Triple Talaq

What is the issue?

Triple Talaq continues to be an issue, which is practised in areas where fundamentalist organisations are strong and where women are not educated.

What is the stand of Muslim Law Board?

• Muslim Personal Law Board neither acknowledges the existence of triple talaq nor feels the compelling need to revisit its position on this injustice.
• When the issue reached the courts, the Board magnanimously acknowledged its existence.
• The community’s refusal to accept its weaknesses also becomes the fundamental reason for its downfall.
• The Muslim Personal Law Board was very critical of women and organisations fighting against triple talaq.

What Islam says about Talaq?

• Islam has given talaq to men and khula to women.
• A man can either issue talaq over a period of time or issue triple talaq giving it a gap of three months.
• A woman can issue khula and get divorced from her husband by approaching her family or a religious head.
• Triple talaq is uttering the word talaq thrice and divorcing the wife.
• With the advent of technology, triple talaq can be issued as a WhatsApp message or a phone call.

What is the reality?

• Though the Quran states that there needs to be a time gap between the three talaqs, in practice it is not so.
• While responding to the courts in a related case, the Centre did not just stop with saying that triple talaq was not legal, it also talked about the Uniform Civil Code.
• The issue came to court only because there was no three-month gap between two talaqs.
• But the root cause for the problem is the organisations which justify this lack of interval and which see the interference of the government and courts as an intrusion.
• These organisations are aware that women are oppressed by this system, they are aware that the triple talaq system does not exist in any other Islamic country.

What is the way ahead?

• Muslim organisations should stop fuelling sentiments over this sensitive issue.
• To be critical on the women or the democratic organisations which have approached the courts for a remedy is unfair.

Source: The Hindu