By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,
This is the third and the last part of the series on Kerala Muslim Marriage Bill.
The Kerala Muslim Marriage and Dissolution by Talaq (Regulation) Bill has been drafted by the Kerala Law Reforms Commission (KLRC) in order to regulate indiscreet marriages and divorces among the Muslims of the state.
Essentially neither is it a bill with radical stand nor is it revolutionary in terms of its features. In fact almost all of its features are there in the Shariah law. For instance it doesn’t ban polygamy nor does it ban the concept of talaq among Muslims. The only thing that it does that it tries to regulate the indiscreet marriages and divorces in the community.
One has to understand that the legal issues related to Muslim personal laws like that of divorce, marriage, inheritance are usually dealt with by the respective Shariah bodies. There is no mechanism in Shariah framework (as it is being practically implemented in India) where the people who violate the Shariah laws are held accountable to their misdeeds and punitive measures are applied to them.
So if a person remarries or misuses the provision of talaq he can and in most of the cases, he does easily get away with this because there is no effective mechanism in the existing Shariah based Muslim Personal Law Board which could ensure that he is punished as per the existing punitive measures available in the Shariah.
It is so because as Dr. Badre Alam Khan, the legal adviser of TwoCircles.net, pointed out that it is often said that personal laws are outside the purview of challenge under Article 13 of the Constitution of India. But this has no constitutional or legal basis.
The Indian Constitution doesn’t provide the organizations like Muslim Personal Law Board (who claim to have the exclusive rights of representation of personal law related issues of Indian Muslims) legal legitimacy. So this Bill seeks to address the implementation of the punitive aspect in the cases of all the discreet remarriage and divorces.
So is there any opposition to the bill? Largely the answer is no with the exception of very few quarters.
TwoCircles.net talked to Ahmad Shareef, the editor of the Malayalam daily Thejas. He pointed out that the bill has created a debate across the religious social and intellectual spectrum of the state.
As far as most of the Muslim organizations are concerned they favor the bill in some cases with few suggestions and concerns to be addressed and included in the bill. So to a large extent there is no opposition to the Bill, in fact he went on to the extent of saying people have hardly opposed the bill on religious grounds at least. The reason is that today most of the progressive organizations want the reform in the Shariah Laws.
There hasn’t been any strong opposition to the bill as such except by few orthodox Muslim organizations like Samastha Kerala Jamiatul Ulama and Kerala Jamiatul Ulama. Both these organizations are completely rejecting the Bill. They have termed it as interference in the Shariah Laws by the secular Indian law.
But their opposition also is complicated by the fact that their office bearers and some leaders have supported the Bill individually. In their religious lectures these people have accepted the problems created by the polygamy and expressed the need for the law to check those problems as pointed out by Mr. M Ebrahim of the Madhyamam daily.
As far as the coverage of this issue by the mainstream media in Kerala is concerned, Mr. Shareef refers to a very dangerous precedent; which is to sensationalize and controversialize every issue related to Muslims even if the issue is very simple.
So in spite of the fact there hasn’t been a strong opposition to the Bill by the Muslims in the state except few orthodox organization, instead of highlighting the moderate voices media is trying to pick up the few voices of opposition to the Bill and portray the whole community as backward and non-progressive.
For instance he pointed out that the Matrabhumi, a mainstream daily is trying to controversialize the issue.
A.P. Aboobaker Musliar the leader of Samastha Kerala Jamiatul Ulama gave a statement that polygamy is necessary because one wife is not sufficient to fulfill her husband’s sexual needs because during the period of pregnancy and the menstrual cycle she won’t be capable of sexual intercourse.
So during those periods she won’t be fulfilling her husband’s sexual needs thereby arises the need for other wives through polygamy he added. So the media in the state picked up the statement and portrayed it as the only voice of the Muslims which actually is as diverse as the culture of India itself.
TwoCircles.net talked to many people who had strong objection in considering Aboobaker Musliar as the sole representative of the Muslim community. Some of them accused him of cashing on this issue. The statement by Mr. Aboobaker evoked huge criticism across secular and interestingly also across the religious spectrum of the state.
Mr. Ebrahim the executive editor of Madhyamam daily pointed out that the fact is that in most of the cases the secular media exaggerates the number of the cases of polygamy just to attack and criticize Muslims and Islam.
What about the opposition to the bill? Who are the people against the Bill?
Mr. Shareef pointed out that there is only one cleric A.P. Aboobaker Musliar who considers such legislations as unnecessary because according to him Islam has already the provisions according to which remarriage and talaq are exercised only in unavoidable circumstances, and indeed it is very true.
TwoCircles.net tried to talk to A.P. Aboobaker Musliar who is the founder president of the Sunni Cultural Centre but it was informed that he has gone for Haj. The people in the Sunni Cultural Centre pointed out that the main reason for the opposition by A.P. Aboobaker Musliar is the fact that for them the bill seems to be an attempt to encroach and “interfere” in the area which otherwise has been the exclusive domain of the Muslim religious bodies like All India Muslim Personal Law Board.
They accept that there should be reforms in the Shariah laws but that reform should be initiated from within the Shariah law and by people in who are expert in the Shariah laws: because they want the reforms to be essentially within the framework of Islamic Shariah.
A very interesting answer to the argument of the Shariah bodies lies in the fact that in several Muslim countries triple talaq has been banned or restricted.
And what the Muslim women’s rights and progressive sections of the community like Dr. Feebina Seethi say is that the Muslim bodies on the Shariah laws have been hearing the calls for reforms since a very long time but they haven’t yet come up with any kinds of plan and strategy for the reforms in the Shariah laws which is actually one of the most important demands of the modern times.
So when there is no hope of reform from within the clergy fraternity then the bill represents a saner and sensible attempt to bring about that reform.