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Centre plans meeting with Muslim organisations about women's rights

Speed News Desk | Updated on: 14 February 2017, 5:35 IST

Even as Mumbai-based Jamiat-i-Ulama moved the Supreme Court on Friday, saying that any exercise by the court to evolve a uniform civil code would amount to interference with personal laws, the Centre is planning a meeting with Muslim organisations, including the personal law board, to discuss the rights of Muslim women, reports The Telegraph.

"The government has decided to call a meeting of prominent Muslim organisations, including Muslim women representatives, to address the age-old problem faced by women," said a government official.

The Mumbai-based 70,000 member-strong Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan had written to the Prime Minister, law commission and the National Commission for Women last November asking for reforms in the Sharia law.

The letter included a copy of its survey on issues facing Muslim women. The survey was carried out across 13 states, including Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and said that nearly 92 per cent of women want a total ban on the oral talaaq, talaaq, talaaq divorce, and 78 per cent said they had no say in their divorce.

Among other findings, 91.7 per cent of the women said they did not want men to take another wife while married; 75 per cent wanted the age of marriage for girls to be above 18 years; 93 per cent wanted arbitration before divorce; and 53.2 per cent said they faced domestic violence.

Some of these issues might have been dealt with in 1986, when the Supreme Court had ruled in the Shah Bano case that divorced Muslim women who were unable to sustain themselves were entitled to alimony for life or till they remarried. But the Rajiv Gandhi government had overturned the verdict.

Zakia Soman, the co-founder of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, said: "We welcome the government's move as we want codification of Muslim personal law to protect women from harassment. We want the government to reform the law as orthodox Muslim leaders have failed to address the problems."


However, Zafaryab Jilani, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, said: "Article 25 of the Constitution of India gives right to all minorities to have personal laws based on respective tenets of religious communities. The government's move would impinge on the religious freedom and secularism principles enshrined in the Constitution,"

First published: 6 February 2016, 7:53 IST