Darul Uloom Deoband Seminary Fatwa on divorce!

The fabulous wit of the year is the new Fatwa issued by foremost Islamic Seminary of Sunni Muslims of India, Darul Uloom Deoband. The fatwa reads as follows: “Talaq uttered thrice over a cell-phone by a Muslim man will be considered valid even if his wife is unable to hear it due to network or other problems”, a fresh fatwa has ruled by Darul-Ifta, the Fatwa department of leading Sunni Islamic Seminary Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband. The Fatwa department of the Seminary ruled that “It is not necessary for talaq to take place that wife hears it or the witness are present” [The New Indian Express, Kochi, 16, November, 2010]. Earlier the same Seminary issued several fatwas by which Muslims are forbidden from viewing cinemas, instructing dress codes to men and women, etc on the ground that these are not mentioned in the holy text of Islam. But the paradox hidden in the present fatwa is that even though the Holy Text of Islam is ignorant of cell-phone, in the cases of divorce [talaq] a Muslim can use an un-Islamic instrument for his sexual-thirst. As far as a male centred religion is concerned which is to stick up for the fundamentals of their religion, this fatwa is not a shocking one. But the religion which hates the modernity and considers the products of modernity as un-Islamic depend on cell phone for their male domination is the humorous aspect of the fatwa.

The Indian Muslims are fighting against the Common Civil Code, the spirit of Indian Constitution, with tooth and nail. What the fundamentalist Islam of India denotes by Common Civil Code? It is primarily nothing more than that of the freedom to divorce with the delicacy of changing apparels and following the medieval primitive practice polygamy. Why the same Indian Muslim does not demands the implementation of the criminal and penal practices that highlighted in the Holy Texts of Islam for them? No doubt, the reason is that the brutality of the criminal laws and leniency of the free and irresponsible sex guaranteed by the Holy text. If they are objecting the Common Civil Code it is rationale that they must insist for the implementation of Islamic criminal and penal practices for the Indian Muslims.

Earlier in this year the same Seminary had issued fatwas which prohibits the Muslim community of India to integrate with economic mainstream of the country. Of such one is declared Insurance policies as an illegitimate instrument and against the spirit of Holy texts: “Insurance policies are unlawful according to sharia laws and it is a kind of gambling.” [The New Indian Express, Kochi, 15th May 2010]. Earlier the same seminary issued another fatwa which prohibit Muslims working in commercial banks where writing and calculating interest. [Ibid]. Another witty fatwa of the seminary reads as follows: “It is unlawful [according to sharia laws] for Muslim women to work in government or private institutions where men and women work together, and women have to talk frankly with men without veil” [The New Indian Express, Kochi,14th May 2010].

Here in India Islamic clergies and their periodic fatwas altogether are creating a parallel judiciary and government. Political parties particularly the Congress and Marxists are fiddling to the orthodoxy and fanaticism for appeasing the communal vote-banks. Now Muslim dominant regions in Kerala like states parallel sharia governments are running. The chief agents of pulling to backwardness of the Muslims of India are the Madrasa education and Aligarh Muslim University. These two agents who are functioning under the blessings of the present political set up is not at all a secret. It is a street gossip of the day. The present political setup of India is deliberately ignoring the progress of the Muslim common mass in order to appease the jihadist elements for their immediate political gains: winning of the elections. The Church under the disguise of modernity, through education and social service, strives to mutilate national spirit of the society. In short, the contemporary India is between the devil and the deep sea.

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