“Triple Talaq” allows a Muslim husband to divorce his wife by repeating the word “Talaq” (divorce) three times in any form, including email or text message. In India, that will no longer be allowed. Although the Indian Supreme Court declared triple-talaq divorces unconstitutional in 2017, that ruling apparently required legislation in the Indian Parliament to ensure that it would be obeyed. The lower house of parliament passed such a law that same year, but India’s upper house of parliament has only now approved, by a vote of 99 to 84, a bill that makes the Muslim practice of “instant divorce” a criminal offense. Men found in breach of the new law can be jailed for up to three years.
Supporters say the new measure protects Muslim women. Opponents say the punishment is harsh and will harm women.
India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supported the bill, while the main opposition Congress party opposed it as did, of course, the much smaller Muslim parties.
“Triple talaq: India criminalises Muslim ‘instant divorce,'” BBC, July 30, 2019:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quick to celebrate the vote as “a victory of gender justice”.
He tweeted:
An archaic and medieval practice has finally been confined to the dustbin of history!
Parliament abolishes Triple Talaq and corrects a historical wrong done to Muslim women. This is a victory of gender justice and will further equality in society.
India rejoices today!
The BBC continues:
But others accused his Hindu nationalist BJP of targeting Muslims.
Asaduddin Owaisi, an MP from the opposition All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party, said the new law was another attack on Muslim identity under the BJP, which has been in power since 2014.
It is curious that Owaisi — and other Muslims who are furious at the ban on triple-talaq divorces — should describe the law as an “attack on Muslim identity,” because the ban on triple-talaq divorces is already in force in twenty lands, almost all of them Muslim, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. Clearly in those countries the ban was not seen as “an attack on Muslim identity.”
Furthermore, there are no passages in the Qur’an that clearly and explicitly discuss triple-talaq divorces, though there are passages (Qur’an 2:229-230) about a man’s right to divorce unilaterally. The husband should express that desire for divorce twice, but then there should be a waiting period before the third, and final, demand, for divorce. This is intended to be a period of reflection, that many Muslim clerics think should last three months. It’s not only the Qur’an that is largely silent on the triple-talaq. There is no discussion, either, of triple-talaq divorce in Sharia law.
Asaduddin Owaisi not only described the ban as an “attack on Muslim identity” but also saw it as “a law [that] is against Muslim women & marginalizes them even more. The law forces a woman to stay in a marriage with an imprisoned man who’d verbally & emotionally abused her. It puts the burden of proof on Muslim women & forces her into impoverishment.”
Let’s try to understand the tortured logic here. From now on, a Muslim husband in India cannot simply divorce his wife by uttering or emailing or texting three words: Talaq, Talaq, Talaq. He must sue for divorce, in court. The Muslim wife now has rights, to contest the divorce if she wishes, or to sue for support for herself and her children, while before she was merely akin to a human kleenex, to be discarded whenever the Muslim husband felt like it. The new law does not, as Owaisi says, “force a woman to stay in a marriage with an imprisoned man who’d verbally & emotionally abused her.” Why does making it harder for the husband to get a divorce “force a woman” to remain in a marriage? She has no need to stay with an abusive husband. She has given up none of her rights to sue for divorce. And when it is the husband who wants the divorce, the wife’s bargaining position has improved as a result of this new law banning triple-talaq divorce. She cannot be so easily gotten rid of; she now has claims, to children and to property, that must be heard.
Owaisi describes the new law as making a husband into an “imprisoned man” — as if being deprived of the triple-talaq option means he has no other way of getting a divorce, and must remain forever stuck with a wife he no longer wants. Owaisi’s claim is ludicrous. The husband can still sue for divorce, just the way Christian and Hindu husbands now do in India, or as Muslim husbands do in Egypt, the U.A.E., Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and more than a dozen other Muslim lands.
Muslims thus cannot claim that the banning of triple-talaq divorces is anti-Muslim. Nearly twenty Muslim states enforce that ban. No clear Qur’anic verse has been violated, nor any part of Sharia, by that ban. The beneficiaries of this law are Muslims. Without having to fear the unilateral finality of the triple-talaq, Muslim women will now be able to contest a divorce in court or if they agree to a divorce, can negotiate or sue for support. Muslim men will benefit, too, for they will now be forced by the flaw to behave less precipitously in such an important matter; triple-talaq divorces, that can be the result of a husband’s temporary burst of anger against a wife, will no longer be permitted. More Muslim marriages may be preserved as a result. Muslims should be, but won’t be, pleased. If Narendra Modi is for the ban, it must be bad. One more terrible thing done to Muslims by Hindus. What did Muslims ever do to the Hindus to deserve this? Will the persecution ever stop?
mortimer says
This is a welcome advance in human rights. Multiple Islamic marriage, combined with effortless ‘talaq’ divorce and discriminatory divorce rules penalizing women, are about the greatest evils caused to women by Sharia law.
Islamic divorce rules come straight out of the Middle Ages.
gravenimage says
+1
CRUSADER says
Now, if only women will think three times before getting hitched to a Muslim man…
Turn to the Trinity, ladies, your Bridegroom awaits…. + + +
Ajay says
Brilliant. Law of the land shall be followed, not Shariya law.
Congrats Modi and thanks, say millions of muslim women today.
katherine says
Bravo Modi – it is the Indian Constitution, the Law of the land which must be followed. Not some arbitrary sharia which nobody else agreed to.
Now what do you do about polygamy – how about Myanmar Rules ? Please look into it seriously because population is one of Islam’s weapon of Mass Destruction.
Meanwhile please define the death Fatwa as Intent to Murder – it will save many helpless victims of violent persecution.
There’s a lot to do that the cowardly Congress Party will not touch on.
mortimer says
Everywhere, even in Islamic countries, Islam is in retreat because it is incompatible with modern human rights and civil liberties.
SAFI says
Hmm? Islam retreating everywhere? In Europe it doesn’t look like Islam is on the retreat, rather the opposite. Western culture seems to be the one retreating as Islam keeps relentlessly advancing. A few burka bans here and there(which often aren’t even being enforced) don’t prove Islam’s retreat. That’s failing to see the bigger picture.
Still, despite my pessimistic outlook, I have to concede that those anti-sharia initiatives indicate that at least some of the kuffar are not as totally docile and submissive as the islamists had hoped.
mortimer says
35% of Muslims worldwide say they don’t want Sharia law. Another third are ‘somewhat’ lukewarm about Sharia. 15% of Muslims are fanatical.
Ursula says
That seems to prove that the majority Is of no relevance, but that the fanatical minority drives the agenda.
CRUSADER says
Same pipe dream smoked by Daniel Pipes, who seems to come to the conclusion that ISLAMISM is on the way out…. another 15 years or so, but we all will be dead before then
— from Climate Change.
“Inshallah!”
gravenimage says
Actually, Mortimer, Islam is on the march in too many places.
And a disturbingly high percentage of Muslims do indeed want Shari’ah law–even in the West, this is in many cases a majority.
Beverly says
So when you grow tired of your pet and would like a new one, you say the magic words 3 times. Do they have shelters for abandoned pets?
Bob says
Nope but these pets keep getting passed from one owner to another. Hope you know the term Nikah Halala. Sometimes women after getting triple Talaq are forced to have sex with her in-laws to remarry her divorced husband.
There is flourishing business of selling muslim child brides of India to rich old Arab men. Sometimes these women are passed between 15-20 men who could easily get rid of the wives with the help of money and sharia rules.
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1CF1F7
It’s disgusting.
esther says
I wonder how many people in India will die as a result of this new law
gravenimage says
What? How *dare* you filthy Infidels fail to pander to the barbarism of Islam–we’ll kill you if you don’t. Bad dhimmis…
Really, you don’t make things better by allowing the savagery of Shari’ah law.
CRUSADER says
Exactamundo !
Diane Harvey says
“Opponents say the punishment is harsh and will harm women”
There’s simply little point in even trying to engage this sort of thinking.
SB says
So if a ten-year-old girl is tired of her fifty-six-year-old husband, she need only say divorce three times? Oh wait, that only applies to men.
European pagan says
India doesn’t want sharia.
gravenimage says
India: Parliament Criminalizes Triple-Talaq Divorce
………………….
This is step in the right direction. Of course, Muslim men will do this anyway–but now it is illegal.
Angemon says
IIRC, in such situations the former wife needs to get remarried, consummate the marriage and then divorce in order to remarry the former husband.
peter says
Strangely it is men who could invoke triple talaq at will but not women ! Where is Women’s equality in it . Mr Aaiswasi is trying to hood wink people who he thinks are gullible.
CRUSADER says
Kashmir downgraded in special state status.
Looks like India 🇮🇳 is becoming more Hindu
and Pakistan will just have to coexist with that!
Venkat says
Modi on a roll now that he has stripped Kashmir of its special status too. Dhimmitude on the way out I hope though congress party is trying desperately to maintain the status quo which has routed them out of this yrs election. Muslims as usual claim superiority and special treatment when in majority and claim victimhood equality and human rights when in minority.
gravenimage says
+1
Chand says
Good move. Will protect many Muslim women.
celia1000 says
But why would a woman wish to continue to be married to a man who would divorce her so casually? I would say that she should accept the divorce but should get benefits, except that that might lead to resentment and revenge in the man, and he might kill her on those grounds. And we shouldn’t forget the many HIndu women killed by their husbands throwing kerosene on them and lighting it, making it appear that their deaths were from kitchen fires.
I think the answer has to lie in providing all women with the means to educate themselves and then get a job or paid work of some kind sufficient to allow them to provide for themselves and their children. And women’s shelters to protect those who flee to them.
marc says
men are less likely to enter into these marriages if they are not so easy to get out of.
and yes, agree, education of women is the biggest threat to islam
gravenimage says
Women usually automatically lose their children in Triple Talaq divorces.
celia1000 says
Then I am glad that India has banned them, but it still leaves the women in an unbearable position.
gravenimage says
Everything about the institution of Muslim marriage is pretty unbearable for women. At least this makes one of the ugliest aspects illegal in India.
DhulQarnayn says
Can you imagine the backlash if a western politician described *anything* to do with Islam as “an archaic and medieval practice”?
Glad this happened though.