Shout it loud: Our lives, our choice

Once again the spotlight is on Muslim women’s rights vis-à-vis marriage and divorce thanks to the Supreme Court taking up a batch of petitions filed by Muslim women and women’s organisations questioning some deplorable practices being followed by Indian Muslims.

The latest to challenge heinous practices such as triple talaq, nikah halala and polygamy, all allowed under Muslim Personal Law, is Kolkata-based Ishrat Jahan, who calls these practices “repugnant to the basic dignity of a woman and violative of her fundamental rights”.

What is heartening is that unlike in the Shah Bano case of 1986, where she stood alone in seeking maintenance under common Indian laws, this time around many women have come together to question the oppression and stranglehold on Muslim women in the name of Shariah. The petitions are related to Muslim women, arbitrarily divorced through triple talaq, seeking remedy from the apex court. One of these is 25-year-old Afreen Rehman who got married in 2014, faced dowry harassment and physical abuse, and moved to her parents’ house. She was sent triple talaq by her husband through speedpost.

With more and more Muslim women moving the courts on this and the pitiful maintenance divorced women get, and women’s voices gathering strength, the Supreme Court has now taken up the issue. It has sent notices to all the related ministries and will examine if these practices, that have the blessings of Muslim personal laws, amount to gender discrimination.

Expectedly, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board has jumped into the fray and in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, has argued that the personal laws of a community cannot be rewritten “in the name of social reform. Muslim Personal Law provides for the practices to be followed on the issues of marriage, divorce and maintenance and these practices are based on holy scriptures”.

The lengths to which a male-dominated community will go to protect and safeguard the whims and fancies of the male when it comes to marriage and divorce matters, can be gauged from the bunch of preposterous arguments the board has made seeking refuge in Muslim Personal Law. It admits that triple talaq is a “sin” but since the Shariah allows it, it cannot be held illegal or invalid.

The next pearl of wisdom we get from it is that polygamy is “not even desirable” nor “mandatory” in the Quran, but since it is “endorsed by primary Islamic sources” it cannot be prohibited.

But the real gem is this one: If a woman can stay in a “live-in relationship with a married or divorced man or a bachelor”, and still be given rights under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, and such a “promiscuous relationship is thus not considered immoral”, why should a formalised polygamous relationship be looked upon as immoral, it argues!

Obviously, it hasn’t even occurred to these so-called, self-appointed leaders of the Muslim community, with coloured viewpoints and prejudiced minds, that there is something called choice. That just like a man, a woman is entitled to make her choices. If a woman, or for that matter, a man, chooses a live-in relationship and Indian laws give a woman protection under an anti-violence law, no amount of moral posturing can take away that right.

Trying to justify polygamy (which even though rare, is cruel on women) by comparing it to a live-in relationship, is a ludicrous attempt to defend all that is wrong with the anti-women Muslim “personal laws” — which cannot be above the laws of the land.

Women leaders and activists have come down like a tonne of bricks on the AIMPLB’s stand. But at the end of the day, Muslim women look up to our judiciary and lawmakers to end the decades of oppression and torture they have been subjected to in the name of Muslim Personal Law.

Any laws, personal or otherwise, that do not guarantee, at least on paper, gender equity and justice, need to be trashed.

Perhaps it is time to disband the AIMPLB, as suggested by lawyer-activist Farah Faiz, who is in the forefront of this battle. The sooner the Indian Muslim leadership, predominantly male, reads the writing on the wall, the better for it.

Winds of change are blowing everywhere: Haji Ali will have to now admit women; and the BJP’s Kerala State secretary K Surendran has said that women of menstruating age must be allowed entry into Sabarimala, asking, “Isn’t menstruation a biological process?”