No second wife, please

When the Bhartiya Mahila Muslim Andolan started working on codifying Muslim personal law, they weren’t sure whether to ban polygamy, or make it conditional. Senior lawyers pointed out that despite bigamy being an offence, Hindu men continued to take a second wife. These women didn’t enjoy the status of a wife, whereas even the fourth wife of a Muslim man had that status.

But the final draft of the new ‘Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act’, released in Mumbai on June 18, makes polygamy illegal. How come? “That’s what Muslim women wanted,” says Noorjehan Safia Niaz, co-founder of the BMMA. “We played the Devil’s Advocate with them, asking them wasn’t a second wife necessary if the first couldn’t conceive, for example. Their reply always was: ‘No. No second wife. No woman should have to share her husband with another woman.’”

Of the seven years taken to arrive at this draft, two were spent talking to Muslim women, most of them poor, uneducated and living in ghettos. It was these women who were desperate for a change, urging the BMMA to “quickly change the law, get us justice.”

But the middle class, supposed to be the pioneer for reform, left Noorjehan disillusioned. A US-returned Muslim in Hyderabad baulked at the BMMA’s proposal to make 18 and 21 the minimum age of marriage for women and men respectively. “It should be 18 for both,” she suggested. Muslim male lawyers in Karnataka saw nothing wrong in a 13-year-old getting married as long as she had attained puberty. But in the bylanes of Bhopal, uneducated Muslim women suggested 21 and 25 instead. “Our daughters graduate at 21,” they pointed out.

“Middle class Muslims kept saying: ‘Don’t tamper too much with the shariat.’ They have well-off families and education to fall back on; the unjust decisions of qazis don’t affect them much,’’ explains Noorjehan. What kept the BMMA going was the response of poor women.

The draft makes many common practices illegal, including underage marriage; unilateral, oral and instant talaq; making the woman give up her mehr (dower) and halala, the practice by which you remarry your divorced wife only after she consummates her marriage with another man and is then divorced by him. “This has no mention in the Quran, it’s become a prostitution racket in places like Lucknow,” says Noorjehan.  

http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/no-second-wife-please/article6158039.ece?homepage=true

-> This may not be to the liking of SuCH & UCC mullahs nonetheless a good start.

CD
 

This is a small insignificant act of a small non influential sector of muslim women.  As far law is concerned , your secular friends and muslim mullahs will kill this before another five people heard about it. 

In your delusional mind you seem to think it somehow answers the UCC flag bearers?  This post is the equivalent of rashmun's telugu clique post. What kind of training are you guys getting from your secular/congress masters?

truthbetold wrote:CD
 

This is a small insignificant act of a small non influential sector of muslim women.  As far law is concerned , your secular friends and muslim mullahs will kill this before another five people heard about it. 

In your delusional mind you seem to think it somehow answers the UCC flag bearers?  This post is the equivalent of rashmun's telugu clique post. What kind of training are you guys getting from your secular/congress masters?

Hmm...  small, insignificant, non-influential and delusional.

One PIL in SC will nullify this Shariat buster.

This organization sounds like a Chaddi organization.

confuzzled dude wrote:: ‘No. No second wife. No woman should have to share her husband with another woman.’”

>>>I understand an amended version of this petition is making the rounds:

"No. No second wife. No wo man should have to share her husband his TV time or charge cards with a another woman"

Kris wrote:

confuzzled dude wrote:: ‘No. No second wife. No woman should have to share her husband with another woman.’”

>>>I understand an amended version of this petition is making the rounds:

"No. No second wife. No wo man should have to share her husband his TV time or charge cards with a another woman"

I agree Komboletely.... no order to stop by grocery store on way from work or List of chores waiting on the refrigerator on Fri even.

I vote Jesus over Mohammad or Krishna.