Dumped Muslim Wives Dump 'Instant' Divorces

Aug. 31, 2004 -- It was the postman who saved her from a dreaded "instant divorce."

Haseena B. still remembers the day the postman arrived at her hut in a sprawling slum in the Indian city of Bombay — also known as Mumbai — shortly after her husband deserted her for another woman.

Like most of the slum's residents, the postman was aware of Haseena's marital problems. He also knew that as a letter carrier in an impoverished Indian neighborhood, he would not only have to deliver the mail, but also read it to his illiterate customers.

So when a registered letter arrived for the 30-year-old mother of two, the postman's suspicions were immediately roused.

He worried it might contain an "instant divorce" — a controversial marital separation-by-remote that has left millions of Muslim women spouseless and abandoned, with their families often ripped apart.

As an experienced postman, he offered Haseena — who asked that her name be changed for this article — two choices. She could accept the letter, put a thumb imprint on his receipt and he would read it to her. But, he warned, the unmarked envelope might well contain an "instant divorce" notice from her absconding husband. Did she want to receive the mail?

Haseena glanced at the envelope, decided no news was indeed good news, and declined to even touch the offending mail. The letter would be returned to the sender with a notice of delivery failure.

In a world where the rules of the game are often arbitrary and unfathomable, Haseena says she is grateful for the human intervention in the mail delivery system.

"He [the postman] was a very nice man, very nice," she told ABCNEWS.com in a phone interview from Bombay. "He tried to save me from a triple talaq [divorce]."

A centuries-old custom, the triple talaq — literally "I divorce you," in Arabic — is a controversial procedure whereby a Muslim husband can divorce his wife by merely repeating the word talaq three times.

Like Haseena, millions of Muslim women across the world have struggled to come to terms with the sheer capriciousness of the rule, and the ease with which their husbands have divested themselves of marital and familial responsibilities.

In recent times, the instant marriage has merged with modern technology to pose a major problem for experts in sharia — or Islamic law — as well as dumped wives across the Muslim world.

In a high-tech twist to the ancient practice, some husbands have taken to e-mailing and even text messaging their divorce statements to their wives' cell phones. In Malaysia last year for instance, local newspapers carried reports of bothersome wives being dumped by husbands simply texting, "I d4c U, I d4c U, I d4c U."

And in a world where the marriage between sharia and SMS (Short Message Service) has bred a cryptic new techno-syntax, many anxious wives have told reporters they're too scared to access text messages from their husbands.

Divorced From Justice

Condemned by women's rights activists and many moderate Islamic scholars, the triple talaq is so widely viewed as blatantly unfair to women that a number of Muslim-majority countries — including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia — have banned the practice.

But the custom continues in some Persian Gulf countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

In recent weeks, some of the biggest public uproars against the triple talaq have been seen in India, home to a large Muslim minority. The AIMPLB (All India Muslim Personal Law Board), which sets religious policy for the nation's 120 million Muslims, reviewed the issue at a meeting this month.

Despite the public pressure though, the board — which is made up of Muslim community leaders — refused to outlaw the practice.

Instead, it called for a "campaign to educate society" about "the evils" of the instant divorce.

But Asghar Ali Engineer, a leading Indian Muslim rights activist and head of the Institute for Islamic Studies, has little faith in the AIMPLB's call for an awareness campaign. "They talk, but they never do anything," he says. "For several decades, we've been campaigning against this unjust practice, but nothing's happened."

Abusing Minority Fears

One of the main problems, according to Engineer, is the fact that Muslims in India — unlike their neighbors in Pakistan and Bangladesh — are a minority in a Hindu-dominated country.

Although India has the world's second-largest population of Muslims after Indonesia, Muslims form just 12 percent of India's total population. About 80 percent of India's 1 billion people are Hindus.

While right-wing Hindu political parties support a uniform civil code that would apply to all Indians, regardless of religion, minority groups such as Muslims and Christians believe it would mean being subject to Hindu laws, thereby encroaching on their religious freedoms.

"The problem with Muslims in India is that the conservative ulema [clergy] is taking advantage of a minority psychology," says Engineer. "Because Muslims in India by and large feel they are in the minority, it becomes difficult to change the rules — even though thousands of Muslim women are suffering under this practice."

A 'Mockery of Islamic Law'

But many Islamic experts question whether the instant divorce rule is even sanctioned by sharia.

"It's a total mockery of Islamic law," says Riffat Hassan, a religious studies professor at the University of Louisville, Ky. "The triple divorce is obviously a man-made, patriarchal custom. It's a case of regional practices and customs being mistaken for a religiously sanctioned practice."

The regional argument, according to Hassan, explains why the instant divorce has historically not been as widespread in the Arab world as in the Indian subcontinent.

Under Islamic law, marriage is a social contract, which husbands and wives have a right to break if it does not work.

For husbands, the Kitab al-Talaq [Book of Divorce] from a popular sunna — or saying of the prophet Muhammad — mentions three forms of divorce. Talaq-al-Ahsan, which gives a couple three months to separate, is the most recommended form, while the talaq al-bida, or the instant divorce, is the most frowned on.

Over the years though, several schools of Islam have developed their own marriage systems. And in countries like India, where the Muslim population hails from several sects, it's a challenge to try to homogenize divorce rules or impose outright bans.

Indian Muslims do, however, have access to civil courts. And according to Flavia Agnes, founder of Majlis, a Bombay-based women's legal rights group, Indian courts have developed a "gender sensitivity" to the issue, overturning several disputed triple talaqs in recent times.

Forcing Mediation or Accepting Separation?

But Aziza al-Hibri, a law professor at the University of Richmond and president of Karamah, a Washington, D.C.-based organization of Muslim women lawyers, disagrees with the recent moves to ban the instant divorce.

"I don't think the right approach is to ban it," says al-Hibri. "I think the Islamic solution, where sharia is followed to the last dot, would be the right one."

Al-Hibri believes the instant divorce — if and when it happens — is probably for the best. "If the husband is unreasonable, how can you force him to go to mediation?" she asks. "In Islam, mediation is based on consent — you can't use coercion to force people to make choices."

The central concern for modern Islamic jurists, according to al-Hibri, should be establishing the financial rights of women seeking divorce and addressing social issues surrounding divorces.

Indeed, economic survival and the stigma still attached to divorce in India appear to be one of the main reasons Haseena is upset about her instant divorce.

Although the kindly postman did save her from an instant divorce more than five years ago, her husband managed to issue her a verbal, face-to-face talaq, which she is currently contesting in a Bombay family court.

"I want money," says the impoverished woman, who works as a lowly paid domestic maid. "I have got nothing. I have a son to support. What can I do? What can I do?" she repeats plaintively in her native Hindi. "I want my husband back because he's my husband. He has to support me."