Our Audacious Tribal Lords!

--Sheeba Aslam Fehmi

‪#‎Muslim_Personal_Law_Debate_In_India‬

See the audacity of the association of this Muslim clerics called 'Jamiat Ulema E Hind', who challenge the Supreme Court of India on its right to purview a mere legal feature of Indian administrative system that is 'Muslim Personal Law' in India. Please note here that the Indian Muslim Personal Law is not a Constitutional feature, nor protected by the Constitution of India. It is just a legal policy matter which may be scrapped anytime the government wants.
In the light of this fact how dare Muslim Ulema challenge the Supreme Court of India and hence the sovereignty of the Nation State for their ongoing criminal oppression on Muslim Women of India?
Do not they know that the Muslim Personal law was first created by the British then inherited by the Indian State at the advent of independence, amended and added by Indian Parliament in as recently as 1986. Hence, Nothing divine about it. Its a man made law and would be interpreted by the Supreme court and others courts of India only or who else will interpret and implement an Indian law if not the Indian Courts? 
This law can be changed or abolished by Indian government, even Parliament is not required, just a simple government order can abolish it. No personal laws are protected by the constitution of India. Its a legal administrative devise to govern the personal matters of religious communities in India.

And its stunning to see that in a 21st century nation-state, where do these 'Muslim Tribal Lords', unwilling to be governed by the laws and Legal courts, get the courage to ask for justice, equality, freedom and affirmative action for themselves while denying the same to their women at home by continuing the institutionalised oppression and violence in the form of Triple-Talaq or verbal-instant divorce, right to enjoy polygamy, practically denying women ownership rights to ancestral property, usurping all the endowment funds and properties reserved for the upkeep of the orphans and the destitute women of the community?

Also, its really stunning to see that while the 'tribal lords' come on air to speak against equality and rights of Indian Muslim women, using their tactless-ness and ruthlessness as a strategy, their sophisticated, educated, articulate brethren are enjoying the tussle from oblivion. The politically smarter brethren giving the impression that they don’t like to deal with ‘these tribals’, and they being educated, modern are not part of the continuing injustices, whereas in practicality, extending the leash to continue the tribal injustices upon women, they ensure their own authority in their households.

Its disheartening to see the thousands of Indian Muslim Male Writers, Revolutionaries, Professors, Scholars, Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers, Judges, Teachers, Activists, Artists, Politicians, Bureaucrats-Technocrats, Professionals, Businessmen, youth are maintaining a deafening silence and never coming out in solidarity with Muslim women fighting for fundamental securities in their married life. It is from this momentous silence of the 'smart brethren', emerges the sanctity to continue the atrocities in the name of divine law. Whereas there is nothing divine in it, rather it is devilish to secretly enjoy the slavery of your better half through misinterpretations of the (very) text that Muslim women are successfully using for emancipation and empowerment worldwide. Mind you, we the Muslim women of India, are NOT asking for Uniform Civil Code or Common Civil Code, we are demanding the codification of Muslim Personal Law in India in the matters of Marriage, Divorce, Polygamy, Maintenance, Child Custody etc.

The more you analyse the centuries old status quo of Muslim women’s pathetic condition inside household, the more you realise that it is not due to the Mullah only that this wretchedness of women continues, but for the silent affirmation of the ruling and intellectual male elite of the community that gives charities, endowments etc. on which Mullah survive, but never bargains for the reforms which they publicly espouse to end injustices within family.
They have shown the indifference to give the impression as if they are not party to it or are outsiders in this debate to reform Indian Muslim Personal Laws, on the contrary they are the biggest beneficiary of the patriarchal stubbornness of the obscurantist clergy.

In these circumstances, I am compelled to make an appeal to the larger world that Muslim men don't deserve any dignity, freedom and justice unless and until they learn to accord the same to Muslim Women. Each time they try to make claim on the fundamental rights to justice, equality, freedom and affirmative action due to religious persecution, please ask back if they are the Allah’s chosen ones or they consider these values as universal?

(sheeba_atplus@yahoo.com) 

Sheeba Aslam Fehmi,

writer/activist/ Ph.D. Fellow, 

Center for Political Studies,

School of Social Sciences,

Jawaharlal Nehru University,

New Delhi, India. +91 9871683654.