LAHORE: Pakistan’s top Islamic advisory body’s recent recommendation to the federal government to drastically amend the outdated divorce laws and give more say to women in divorce cases has triggered a serious controversy, with Islamic hardliners vowing to resist the proposed amendments with full might.
The Council of Islamic Ideology had (CII) proposed to the PPP government last week after thorough deliberations that a divorce should go into effect within three months of a woman’s request and it should be mandatory for a husband to divorce his wife within 90 days if she submits a written demand for divorce. If the husband fails to do so, the recommendations say, the marriage would automatically stand cancelled after the 90-day term lapsed, except if the wife withdrew her demand. The recommendations say if the husband gave his wife assets and property and demanded them back at the time of divorce, the wife would have to return the assets except for dower and maintenance or else approach a court of law for the resolution of the conflict.
Under existing Pakistani laws, men are free to divorce their wives, but a woman can only start divorce proceedings if she first surrenders her right to ‘mehr’, or money pledged to her at the time of wedding as a token of her husband’s earnestness. Existing laws allow a husband to divorce his wife verbally in private but the CII recommended it should be done in writing. Though this proposal was received well by the progressive sections of the Pakistani society, there was a lot of hue and cry raised by the religious circles. Many religious scholars strongly objected to the CII recommendations which have already been forwarded to the federal government to ensure their implementation through the parliament that is actually empowered to amend laws.
Hardliners, however, have branded the proposed changes by the CII un-Islamic and at odds with Islamic shariah. “The so-called Council of Islamic Ideology is trying to invent a new Islamic Shariah,” said Mufti Munibur Rehman, a leading Pakistani cleric who signed a statement with other hardliners criticising the CII. “They are trying to create anarchy and chaos in the country and if they are not stopped then I fear a movement for enforcement of true Islamic shariah would be launched throughout the country.” “The Council of Islamic Ideology is crossing its constitutional limits by recommending un-Islamic reforms in the law,” said Hanif Jalandhry, the secretary general of the Alliance of Organisations of Islamic Schools.
As the issue was taken up on the floor of the National Assembly the other day by hardline clerics, demanding the sacking the chairman of the Council for Islamic Ideology for his un-Islamic recommendations to change the divorce law, the PPP government strangely decided to disown the recommendations and announced sending them back to the CII for review. Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan and Religious Affairs Minister Hamid Saeed Kazmi assured the National Assembly that the government would not support the reported recommendation by the Council of Islamic Ideology that a divorce should go into effect within three months of a woman’s request for it, even if her husband did not respond by that time. Minister for Law and Justice Farooq Naek said that these were only recommendations of the CII and these would become law only if parliament approved them. He said that no law against the Holy Quran and Sunnah would be passed.
However, the way the enlightened PPP government has distanced itself from the CII recommendation show that they are being politicised. For example, some of the scholars opined that the former president Pervez Musharraf, according to his theory of enlightenment, had appointed such persons in the CII who were not capable of issuing religious decrees (fatwas). But the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan led by Asma Jahangir, an enlightened friend of Benazir Bhutto, has called on Asif Ali Zardari, the president of the country, to immediately frame the laws in line with the CII’s recommendations. “These recommendations are no doubt very positive, sensible and logical and the government should implement them forthwith without any fear of bigotry. Disowning the recommendations of the CII would stir more trouble and the Pakistan government should better place them before the National Assembly to reach a consensus. By disowning the CII recommendations, the government would be giving in to extremist hardliners who have repeatedly tarnished the name of Islam to promote their vested interests”, Asma Jahangir added
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