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India - Muslim Women Fight to End Triple Talaq Alleged Islamic Law that Gives Instant Divorce
In India, Muslim
women’s lives are being ruined because men can end marriages simply by saying
‘talaq’ three times – even on social media.
Nishat
Hussain, left, with colleagues and clients at her office of Muslim women’s
rights group BMMA in Jaipur, India.
Photograph:
Amrit Dhillon
Amrit Dhillon in
Jaipur – 10 August 2015
Every time Nishat
Hussain gets into a fight with religious leaders about women’s rights under
Islam, she hits the same wall. They say the rules governing women are
sanctioned by scripture and therefore cannot be altered. She says they are
sanctioned by custom and most certainly can be.
Hussain finds this
divide most frustrating when she is defending divorced women who come to her
office near the overcrowded ironmonger’s bazaar in Jaipur. These women have
experienced triple talaq, under which a Muslim man can repeat the word “talaq”
three times and his wife stands divorced. No questions, no reasons. All
objections overruled.
On an overcast but
muggy day, with the endless honking and hum of the pink city’s
insanely congested roads in the background, Rani Khan, 25, sits in Hussain’s
office with her daughter, Zeinab, four, on her lap.
For years, she
claims, her unemployed husband demanded that she get money from her parents to
finance his drinking. “He used to threaten to kill Zeinab if I refused,”
claimed Khan.
“Then one day, he
shouted talaq three times and forced me out of the house.” She now lives with
her father, who is paralysed, her mother, six sisters and Zeinab, making a
living from fabric painting.
When desperate
women like Khan rush to local clerics for justice, they are told that instant
divorce is permitted under Islamic law. Their next port of call is the office
of the Muslim women’s rights group the Bharatiya
Muslim Mahila Andolan (Indian Muslim women’s welfare movement or
BMMA). Hussain heads the Jaipur office and is well known locally for her work
with poor, vulnerable women and efforts to reform aspects of Islam.
Since it was set
up in 2007, the BMMA has been campaigning for a ban on triple talaq, calling it
a travesty of divorce as envisaged in the Qur’an, where the word has to be
pronounced on three separate occasions spread over three months and must be
accompanied by efforts at reconciliation.
Try telling that
to men like Nooran Nisa’s husband, who divorced her four months after their
marriage. “All Muslim women are haunted by this word,” Nisa said. “During
fights, I used to argue back but if it got too heated, I stopped because I was
frightened my husband might say talaq.”
During fights I
used to argue back but if it got too heated, I stopped because I was scared my
husband might say 'talaq'
Nooran
Nisa
Nisa, 35, was
never to hear those words, but after kicking her out of the house, her husband
sent her a letter with talaq written in it three times, she claims.
When her husband
threw Jahan Ara, 40, out of the house a year ago, after 15 years of marriage,
he kept their three children. He has not yet divorced her. “I’ve inherited some
property so that’s why he hasn’t divorced me. He’s got his eyes on it,” she
claimed at the BMMA offices.
In India,
which has a Muslim minority, Muslim men have sent triple talaq by text, email,
Facebook, Skype and WhatsApp. The reasons vary from not liking the wife’s dyed
hair to her cooking.
At a civil court,
Nisa was told by a judge that the instant divorce was valid as it was permitted
to Muslim men under Muslim personal law, or the sharia.
Hussain and her
colleagues across India have failed to persuade their community to ban triple
talaq. But recently they received a boost: a government committee set up in
2013 to look into women’s status has recommended that the government should
outlaw it.
In its report (pdf), released last month, it says
the custom “makes wives extremely vulnerable and insecure regarding their
marital status”.
The recommendation
has been sent to the ministry
of women and child development, which will hold consultations with
civic and religious groups before a final decision is taken.
Hussain says that,
had her husband been alive, he would have supported the ban. “He was a
feminist. He totally supported my efforts to protect Muslim women against
abuse,” she said.
Muslim scholars
such as Professor Tahir Mahmood, an internationally recognised expert on sharia
law, will also support a ban. He recently told Scroll, an Indian news website,that
“ignorance, obstinacy, blind belief in religion and morbid religiosity are
undoubtedly the factors” responsible for triple talaq being allowed in
India.
“Why should India
be sticking to this seventh-century law?” he said.
The reason is
because India does not have a uniform civil code that applies to all Indians.
Instead, each religious community is allowed to have its own laws governing
marriage and divorce and consequently Muslims are allowed to follow sharia.
A government ban
on triple talaq will be opposed by clerics and conservative organisations, such
as the powerful All India Muslim Personal Law Board. The board,
aware of how women’s lives are destroyed by triple talaq, is trying to impose
restrictions on its use by suggesting that efforts at reconciliation must be
mandatory. It is also toying with the idea of a heavy fine for men who indulge
in it.
But spokesman
Mohammed Abdul Rahim Qureshi said the board could not support a government ban.
“For one, we don’t want the government to interfere in matters of Muslim
personal law and for another, triple talaq is permitted under the hadith [the
prophet Muhammad’s sayings],” he said.
That kind of remark makes Hussain, an otherwise calm, soft-spoken woman, furious. “For the women I see in my office – hardworking women, good wives and good mothers – this is just plain and simple cruelty."