Women and Muslim Personal Law A Study on the Status and Awareness among Muslim Women of Cuttack District in Odisha

Abstract

Muslims in India are governed by the Muslim Personal Law which owes its origin to the modern British period in India and to the English jurisprudence during that period. The Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act or Act XXVI of 1937 was enacted by the British Government in India. The Muslim Personal Law is essentially based on traditional customary and religious rules which do not conform to the modern concept of individual dignity which is embodied in the principles of liberty, equality and justice. Although the Indian Constitution offers all its citizens equal rights irrespective of gender, these rights do not extend to Personal Law. India does not have a Uniform Civil Code; in family matters, legal decisions are based on religious law. India is one of the countries where Muslim women have limited legal recourse. Women groups have argued that since Personal Laws are uncodified, customary practices have superseded Qur anic law. Muslim personal law is largely uncodified, and legal decisions are made by courts on the basis of the customary practices. (Menon: 2005) newlineZakia Soman, one of the founding members of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), told The New York Time: April 24, 2012, The clerics are ignorant about what the Koran has to say on the subject of Women s lives. The Muslim Personal Law Board is not representative of all Muslims. Nobody elected them, and they have very few women in their organization. They don t consider women equal, which is extremely un-Islamic. God doesn t distinguish between men and women. (Hasan and Menon, 2004; Roy, 1979) Zeenat Shaukat Ali, a professor of Islamic Studies at St. Xavier s College in Mumbai, told: The Times: June 12, 2012 We shouldn t forget that the Prophet himself was one of the first feminists. What is interesting about this situation is that Muslim women in India are not arguing against Qur anic law. Rather, they are asking for the rights guaranteed to them by the Quran. So there is an urgent need to settle the legal reform debate