All India Muslim Personal Law Board Lacks Concerns for Women and Children

Since its inception in 1972, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, despite its religio-legal character, has been a major player in the Muslim politics in India. However, the resolutions passed at its 19^th session(January 10-12, 2007) at Chennai exhibit a gender-bias against the women-folk and will have of serious implications, mostly of social in nature. The significance of the session emanates also from the fact that after emergence of different other personal law boards, it was the first General body meet of the AIMPLB.

Notwithstanding remarks of the critics regarding its representative and democratic temperament, the AIMPLB has been projecting itself as the sole spokesperson of all hues of the Indian Muslims but now as the Shia sect, women and the Barelvi denomination have set up their own separate personal law boards, undermining its claims in a major way, their formation has acted as a catalyst for its office-bearers to make the body even more representative. That the Board made amendments in its Constitution to incorporate 50 more members, putting its strength at 251, demonstrates the intensity of the pressure under which it finds itself. Despite the induction of such a large number of new members in the Board for the first time in its history, Maulana Syed Mohammad Rabey Hasani Nadwi, the President, in his key-note address, said, “There is a limit to which the AIMPLB can expand its membership. All intellectuals from the community can not be incorporated in it. It is only their representatives can be its part through a due process of election”.

This session witnessed the re-election of Maulana Syed Mohammad Rabey Hasani as the President of the AIMPLB also. His coming back to the office confirms the complaints of those who established their own boards that the leadership of the AIMPLB has never eluded the Hasani family. Earlier, Maulana Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, a close relative of the present President, continued to hold the post till his demise. It does not perpetuate the hegemony of only an upper caste family on the AIMPLB but also that of a particular denomination of the Indian Muslims at the cost of others. It should be borne in the mind that the Hasani family is Deobandi in its sectarian orientation.

Instead of addressing the serious issues confronting the Indian Muslims today, the AIMPLB, this time too, refused to go beyond the clichéd of Nikahnama, Babri mosque, etc. Among a number of resolutions it passed in Chennai is its demand, on flimsy grounds, for drastic overhaul of the phraseology of the draft of a bill which advocates for the compulsory registration of marriages.

 

On the persuasion of the National Commission for Women, the Supreme Court of India issued a direction to the states and the central government to evolve mechanism to compulsorily register every marriage that gets solemnized on the soil of India, irrespective of caste, creed and religion. This is to prevent the misuse of the institution of the marriage. In this regard, a bill titled “The Compulsory Registration Of Marriages Bill, 2006″ has been promulgated in the Rajya Sabha on March 14, 2006.

 

Before giving the Bill a final shape, the NCW sent a draft copy of the same to the AIMPLB asking for its suggestions. The remarks of the concerned committee of the Board regarding the different clauses of the CRMB are simply unacceptable to civilized society. To make it worse, the Chennai session has approved the same. It suggests for the removal of the word ‘compulsory’ from the CRMB. It argues that as most of the Indian Muslims are illiterate, making the registration of the marriage compulsory will add to their woes and will multiply chances for their exploitation. If the community can manage all the chores despite its illiteracy, one is at loss to understand how the compulsion of the marriage registration will make its life hell? Though the government at present is not equipped with adequate infrastructure to meet the requirements of the Bill, implementation of the same will also curtail in a way whatever influence the AIMPLB enjoys in the community.

 

The AIMPLB’s disagreement with the CRMB also stems from the fact that it is opposed to the prevention of the child-marriage, one of the major objectives behind the promulgation of the Bill. It had maintained the same stand when the Child Marriage Restraint Act was in debate in 2002. Though it does so in the name of Islam, this opposition betrays lack of proper understanding of the scriptural texts of Islam on the part of the Board members. Child marriage is in reality against the soul of Islam. The acquisition of education, as a famous hadis goes, is obligatory to every Muslim and early marriage discontinues the academic process. Moreover, it exacerbates the rate of infant mortality on the one hand and compels the under-age mothers to become victims of numerous health hazards on the other. What is the most un-islamic about the child-marriage is that Islam provides everyone the freedom to choose a life partner while such a marriage arrangement denies the right.

 

The Board is also against the provision to ensure that “prior wives receive notice of intended marriage”, another significant objective of the CRMB. It argues that if a man is sure that he will be just in his dealings with both of his wives; Islam does not prevent him from polygamy. It is the most inhuman and literal reading of the text which stipulates the injunction. It is a polite way of forbidding from polygamy as nobody can fulfill the criteria the same has been conditioned with. Moreover, one needs to listen to the call of his conscience rather to consult a scripture regarding the issue whether his wife should have information of his intended second marriage. It is wise at some occasions to let the commonsense be your guide.

Making sense of the Irshad Manji’s “Wake-up Call”

Title: The Trouble With Islam: A Wake-Up Call For Honesty And Change

Author: Irshad Manji

Pages: 254

Year: 2004

Publisher: Mainstream Publishing Company Ltd, Edinburgh.

Reviewer: Arshad Amanullah

The revolutionary nature of the questions Irshad Manji raises in the under –review volume, makes it “a wake-up call for honesty and change” though the way she argued, is characterized with a stunning naiveté. It is her tendency to make sweeping statements, without marshalling convincing arguments, makes it an irritating reading. It perhaps springs from her ignorance of the classical texts produced by the Muslims as a part of their intellectual journey across millennia.

Manji’s narrative unfolds with the mention of the Richmond madrasa as an ideological space, one of the clichéd themes of the contemporary writings on Islam. She, like other children of the Muslim immigrants, attended it which had no answers to the questions she asked about Islam and the place of women in it. Not long before, she realized that the focus was on indoctrination, rather the education. Out of her curiosity, she decided to circumvent the madrasa circle and became a mall-rat “to find more meaning in her religion”. Thus, the madrasa acted as a catalyst in propelling her to embark upon a journey to discover Islam.

Manji critiques the Richmond madrasa curriculum which counts all pre-Islamic experience for naught. The South Asian madrasas are no exception to it. ‘Jahiliyya’ is the term which is quite often used to refer to the pre-Islamic contributions to the societies and civilisations. Further, she advises the Muslims not to “be steeped in anti-Semitism” and in the same vein, describes the Jews as “the debut monotheists”. It is very strange on her part that she, despite her insistence on her Muslim identity, overlooks the contributions of the prophets and their peoples to the idea of monotheism who lived on this planet in the pre-Mosses era.

A presenter of the Queer Television, Toronto, and an open lesbian, Manji very often comes across the demand to explain herself: “How do you reconcile homosexuality with Islam?” During her crusades to resolve this inconsistency between her spiritual and physical identity, she has been exposed to many other disturbing questions regarding Islam and the Muslims. For example, the issue which left her perplexed while pondering over the different interpretations of the Qur’anic verse: “Women are your fields. Go, then, into your fields when you please. Do good works and fear God”, was: “I know which interpretation I wanted but I didn’t know for sure (and still don’t) which one God wants”.

Her search for truth continues unabated as is reflected through her website (www.muslim-refusenik.com) and also in the large number of volumes she incorporated in her bibliography of this book. It betrays a slant towards the writings churned out by the western scribes. Thus, like many other authors of the third-world origin who are yet to go through the process of the cerebral decolonization, Manji too has succumbed to the irresistible temptation to heavily draw from the so-called western experts on the religions originated in the Orient, especially on Islam. This may be one of the reasons that she needed a person to introduce the tradition of ijtihad and Muslim Spain at towards such a later part of her life though her quest for the meaning of her Muslim identity started during her childhood .

My hats are off to Manji for making an appeal to launch “Operation Ijtihad”. Sadly, the role she has scripted for America in actualizing this Operation places it in the domain of utopia. It will depend on America not only for “the resources” but also for “dramatically choking off Saudi oil revenues” to compel the King to terminate financial aid to the clerics and also for irrigating the desert with ideas and economic activity.

As an ardent supporter of the tradition of ijtihad, she refuses to place herself within the four schools of jurisprudence. This very choice, on her part, brings her closer to the Wahhabism than she would have liked to be, an ideology which she lambasted on innumerable occasions in this book itself. I am surprised why she, a post-modern and a believer in multiplicity of Islamic traditions, fails to recognize variations within the Wahhabi cult. I respect Manji’s inquisitive spirit and her right to ask questions although my only concern is whether is it not necessary for a truth-seeker to keep his/her facts correct. The historicity of the accounts she provides regarding Islam’s first schism, calls for reconsideration.

Webbed to her passionate advocacy for invoking the tradition of ijtihad is her hope that Islam has still retained its appeal to the humanity. She does not agree with Taslima Nasrin of the Lajja fame who believes that replacement of the religious laws with civil ones i.e., the complete separation of mosque and state, is the only way to make reform possible in the Muslim societies. Manji thinks that “Islam forms a pillar of identity for millions of women” and, hence, taking religion out of the public sphere is more than unrealistic. However, she, like Nasrin, is concerned about the fact that one can not reaffirm the value of Islam without reinforcing its noxious air of supremacy.

Putting her trip to Israel in the foreground, she discusses the Israel-Palestine quagmire at length. Interwoven through her observations, surfing of the newspapers and magazines like the Jerusalem Report and Ha’aretz, the New York Times of Israel, her visits to the Dome of the Rock and the Al- Aqsa mosque as well as meeting with some intellectuals like Raja Shehadeh, her narrative provides glimpses of the political culture of Israel and its engagement with the Palestinian people and leaders. Shehadeh, the founder of the nonpartisan human rights organization Al-Haq and author of “Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine”, is son of Aziz, the first prominent Palestinian to accept Israel’s existence and advance a solution based on two states. She notes that the in-house fightings and the lack of the consensus are among major reasons for the plights of the Palestinians. The absence of the colonizing character of the state of Israel from her analysis in this regard is not only unfortunate but also dangerous as it lends the issue a religious/communal colour.

Arguing against the dominant undercurrents of desert tribalism within Islam, Manji holds it responsible for a great deal of problems the Muslims are grappling with. This discourages the efforts to interpret the basic texts of Islam in a way that fulfills demands of the local milieus. The rigidity which Islam is supposed to be characterized with, originates from the elements of the desert tribalism and the clergy class plays a custodian to them. Here comes in the role of the Saudi Arabia which has been enabling the ulama to obliterate the local Islamic traditions in a better fashion, through pumping petro-dollars. Springs from the issue of desert tribalism, the debate of the Arab/’Ajam (non-Arab) divide in the body of knowledge produced by the Muslims. It is argued that the contributions made by the ‘Ajami Muslims not only outnumber those of the Arabs but the former lot has been more tolerant to the varieties of the interpretations of the basic texts of Islam. It is against this backdrop of the local vs global debate within Islam that Manji asks: “why would Islam be so hard to extricate from local customs-tribal customs- if there wasn’t something profoundly tribal about the religion to begin with?”

In short, this volume encapsulates serious questions about Islam and the contemporary experiences of the Muslims as well as sweeping statements and observations of the author as their answers.