Muslim leaders, hundreds of citizens slam Modi govt for celebrating Triple Talaq Law

New Delhi, August 03, 2021 (PPI-OT):Several Muslim leaders as well as more than 650 citizens including women’s rights activists have condemned the Narendra Modi government for declaring the second anniversary of the enactment of Triple Talaq law as ‘Muslim Women Rights Day’. The law has already been rejected by the Muslim community and rights activists for criminalizing instant talaq.

The Indian Ministry of Minority Affairs announced on Saturday, July 31, to commemorate August 1, the day when Triple Talaq bill was passed in 2019 amid opposition. Khalid Saifullah Rahmani, Acting General Secretary of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMBPL), slammed the Modi government for the move. He asked the government to instead make changes in the law. In a statement he said the announcement is like the government “committing burglary after theft. This law increased the problems of Muslim women.”

Maulana Rahmani said that the law is full of contradictions. It says that the husband will fulfill his responsibilities towards his wife even though he will be sent to jail for giving triple talaq. “When husband will be in jail, how can he fulfill his responsibilities?” he asked.

Navaid Hamid, President, All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawrat (AIMMM), said that the move of the government is a gimmick to divert attention from real issues and atrocities being faced by Muslims including women. He lamented that when it comes to the triple talaq, it’s a non-issue for the Muslim community. Hundreds of Muslims women, who faced atrocities in communal riots in UP and 2002 Gujarat pogrom are still awaiting justice, he said.

“The government failed to take action against various hate campaigns launched against Muslim women by Hindutva brigade. They have not filed a single FIR against the people who started Sulli Deals. Another person named Kunal Sharma is circulating the phone numbers of Muslim girls inviting to commit rape. If the government is sincere about welfare of Muslim women, why it is silent on Sulli Deals,” asked Hamid.
Asaduddin Owaisi, MP and President of All Indian Muslim Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMMIM), criticized the law calling it ‘unconstitutional’. “This law (triple talaq) is unconstitutional and has been challenged in the Supreme Court of India. It’s against equality, demonizes Muslims. Would the Modi govt only celebrate Muslim Women (Rights) Day? What about the empowerment of Hindu, Dalit and OBC women?” Owaisi said.

Meanwhile, over 650 citizens – Muslim and non-Muslim women, men and trans-persons, women rights activists, human rights activists, academics, students and hundreds of citizens from across India – issued a strong statement. In the joint statement, they condemned and rejected this cynical optics of using Muslim women’s rights, in the face of an unprecedented onslaught against the rights of the Muslims in recent years under the present government. They voiced strong opposition to the move, calling it the celebration of a law that is fundamentally anti-minority, anti-women, anti-constitutional, and seeks only to disparage the Muslim community.

“This government has diluted Muslims’ rights to citizenship by enacting the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA). The very Muslim women, in whose name you have declared August 1 as a day of “their rights” invited their government, even begged their government, to talk to them when they were out on the streets, protesting the CAA-NPR-NRC, in a desperate bid to save their future, their children’s future, their family’s future, in their own country. You responded to those Muslim women with the utter contempt of silence. Without even the pretence of democratic dialogue,” said the statement.

Following is the text of their statement:

We say, respectfully, “How dare you!”

This government that has worked to ceaselessly one by one, decimate the constitutional rights of Muslims in India, now has the temerity to declare Muslim Women’s Rights Day on August 1. This, to celebrate its passage of its purportedly Anti-Triple Talaq law (Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019), that claimed to protect Muslim women’s rights, but in reality, had a more sinister purpose – to show Muslim men their place in a new India. To tell them that they can be criminalized even in civil matters. The Triple Talaq law was an abomination. It was then, and still is, nothing but a charade. Because no such law was needed to “protect Muslim women, or secure their rights” since the Supreme Court had already struck the Triple Talaq down. So, we voiced our opposition when the law was passed in Parliament in 2019, stating that “You cannot pretend to save Muslim women while seeking to bring the Muslim community to its knees.” The sentiment is as true today as it was then.

This government has diluted Muslims’ rights to citizenship by enacting the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA). The very Muslim women, in whose name you have declared August 1 as a day of “their rights” invited their government, even begged their government, to talk to them when they were out on the streets, protesting the CAA-NPR-NRC, in a desperate bid to save their future, their children’s future, their family’s future, in their own country. You responded to those Muslim women with the utter contempt of silence. Without even the pretence of democratic dialogue.

This government instead mercilessly arrested those who protested the CAA-NRC-NPR under anti-terror laws like UAPA. It jailed Muslim women who dared to take to their streets to protect their rights to citizenship. It has deprived Muslim women of their youthful children, who languish today in jails. It has deprived Muslim women of husbands, who are incarcerated. It has placed in detention centres Muslim women, men, children and trans-persons who could not produce “citizenship papers” in Assam.

This government has remained silent as Muslims have been lynched, and its leaders have garlanded the lynchers. The BJP, both at the centre and through its state governments, has determinedly “gone after” Muslims under myriad laws, both old, new and proposed – beef bans, anti-conversion, including the recent Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020, and its proposed UP Population Control Bill. It has systematically tried to rob Muslims of their right to livelihood, and Muslim women of their agency.

This government has remained silent as men exhorted mobs to rape Muslim women (most recently in Pataudi). It has remained silent, without a single comment, tweet or tear, as Muslim women’s bodies have become the object of “Sulli Deals” by right-wing online mobs.

Release Gulfisha Fatima, Ishrat Jahan, etc

We collectively, as citizens of India – Muslim and non-Muslim women, men and trans-persons across castes and regions – reject the cynical optics of a “Muslim Women’s Rights Day” by a government intent on reducing all Muslims to second-class citizens.

What we demand is the release of Gulfisha Fatima and Ishrat Jahan, both Muslim women, from unjust incarceration. On behalf of Sabiha Ilyas, a Muslim woman, we demand the release of her son, Umar Khalid from unjust incarceration. On behalf of Nargis Saifi, a Muslim woman, we demand the release of her husband Khalid Saifi from unjust incarceration. On behalf of Afshan Rahim, a Muslim woman, we demand the release of her son, Sharjeel Imam from unjust incarceration. On behalf of Fatima Nafees, a Muslim woman, we ask you to find her son, Najeeb.

On behalf of Raihanath Kappan, a Muslim woman, we ask you to release her husband, Siddique Kappan from incarceration. On behalf of Ayesha Sultana, a Muslim woman, charged with sedition for stating that officials must follow Covid protocols in Lakshadweep, we ask you to unconditionally drop all charges. On behalf of Safoora Zargar, a Muslim woman, we ask that she, like all other Muslim activists, lawyers, journalists, students, be freed of the false and malicious cases filed against them by this government. There is a long such list, Mr. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

After you have done that, please then sit with us. With all of us, Muslim and Non-Muslim women, men and trans-persons, who believe in our democracy and its promise of equality. And then we can discuss that appropriate day of ‘declaration’ in the future, when Muslim women feel their rights are secure, and they want the whole nation to celebrate their rightful and visible place in this democracy.

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