KOZHIKODE: A progressive women’s organisation here has moved the Supreme Court against the discrimination meted out to Muslim women under the Sharia law. The Supreme Court on Saturday accepted a writ petition filed by activist V.P. Zuhra on February 26.
Ms Zuhra, who is also the president of NISA, the women’s organisation, maintained that the Sharia law was against the Constitution and un-Islamic. (NISA is the Arabic word for woman).
Ms Zuhra said that many barbaric rules in the Sharia had been corrected and eliminated in the past, but those pertaining to women remained untouched.
“The slavery law was banned in 1843. Later in 1860, criminal procedure code was
introduced instead of Islamic criminal law. A codification of Muslim personal
law will, to a great extent, solve the problems being faced by Muslim women in legal spheres like marriage, divorce, property rights, adoption, custody and guardianship,” she said.
The Sharia law came into being in 1937. However, though the law stated that it is applicable to Indian Muslims in the areas of marriage, divorce, succession etc., it did not explain what Sharia is. Ms Zuhra added that Sharia was still being practised for the sake of the clergy as well as the politicians.
This is for the first time that a Muslim women’s organisation has come out in the open against the Sharia law terming it as against the Indian Constitution.
After the news of the petition came out, NISA has been accused of promoting Unified Civil Code, about which Ms Zuhra declined to comment.
