A large number of Muslim women in Kashmir known as half-widows because their husbands have disappeared during the past 24 years of turmoil in Kashmir, have been allowed to remarry through a decree by a group of Islamic scholars. The decree or fatwa issued on Thursday after several rounds of deliberations said that a half-widow can remarry four years after the disappearance of her husband.
Most of the half widows have not remarried due to uncertainty about the fate of their husbands and lack of consensus among Muslim scholars on the issue. The interim decree has not elaborated on the inheritance rights of half-widows. The scholars said that an all-encompassing decree would be issued in near future.
A large number of women in Jammu & Kashmir have been living as half-widows due to disappearance of their husbands in custody of the security forces. In some cases, the militants are involved in untraceable kidnappings while many others have disappeared mysteriously without their relatives having any hint of their whereabouts.
Human rights groups say the number of people who have so disappeared during the anti-India insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir since 1989 is more than eight thousand. One fourth of them were married.
The authorities deny that such a large number of persons have disappeared in custody. The rulers have given conflicting figures, only in hundreds. They say that most of the disappeared persons might have crossed the line of Control.
Their wives are known as half widows because they don’t know whether their husbands are alive or dead. As such these women cannot decide whether to remarry or whether to wait for their missing men to return.
Most of the women have been living in miserable conditions. Only a handful of them are known to have remarried.
The Islamic scholars held three rounds of consultations over the issue before issuing the fatwa. There are differences of opinion among various schools of Islamic jurisprudence over how long a woman whose husband has disappeared must wait before she remarries.
The four-year long wait which is the minimum has been prescribed by the Maliki School, one of the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, founded by Imam Malik.
Kashmir is predominantly inhabited by Sunni Muslims following Hanafi school of jurisprudence, founded by Imam Abu Haneefa.
The Islamic scholars who issued the decree said that there was no problem in following the Imam Maalik’s line while dealing with the issue of half-widows.
The decree has been issued due to the social crises erupted during the turmoil. Kashmir has a huge number of widows, orphans and half-widows.
Interestingly, the Government-backed controversial Grand Mufti of Kashmir, Mufti Bashiruddin is not the signatory of fatwa on half-widows.