The Quintessential Outsider

Today’s Times of India had an article by Arif Mohammed Khan on the Imrana case. The full article can be accessed online. Here, I am quoting a few sections of it.  

Woe to those who write the Book with their own hands and then say, ‘This is from Allah’, to traffic with it for a miserable price! Woe to them for what their hands do write and for the gain they make thereby — Holy Quran 2.79.
   And yet it’s written every other day by those in the business of clergy and passed off as Allah’s word. The Holy Quran repeatedly decries such attempts to impose human opinions as laws of God. Still, the clergy is ever ready to issue decrees in the garb of ‘fatwa’ and make the lives of Muslims more and more complicated. There are several examples where the clergy has gone out of its way to distort the laws in a manner that ensures male dominance and female subservience. 

So who is Arif Mohammed Khan? He is a politician whose name I have heard fleetingly on news channels during elections. More info about him is available on the Parliament website. The AIMPLB calls him ‘confused’ and dismisses his opinion as he is now a member of the BJP. Here’s what he has to say about the AIMPLB:  

The All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (MPLB) since its inception has been a votary of this trend. Their role in the Shah Bano case bears ample testimony. Although after the Imrana verdict, some of their members have welcomed it, but as a body of clergy, the MPLB has kept silent. In fact, when a ‘fatwa’ was issued by Deoband, annulling Imrana’s marriage and asking her to marry the rapist, the MPLB’s silence was stonier. 

And the ‘confused’ state of their laws, supposedly based on Islamic law:

To those who still respect the MPLB, the board’s publication, Compendium of Islamic Laws, should be an eye-opener. … not only sanctions triple oral ‘talaq’ but also divorce written on a piece of paper or even on the wall without conveying the same to the wife. … 
   In another provision in the same chapter, the Compendium says ‘‘for the effectiveness of ‘talaq’, it is in principle necessary that the man pronouncing it should be in his senses. This demands that ‘talaq’ pronounced in an inebriated condition should not be effective.’’
   But in succeeding sentence it is said, ‘‘However, if a person has unlawfully consumed an intoxicant by his own liking and habit, his ‘talaq’ will become effective by way of punishment.’’
   Curious logic, particularly when one knows that consumption of all liquor in Islam is forbidden and unlawful. You could understand that if in the case of a liquor addict, the wife is given the option to divorce him by ‘khula’. But to say that divorce pronounced under the influence of drink will become effective ‘‘by way of punishment’’ is being oblivious of Indian social realities where more than the husband, it’s the hapless wife who is likely to feel the pinch of the ‘punishment’ given to an erring husband.
   Then, section 6 of the chapter says, ‘‘If a person under compulsion or duress pronounces a ‘talaq’, it will be valid if it is verbal, but not otherwise.’’ Here the cat is out of bag. Force is held to be the final arbiter. If somebody is compelled to pronounce divorce under duress, according to the MPLB it will be valid. And the Quran declares, ‘‘There is no compulsion in religion’’ (2.256). The basic principle of Islamic jurisprudence is ‘‘Action depends on intention’’ (Innamal Aamalu Binniyat). As you can see, the MPLB has ignored intention and instead given extraneous factors the sanction of legality. 

And here is an explanation for this stupidity:

The Compendium says: ‘‘Regard shall be had in respect of descent among the Arabs, especially the Quraish, and those non-Arab families who have preserved the descent.’’
   Next, it says, ‘‘People in the rest of the non-Arab Muslim World are mutually equal.’’ Further, it says, ‘‘On the basis of this principle, a girl can get terminated her marriage to a non equal contracted by her guardian; and a guardian has the right to terminate the marriage of an adult woman to a non equal.
   In other words, this provision gives authority to a guardian of Arab origin to terminate the marriage of his adult daughter if he is of the view that she has married an unequal. He need not approach even the Qazi but can do so on his own. They have been given special right to decide about equality of status in marriage whereas the Muslims of non-Arab origin have been held to be mutually equal. The implication is clear: Muslims of Arab origin are more equal than others. Since the leadership of the MPLB consists mostly of those who claim Arab origin, this is how they wish to stop marriages between Muslims of Arab and non-Arab origin.
   Consider this in the light of the basic Islamic principle of equality of all human beings. To prove the point, the Prophet prevailed upon his family, and despite their resistance, gave his first cousin in marriage to a man who was a freed slave.
   Cases like Imrana and Shah Bano will keep happening because the MPLB is promoting a value system that is not rooted in Islamic principles but Arab tribal arrogance. The right to freedom of religion under Indian Constitution is guaranteed to each and every individual. But the Constitution does not provide any license to a group of persons, howsoever eminent, to become the arbiters of the religious faith of a community.
   If we do not wish Imrana and Shah Bano to be repeated then there is urgent need to at least discourage organisations like MPLB and give them no respectability and thus help the community, in the words of the Quran, ‘‘to free from their heavy burdens and from the yokes that are upon them’’ (7.157). 

I wish there were more opinions like this in the world…