The National Commission for Women's recently released report on the status of Muslim women is indication enough that social rot is indeed deep in the Muslim society all across the country. Muslim women are unfairly divorced; curse of dowry affects Muslims as it does others and polygamy is another way to collect more and more dowry and wives. Saddled with children, mothers deserted by husbands are a harassed lot. Blatant denial of Mehr weakens their financial situation even more. Islam had a given a set of social laws that were quite in keeping with biological and emotional role of the two sexes ..
Ideally, these laws should have put the Muslim women a notch higher than others. But that is not what is commonly observed. Three talaqs at one go is almost the rule among men from the lower social strata. It has become a convenient tool to punish the erring women by uncouth and irresponsible men. More ironically, divorce is used when wives and in-laws refuse to comply with the demands for dowry. Polygamy has come in as additional facility for satisfying greed by gathering more dowry through more wives. While dowry has almost become obligatory, Mehr is becoming nominal and invariably denied or waived through consent obtained under duress in the tense final moments before husbands' deaths. Result more Muslim women are being burnt at the altar of the dowry, children are being rendered destitute, hospitals are brimming with undernourished Muslim kids and anaemic Muslim mothers, more Muslim kids are turning criminals.
We all accept that the Shariah is blameless ... It has worked flawlessly in the past and still works fine in several Muslim countries. The rot therefore is traceable to other factors. Possibly, lack of awareness about the Shariah among Muslims, lack of counselling of spouses before and after marriage, low socio-economic status, anonymity offered by big cities to people ... who feel no social pressures to stick to recognized social mores and behaviour. huddled living in slums where free mixing of sexes is more and economic opportunities are less etc. etc.
Seen in this backdrop, it will be worthwhile for the Muslim ulema, intellectuals, advocates and the members of Muslim Personal Law Board meeting in Bangalore on October 28, 29 to take a holistic view of the social mess in the Muslim society. Mere insistence on letter of the Shariab and issue of "hands-off" warning sounds too superficial. Unfortunately, the religious class among Muslims comprises of more theology scholars than social scientists. While muftis can justifiably be perturbed over interference in the Shariah, as social scientists they ought to trigger the reform mechanism within the society. It is where our ulema must redefine their role. They ought to be more musleh (reformers) and muzakki (trainer) of the people than mufti (jurists). Unless this happens, the societal structure will be in peril of getting damaged by the internally mobile lava of social discontent.
Syed Saiyidain Hameed on Urgency for Ban on Polygamy and Triple Talaq
Talaq is permissible in the Koran only on condition that there is a complete breakdown of marriage. Parting of ways must be graceful, and utmost care is taken to inflict no suffering on the woman. The common practice of impulsively uttering talaq thrice in a go, or writing talaq thrice on a postcard ... is totally anti-Islamic. No cleric, regardless from which school of Fiqah, can ever condone this form of talaq.
Just as the man is permitted talaq, so also is the woman permitted to take khula. In this matter as in all others, women and men have equal rights in Islam ... Most women arc brainwashed to believe that for a virtuous wife, it is incumbent to forfeit her mehr altogether. This they do without understanding their rights; and when the husband pronounces talaq, he can throw her out minus the mandatory mehr ..
The fact of the matter is that Muslims (males) selectively practice whatever suits our need. (They) indulge in triple talaq, in polygamy, in dodging mehr and maintenance. (They) ascribe (their) actions to (the) religious sanctions and continuously harp on our religious code. But we blatantly violate the injunctions of Islam. (They) pronounce triple talaq without following the commands pertaining to it. We marry again and again without adhering to the commands pertaining to second and subsequent marriage. Thanks to the way (they) practice it, Islam is looked upon by the world as the most anti-gender religion. For this perception, it is (they) who are to be blamed. It is time (they) applied the corrective to (their) own selves and stop using religion as an excuse for (their) misdemeanours. (Source: The Times of India, 15 November, 2000)
Muslim Failure Editorial, The Hindustan Times, 1 Nov., 2000
(The) meeting of the Muslim Personal Law Board attract(ed) so much publicity ... presumably because of the faint hopes about the possibility of the Board finally coming to grips with the so-called triple talaq form of divorce and perhaps even banning it. The hopeful expectations, however, proved futile. Nor was this surprising because this practice has proved to be quite an intractable one ...
... If the Indian Muslims are unwilling to end this practice, which is patently unfair to women, it is presumably because of the hesitation which a minority community feels in dispensing with a 'tradition', no matter how iniquitous, lest it should open the floodgates of 'reforms', undermining its distinctiveness ...
Even then, there is obviously a need for the Personal Law Board to be much more forward-looking than it has been so far ... Above all, there is a need for the leading lights of the community to make a genuine effort to eradicate the impression that the Muslims constitute a backward-looking mullah-dominated group.
