Triple talaq bill will snatch away liberty of Muslim women

Hyderabad: Well known scholar All India Muslim Personal Law Board secretary Moulana Khalid Saifullah Rahmani said the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill would create more complications and problems for Muslim women rather than coming up with solutions for their problems and protecting their rights.

In an interview , Rahmani said the proposed law would snatch away the liberty of a Muslim woman once her husband goes to jail because according to the Supreme Court judgement and the proposed legislation, instant divorce was void and illegal. Hence, if a husband pronounces three Talaqs in a sitting or gives it in writing and through SMS, divorce would not happen and the woman would still ‘remain in his Nikah’.

Rahmani said if a husband was found guilty and sent to jail, how would



he give subsistence allowance to his wife from behind bars? What would the wife would do if her husband did not give money and how would she bring up her children without any support or money, he said.

The proposed law neither had any coherence with Islamic family laws nor had any legal remedy for women. “If such laws are enacted in our Parliament, the ratio of abandoned Muslim women will increase,” he said.

Terming it unfortunate that the government was bringing in an ‘ambiguous’ law in the name of protection of women’s rights, he asked why was it being done without proper consultation with stake holders.

Rahmani said though arbitration was the key in the country’s judicial system, the proposed law had no mechanism of arbitration and consultations.