Take a cup of systematised, ancient, near-universal patriarchy.
Add a spoonful of religious persecution, marginalisation.
Sprinkle generously with the dictates of a biased religious authority.
Stir.
Congratulations, you have on your hands the fate of India’s Muslim women.
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), a non-government organisation that oversees Muslim law, recently defended the practice of triple talaq by telling the Supreme Court that it was a better option than to have a Muslim man resort to murder to get rid of his wife.
They added that this God-like power – uttering a word thrice and radically changing the life of another person – is safe from misuse in the hands of men because they are “more likely to control emotions and not take a hasty decision.”
Ironically, triple talaq faces legal challenge in the first place for displaying bias against women.
They conveniently forget to mention the part where all three divorce proceedings require mutual agreement, with khula and talaq-e-tafweez requiring the husband’s written consent to kick into effect.
As to AIMPLB’s assertion that emotionally stable, maritally conscientious Muslim men spend hours introspecting before initiating divorce: Pish-posh.
The practice of triple talaq, a sham board’s self-interested defence notwithstanding, is legally and morally indefensible, evident from the fact that it is banned in more than 20 Muslim countries.
This list of countries
includes Pakistan, a yardstick against which we measure our own nation’s
progressiveness when we want to bask in the warm light of self-congratulation.
The Muslim woman, caught between the rock of religious discrimination and the hard place of institutionalised patriarchy, is doubly damned: Oppressed and rendered impotent by biased interpretations of religious texts, subjugated by male-dominated institutions, discriminated against by fanatics from other religions scrutinised for ‘provocation’ by supposedly secular voices, or seized upon as an object of pity needing rescue.
Until that’s done, Muslim women will continue to be used as
ammunition by both Islamophobes and self-appointed white knights with hidden
agendas.
(The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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