ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top Islamic advisory body has urged the government to amend divorce laws to give more say to women, triggering a controversy with religious hard-liners vowing to resist the move.
The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) proposed to the government at the weekend that a divorce should go into effect within three months of a woman’s request for it.
Pakistan’s Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Hamid Saeed Kazmi yesterday told the National Assembly that the government does not support the statement of the CII chairman regarding Nikah and divorce.
Responding to a point of order raised by Sahibzada Fazal Karim, member of National Assembly belonging to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N-), Kazmi said that it was not the decision or viewpoint of the government but that of the members of the CII.
He told the House that presently out of 20 members, CII had only 8 members. The government would fill the vacant 12 posts of CII and the matter would be taken up again, he added.
Minister for Law and Justice Farooq Naek said that these were only recommendations given by the CII and they would become law only if the Parliament approve them. He made it clear that no law against the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah would be passed. The CII had recently delivered a verdict in a divorce case that verbal divorce had no religious sanction.
Under existing Pakistani laws, men are free to divorce their wives, but a woman can only start divorce proceedings if she first surrenders her right to “Mehr,” or money pledged to her at the time of wedding as a token of her husband’s earnestness.
Existing laws allow a husband to divorce his wife verbally in private but CII recommended it should be done in writing. A bitter struggle between progressives and conservatives to set Pakistan’s direction is one factor in the rise of militancy afflicting the Muslim nation of 170 million people.
Rights groups called on the government to frame the laws in line with the CII’s recommendations. “These recommendations are no doubt very positive, sensible and logical and the government must implement them forthwith without any fear of bigotry,” Iqbal Haider, secretary-general of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told Reuters.
— With input from agencies
