Click to play videoNew Delhi: Thirty-one-year-old Sameen Adeeb's dreams of a happy marriage came crashing in a very short time.Two-and-a-half years after she tied the knot, Sameen opted out using her Islamic rights. She asked for khulla or the permission to divorce her husband.
"I tried my level best to save the marriage but unfortunately it could not be saved and things could not be worked out. I preferred to end it rather than live in misery. There was a point when I realised that I couldn't take it anymore and that's when I decided to bail out," she says.
Says Sociologist Azra Kidwai, "Shariat prescribes talaq (divorce) and it prescribes khulla. If a woman wants to separate from her husband, she asks for khulla. However, the implementation of the khulla is not as easy as talaq is. The Shariat makes a muslim woman very vulnerable."
Most Muslims in India feel that the decision to end a marriage usually rests with the man, but this is not so. In fact, this notion is prevalent because very few Indian muslim women know their marital rights.
Sameen's marriage like any other Muslim marriage, was a contract between two mature adults, but when things did not work out, she took the intelligent option and exercised her right to leave the man that she could not stay happily with.
Sameen says that she was not going to wait for her husband to give her a talaq, and instead decided to take the first step herself.
"Its not possible to walk out of a marriage easily. All pros and cons have to be weighed. But I realised this was the only way out. It wasn't easy though," says she.
Most Ulemas agree that triple talaq in one sitting is biddah (a sinful act) - three words that end a marriage in one breath.
After talaq, the status of the wife becomes haram (illegitimate) to her husband.
Says Islamic law scholar, Tahir Mehmood, "Triple talaq deserves to be outrightly repealed. It has no place in the holy Quran and it's the distortion of the law - not the Islamic law."
The Quran is very cautious when it comes to talaq. In fact, it says that it is the most hateful act in the eyes of Allah, sanctioned only in extreme circumstances, when a couple is unable to stay together despite all efforts of reconciliation.
Most importantly, there has to be a gap, between each utterance of talaq.
In 2004, the All India muslim Personal Law board drafted a model Nikaah Nama expressing concern over the misuse of the triple talaq in case of marital disputes. It asked for Muslims across India to adopt the Shariat approved talaaq-e-ehsan - one divorce in one sitting.
The Muslim wife all across India lives under the un-Islamic threat of triple talaq. Most Islamic scholars feel that the time has come to abolish the practice as several countries like Iraq, Indonesia and Bangladesh have done, but until this is done, for those living under the dominance of the Ulema, the Muslim marriage remains imprisoned in inequality.
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