Muslim Reformers - A Peek Into the Past

Ref Mantolives #64

[Harimau,

If only I had a penny for everyone of your stupidity....]

You wouldn`t be richer by even one penny!

[... so there going and washing the Minar-e-Pakistan just means that their Brahminized form of Islam ...]

And all along you have been telling us that there is no caste system in Islam, how you are ALL descended either from Prophet Mohammad himself or from Genghis Khan and Taimur Leng.

[... but Shah Bano begum`s alimony issue on which the secular Congress for its old Islamist allies passed an Act of Parliament overturning SC`s ruling.... will forever remain an example of how Indian ``secularists`` want Muslims to be ..]

``Pseudo-secularists``, not secularists. And you Muslims keep falling for that crap, don`t you?

Anyway, the Supreme Court has told the Government of India that there can be no subsidy for the Haj pilgrimage unless they can make a better case.

We do have a judiciary that can overrule the Government. In your country founded by a distinguished Barrister from Lincoln`s Inn, you have the Supreme Court justices taking an oath to defend the PCO. Sigh!

Dear Harimau mian,

I would be very rich ... not just by a few pennies. The true Islamic spirit is egalitarian, progressive and yes liberal... Mullahs don`t represent that. Nor is Pakistan free from caste system... so far. Old habits die hard. Punjabi politics for example is perpetually plagued with divisions along arain-jatt-gujjar lines.

Yes Pseudo-secularism... which is what your country is based on... a facade of secularism masking an ugly reality. This is what the Congress Party is... this is why we had to make Pakistan. And was your brilliant SC able to overturn the act of parliament in Shah Bano case...

Ref Mantolives #66

Yasser, dear boy, I do know that when you study law you are generally asked to take a look at case law... law as determined by rulings of various courts.

In your case, looking at the Hudood Ordnances and fatwa-online.com seems to have sapped your ability to research case law.

Anyway, here is the Anti-Hindu`s (you know, the paper you guys love to quote) view on the matter:

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2003/08/10/stories/2003081000221500.htm

The Shah Bano legacy


THE SHAH Bano case was a milestone in the Muslim women`s search for justice and the beginning of the political battle over personal law. A 60-year-old woman went to court asking maintenance from her husband who had divorced her. The court ruled in her favour. Shah Bano was entitled to maintenance from her ex-husband under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (with an upper limit of Rs. 500 a month) like any other Indian woman. The judgment was not the first granting a divorced Muslim woman maintenance under Section 125. But a voluble orthodoxy deemed the verdict an attack on Islam.

The Congress Government, panicky in an election year, caved in under the pressure of the orthodoxy. It enacted the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986. The most controversial provision of the Act was that it gave a Muslim woman the right to maintenance for the period of iddat (about three months) after the divorce, and shifted the onus of maintaining her to her relatives or the Wakf Board. The Act was seen as discriminatory as it denied divorced Muslim women the right to basic maintenance which women of other faiths had recourse to under secular law.

The Bharatiya Janata Party saw it as `appeasement` of the minority community and discriminatory to non-Muslim men, because they were still bound to pay maintenance under Section 125, Cr. PC. However, lawyers who have seen the Act in operation say that there is good reason to take another look at the Act. It contains provisions which have left it open to liberal interpretation. Flavia Agnes, a Mumbai-based lawyer, says that liberal interpretation has not been wanting. Clause A in Section 3 (1) of the Act says that a divorced woman shall be entitled to ``a reasonable and fair provision and maintenance to be made and paid to her within the iddat period by her former husband.`` The injunction that `a reasonable and fair provision is made` and `maintenance paid` leaves enough scope for gender-sensitive judgments.

Ms. Agnes cites a slew of rulings in States such as Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, which have awarded sums as maintenance, and `reasonable and fair provisions` in the form of a one-time lump sum payment that Muslim women have never received before. Apart from this, Ms. Agnes says, the 2001 ruling of the full constitutional bench of the Supreme Court in the Daniel Latifi case, in effect, gave Muslim women a law on maintenance. While the 1986 Act appears to have worked better than it was expected to, what remains a concern to many is the inherent discrimination in excluding divorced Muslim women from a provision of law outside the realm of personal law, which is applicable to all other women.

And also, Wikipedia has this to say about it. Go to this URL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_bano

So the conclusion is that the ONLY people capable of reforming Muslims are those belonging to the BJP.

I know you LOVE MJ Akbar`s colums about Indo-Pak relations. He was among those demanding that the Shah Bano judgement be set aside. Kiss goodbye any thoughts that Muslims will reform themselves. Left to themselves, Muslims will engage in a fratricidal war amongst themselves. I like the fact that it was the so-called Muslims who exterminated Prophet Mohammad`s descendants.

[Yes Pseudo-secularism... which is what your country is based on... a facade of secularism masking an ugly reality. This is what the Congress Party is... this is why we had to make Pakistan. And was your brilliant SC able to overturn the act of parliament in Shah Bano case...]

So, are you going to carry the flag for the chaddiwallahs, the RSS, the BJP who want a uniform Civil Code?

I don`t think so.

So long as you praise Nehru and his clan, Indian Muslims will keep themselves in slums and ensure that they get nowhere.

You are becoming more like Jinnah everyday. You don`t know exactly what your demands will get you but you keep demanding it just to be obstinate.

Is this a Muslim trait or is it in the water/whiskey you drink?

PS. The West Bengal High Court ordered alimony for a Muslim woman a couple of years back despite the infamous Shah Bano law. Check it out on case law.

Dear Harimau,

Why ... my my.. you are still trying to wriggle out of the fact that your secular parliament deprived a poor old woman alimony (yes the same alimony she is entitled to in the big bad Islamic republic next door) by using Islam...

I don`t give a damn what M J Akbar`s stance was... I have always maintained that on the uniform civil code issue... BJP`s stance is more rational and keeping in line with modern times... but not just that ... its not even the issue of uniform civil code my friend... it is about the Hindu majority making the right alliances with the right people in the Muslim minority ... instead of the easily bought mullahs .. an unholy alliance which was christened by Gandhi himself and which to this day stops Muslims from reforming.

Ref Mantolives #68

[Why ... my my.. you are still trying to wriggle out of the fact that your secular parliament deprived a poor old woman alimony (yes the same alimony she is entitled to in the big bad Islamic republic next door) by using Islam...]

If you had read the article in The Hindu, you would have noticed that the courts immediately started ordering large lump sum payments instead of monthly alimonies.

So how many divorced Muslim women in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan are collecting alimony after the Sharia-mandated three menstrual periods?

[... it is about the Hindu majority making the right alliances with the right people in the Muslim minority ... instead of the easily bought mullahs....]

Of course the other way is to deprive Muslims of the right to vote so that there is no Muslim vote bank. Would you agree to that since the Congress, a decidedly anti-Hindu, pro-minority party insists on not allying with the RIGHT people as you put it?

[.. an unholy alliance which was christened by Gandhi himself and which to this day stops Muslims from reforming.]

Yes, it is a similar kind of unholy alliance that causes Muslims worldwide to blow themselves up, shoot at Shia imambaras in Pakistan, kill Shia doctors in Karachi, leads to Shia-Sunni warfare in Iraq, etc. What are the poor Muslims to do? It is their allies that make them do it!

Harimau,

Actually the Congress party is a decidedly Hindu machiavellian party and BJP is simply an open and honest one... on the other hand if you think depriving Muslims the right to vote is the only solution... then one can imagine the fascist mindset of which you are the product and of which I never had any doubt about.

I suggest you read the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961 of Pakistan carefuly and compare it to the existing Indian Muslim family laws... As for your pathetic little hiding behind sectarian violence... yes the Muslim World as a whole is going through turmoil and yes in Pakistan the fall out from our involvement in Afghanistan war is severe... but this my friend is merely a temporary condition and wholely irrelevant to what we are arguing about...