By Muslim Mirror Special Correspondent
New Delhi: Reacting to the proposed Triple Talaq Bill, Muslim groups on Saturday alleged it is a “deep-rooted conspiracy” to disrupt the family life of Muslims. Alleging the ‘secular’ Congress also part of the conspiracy, they said the swift move to get the bill passed has ulterior motives other than what is being claimed.
Welfare Party of India described the bill as “anti-Constitutional” and “anti- Shariah” which violets the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Articles 15, 16, and 25. WIP president Dr. S Q R Ilyas questioned the intent of the government saying it wants to create friction and family discord in the society by this proposed law. Slamming opposition Congress for supporting the bill, Dr. Ilyas said the Congress is also involved in this “deep-rooted conspiracy” to make the matrimonial life of Muslims as “hell”. He said the BJP is not a well-wisher of the Muslim women as it is trying to present itself. The BJP government did not do justice to rape-survivors and sexual-assault victims of Gujarat, Muzaffarnagar and other communal violence incidents.
Noted social organization Popular Front of India also opposed the bill saying it was drafted without any sort of discussions or consultations with the affected parties, Muslim women’s organizations, bodies representing the Muslim community.
Front chairman E Abubacker said the claim that the Bill is about protecting the rights of marriage of Muslim women is devoid of any substance since the opinion of Muslim women had hardly been ever taken into account.
Even the request by the President of All India Muslim Personal Law Board to the Prime Minister was not taken into account, he added. “Such a blatant rejection of an appeal from the largest body representing all the different sections of the Muslim community in the country is suggestive of the disdainful attitude of Narendra Modi towards minorities”.
He underlined that triple talaq is an issue affecting a tiny percentage of Muslim women. Even then, sending the men involved such cases to jail, instead of solving the problem, only intensifies the suffering of the victims and their children. It is, therefore, safe to say that this is an anti-women Bill.
Now the Bill has been passed by a house where Muslim community, let alone Muslim women, is massively underrepresented.
Abubacker said the swift move to get the bill passed has ulterior motives other than what is being claimed as the Muslim community understands well that the present Bill has to do more with opening the door for interfering in Personal Laws and tampering with fundamental rights than protecting the rights of Muslim women.
He slammed the secular forces which are supporting the Bill only looking at its superficial language of equality and gender justice and disregarding the voices of the community are actually helping the alienation of the community.
Muslim groups also argued that the recent Supreme Court judgment which had struck down Triple Talaq and made it ‘non-legal’ was by and the large most effective step towards solving the issue.
“The proponents of the Bill are bound to explain how an act becomes punishable offence when it is legally nonexistent in the first place. By the decision to pass a Bill against Triple Talaq in the Parliament making it a punishable offence, Government is blowing the issue out of proportion to political gains. It simply looks like another reason to send Muslim men to jail and an attempt to demonize Muslim community and their bodies”.