Muslim clerics must wake up and act now
Shia cleric and vice president of All India Muslim Personal law Board (AIMPlB) Kalbe Sadiq's assurance that the board would end the practice of triple talaq in one-and-a-half years is not borne out by the statements issued by various office-bearers of the AIMPlB on the issue. They have not only opposed the petitions in the Supreme Court challenging the gender-discriminatory tradition in the community but also claimed that triple talaq is an intrinsic part of Islam. The Government of India had to take a position against the practice because it was made a party to the issue. If indeed it is the Muslim clerics' stand that this form of divorce is part of their religion, how would they give it up less than two years from nowIJ It is true that tripletalaq is dominant among the Sunni sect of Islam and does not find favour with the Shias.
Over the decades, though, the Shia community has been engaged in a futile battle and the AIMPlB has been holding firm to its resolve. Such obstinacies led to the formation of the All India Muslim Women Personal law Board, which has taken up the cause of married women who have become victims of triple talaq. The opposition to this practice has also resonated among large sections of women in the Muslim community, especially the young and the educated. Even if one accepts for argument's sake that the AIMPlB will move towards abolishing tripletalaq in a couple of years' time, what happens to those who are targeted by this practice in the interim periodIJ Surely they have a right to seek justice. And precisely because justice hasn't come from the clerics who adjudicate such cases, the harassed women have been knocking the doors of the judiciary.
It would help if Kalbe Sadiq clarifies the basic issue on which the AIMPlB has based its support to triple talaq: That the practice has religious sanction. Many Islamic nations have done away with this divorce form, and quite a few Muslim scholars have argued that tripletalaq is not sanctified by Islam but is an insidious introduction in the name of religion by the community's patriarchal society. The Union Government has pointed out to its discriminatory nature and argued that it denies Muslim women fundamental rights given by the Constitution of India. If the AIMPlB does not want the Government to ‘interfere' — and by the same logic, the apex court too should keep out of the dispute — then it must clearly spell out its opposition to tripletalaq. Hedging will not work. Religious leaders of the community ought to have taken a progressive stand long ago. If some among them are today speaking in a conciliatortone, it's not because of a change of heart but because they have been rattled by the enormous opposition from within the Muslim community itself to this archaic practice. Whatever the case, tripletalaq must go; assurances of future action by clerics cannot be taken at face value. Nothing stops them from abolishing it without deplay, especially if there is no religious angle to it.