.

The customary laws and practices of the Hindus today are often very reactionary, as for example in the khap panchayats.

The unreformed Muslim personal laws are not as reactionary as made out to be, and sometimes or often give women reasonable rights.

The customary practices of Muslims are also not as bad as claimed; thus Muslim polygamy does not discriminate against second or third wives in the manner that Hindu polygamy does or did.

The demand for a uniform civil code is motivated by the political agenda of the BJP.

Article 44 of the Constitution, asking for a Uniform Civil Code, clashes with Article 25, assuring the freedom to propagate religion.

There are many other Articles of the Constitution that remain unfulfilled; why then harp on this one?

In my opinion, Guha misses out one thing, in my opinion the major one, why some liberals (meaning those who push for the rights of individuals) oppose this reform. That is the right of the woman, or the man, to become a second wife or a second husband (polyandry is practised in some communities in India). It is true that a poll shows that 90 per cent of Muslim women oppose polygamy but then 90 per cent of Muslim women also live in monogamous marriages. It would be interesting to see the data on how those inside polygamous marriages view the practice.

Guha says polygamy is an “abhorrent practice”, which must be “abolished at once”. 

This is in my opinion a moral judgment. The Indian law and successive governments have said the same thing about homosexuality. But the liberal will stand for the individual’s rights in that instance also. My guess is, having said all this, that the momentum has shifted on the issue. Triple talaq and polygamy are likely to be the next ground on which Hindutva will assert itself. And, as with other issues where this has happened, we must anticipate trouble.

Aakar Patel is a writer, columnist and executive director of Amnesty International (India)

End Triple Talaq Divorce - By Zeenat Shaukat Ali - The Times of India

My comments on Ms. Zeenat Shaukat Ali's article - End Triple Talaq Divorce published in The Times of India :

Ghulam Muhammed•Mumbai•24 secs ago

Zeenat Shaukat Ali, a supposed Islamic Scholar, is probably committing a great injustice to Islam, by trying to confine the entire body Sharia to Holy Quran. Even in Quran, there are clear instructions for Muslims to follow not just Quran, but the Prophet and those who are in-charge. How can Zeenat then try to prove that since it is not in Quran, Triple Talaaq has no basis in Islam. Misguided progressives are trying to force Government to assume the role of a Theocratic Islamic State which it is not. India is a secular pluralist country, and neither Hindutva nor Islamic zealots nor misguided Progressives who are in fact anti-religious per se, can change its constitution through Supreme Court intervention.

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http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/end-triple-talaq-divorce-shayara-bano-case-will-be-critical-for-gender-justice-to-muslim-women/

The Times of India, Mumbai (Print Edition)

End Triple Talaq Divorce

Shayara Bano case will be critical for gender justice to Muslim women

By Zeenat Shaukat Ali

The Supreme Court’s suo motu decision delivered by Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice U U Lalit, to test the legal validity of triple talaq in one sitting in the petition filed by Shayara Bano, has long been overdue. Shayara Bano – a sociology postgraduate and a mother of two – appealed that triple talaq be declared unconstitutional when her husband ended their 15-year-old marriage by sending her a letter with the word talaq written on it thrice.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board has declared that the country’s top court has no jurisdiction to undertake the exercise as Muslim Personal Law “is inextricably interwoven with the religion of Islam”, being based on the Quran and not on a law enacted by Parliament. This argument has little logic. It needs to be unequivocally stated that the talaq-i-bidat, admitted by the Muslim Personal Law Board to be “sinful” and an “innovation”, finds no sanction in the Quran.

Neither does the Quran sanction this form of divorce in one sitting nor was it legally held permissible by the Prophet. Such a practice violates the fundamental principles of gender justice, gender equity, good conscience and the dignity of women strongly enunciated in Islam.

The Prophet denounced the pre-Islamic, patriarchal notion of the husband’s absolute right to divorce, stating that divorce was the most reprehensible of all things permitted: “God has not created anything on the face of the earth that he loves more than emancipation; and God has created nothing upon the face of the earth more hateful to him than divorce” (AD 13:3). The Quran illustrates this point by expressing approval when the Prophet recommended that Zayd should not divorce his wife in spite of the fact that there was long standing dissension between husband and wife. “Behold thou should say to one who has received the Grace of God and His favour, retain your wife in wedlock and fear God” (Q 33:37).

The arbitrary, undisputed, absolute power of divorce by the husband with triple talaq in a single sitting was the common customary law practised in pre-Islamic Arabia in the days of jahiliyya or ignorance, where a husband would discard his wife by contemptuously tossing his slipper saying “you are unto me like my slipper”. This is a grave distortion of the law of divorce in Islam and was condemned by the Prophet as the following Tradition demonstrates: “The Messenger of Allah was informed of a man (Rukhana) who divorced his wife three times together, his face became red and he stood up in displeasure and said: ‘Is the Book of Allah being sported with while I am still in your midst?’” (NS 27:6)

This mode of talaq, once pronounced, is considered “bain” or irrevocable where rights of inheritance cease immediately on pronouncement though the death of the husband or wife may occur during the period of iddat or period of waiting. Further, in this form of talaq, if the parties wish to remarry the wife undergoes halala, a humiliating pre-Islamic practice where the wife went through a marriage with another man which is consummated and subsequently dissolved.

As Justice Ameer Ali points out, legitimacy of the triple talaq seems to have crept into Islamic jurisprudence at the instance of the Umayyad monarchs. Inexplicably, although disapproved by the classical jurists, it has been accepted by most Sunni jurists.

Unfortunately the legality of this mode of divorce is upheld in India if the husband were to repudiate his wife during her menstrual flow, if he is in a drunken state, in a fit of temper, in jest, at the slip of a tongue, when the woman is pregnant and other such situations, communicated even by means of a telephone call, an SMS, through Facebook or over Skype.

Needless to say talaq-i-bidat has devastated the lives of many women and children. Deprived of any opportunity for reconciliation, this mode of divorce has been subject to criticism in several Muslim countries.

Modernist interpretation advocated by scholars introduced reform through the juristic means of ijtehad (creative interpretation). Several Muslim countries have brought about reform through codification. Countries like Turkey, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan have either reformed the law completely or brought about legally stringent preventive measures in this area. Tunisia brought about reform by de-recognition of the triple talaq within the circumference and perimeter of Islamic law.

The time has come for major strides to be taken to bring about reform and change in the Muslim Personal Law in India. In order to accomplish this, codification of the Muslim Personal Law is an imperative. The process of codification of Muslim Law must now be seriously undertaken by a group of legal experts, experienced jurists well versed in the Muslim law, legal experts, liberal ulema and scholars in the field. Gender-just laws must be the common denominator. Alongside Muslim women, Muslim men’s organisations must push for change.

If Muslim countries can bring about reform in family laws India must follow suit. In the words of Justice Hidayatullah: “If the lead is coming from Muslim countries, it is hoped that in the course of time the same measures will be applied in India also.”

We await the judgment of the Supreme Court, seeking gender justice.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.