Shayara Bano heaved a sigh of relief at the enactment of a law banning polygamy in her small Indian state, the culmination of a years-long effort including her own case before the nation’s Supreme Court.
“I can now say that my battle against age-old Islamic rules on marriage and divorce has been won,” said Bano, a 49-year-old Muslim activist whose husband chose to have two wives and divorced her by uttering “talaq” three times.
“Islam’s allowance for men to have two or more wives at the same time had to end,” she said.
Photo: Reuters
However, Sadaf Jafar did not cheer the new law, which abolishes practices such as polygamy and instant divorce, even though she has been waging her own court battle against her husband for marrying another woman without her consent.
Polygamy is permissible in Islam under strict rules and regulations, but it is misused, said Jafar, who is seeking alimony to support their two children.
She said she did not consult Islamic academics as she hoped Indian courts would provide justice.
The adoption of the Uniform Civil Code in the state of Uttarakhand on Wednesday last week has opened a chasm between women in India’s largest religious minority, even among some whose lives were turned upside-down when their husbands entered multiple marriages.
Some, such as Bano, celebrate the new provisions as the overdue assertion of secular law over parallel Shariah rulings on marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption and succession. For others such as Jafar, Muslim politicians and Islamic academics, it is an unwelcome stunt by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party.
Adoption of the code in Uttarakhand is expected to pave the way for other states ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to follow suit, over the angry opposition from some leaders of the 200 million Muslims who make India the world’s third-biggest Muslim country.
BJP leaders said the new code is a major reform, rooted in India’s 1950 constitution, that aims to modernize the country’s Muslim personal laws and guarantee complete equality for women.
A 2013 survey found that 91.7 percent of Muslim women nationwide believed a Muslim man should not be allowed to have another wife while married to the first.
Still, many Muslims accuse Modi’s party of pursuing a Hindu agenda that discriminates against them and imposes laws interfering with Islam. Shariah permits Muslim men to have up to four wives and it has no stringent rules to prohibit the marriage of minors.
Jafar, who has run for office with the main opposition Indian National Congress party, calls the passage of the code a tactic of Modi’s government to showcase Islam in a bad light and divert attention from pressing issues such as improving the livelihood of Muslims.
The Supreme Court in 2017 found the Islamic instant divorce unconstitutional, but the order did not ban polygamy or some other practices that critics say violate equal rights for women.
In addition to the polygamy ban, the new code sets a minimum marriageable age for both genders and guarantees equal shares in ancestral property to adopted children, those born out of wedlock and those conceived through surrogate births.
While BJP leaders and women’s rights activists say the code aims to end regressive practices, some Muslim politicians say it contravenes the fundamental right to practice religion.
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board called the code impractical and a direct threat to a multi-religious Indian society.
“Banning polygamy makes little sense, because data shows very few Muslim men have more than one wife in India,” said board official S.Q.R. Ilyas, adding that the government has no right to question Shariah law.
“Islam has enough provisions to provide a life of dignity,” said Jafar, who lives with her two children in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. “We don’t need [the code], but what we need is swift justice for women fighting for their dignity.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS