Nikah Halala: A proxy scandal

Muslim society, writes Ziya Us Salam in Nikah Halala: Sleeping with a Stranger,  is in a state of denial on nikah halala.  Many in the community blame television channels for raking it up to garner TRPs, he says.

The book is an attempt “to take the lid off this legalized form of prostitution, encouraged under the garb of faith by men of religion,” the author writes.

In the book, based on research of Islamic jurisprudence and his own investigations, Mr Salam argues that the practice is more widely prevalent than most people allow themselves to believe, and flourishes in parts of rural India.

Nikah halala and instant triple talaq, or talaq-e-biddat,  are interrelated. On petitions of Shayara Bano and others, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court invalidated instant triple talaq  in August 2017. Two years later, Parliament made it a punishable offence. But the practices of instant triple talaq and nikah halala  continue, Mr Salam says.

Nikah halala occurs when a husband pronounces instant triple talaq on his wife, but regrets it and is keen to reverse the decision. A maulvi then prescribes nikah halala, which mandates that the two cannot get together unless she marries another man, consummates the marriage, obtain a divorce, performs  iddah (that is observe the prescribed waiting period of a few menstrual cycles), then remarry her first husband.

That the woman has to consummate a marriage with another man is ostensibly a punishment for her first husband for failing to control his temper.

Nikah Halala: Sleeping with a Stranger

Author: Ziya Us Salam

Publisher:Bloomsbury

Pages: 240

Price: Rs 550

Nikah halala  is mostly practised in India and Pakistan. Muslims in both countries are predominantly followers of Imam Abu Hanifa, and the sect regards instant triple talaq  to  be a valid form of divorce. The author says nikah halala  goes against the letter and spirit of Islam; there is not a single verse that even indirectly hints at instant triple  talaq  in the Quran.
 

The practice also occurs among Muslims of subcontinental origin in the UK, but is unheard of in West Asia, including Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. In an investigation in 2017, India Today found a startling number of clerics who first pushed for  halala  to “save marriages”, then offered themselves  “out of sheer goodwill” as a temporary husband, sometimes for a few hours  or days.

Mr Salam writes about men who use this abomination in the garb of piety “to satiate their thirst for variety in bed”. Some men charge for these services, just as there are men who do it out of a misplaced sense of piety, the author writes.

Women suffer enormous mental and physical torture not just from a husband who has divorced her in a fit of anger, but also when they have to consummate marriage with strangers, mostly elderly men. There are cases when the new husband refuses to divorce the woman after nikah halala.  How does she get back to her husband and children for whose sake she might have reluctantly agreed to such a matrimonial alliance?

Since most families wish to keep it a secret, they look for trustworthy halala husbands. Bareilly resident Shabeena was forced into nikah halala by her hus­ba­nd with her father-in-law in 2011, who only divorced her after 10 days of physical relations. When her husband pronounced triple talaq  in 2017 again, he suggested she did the halala with her younger brother-in-law. This time, Shabeena refused and approached the police and the courts, receiving death threats.

Sameena Begum of western Uttar Pradesh, a victim of two triple talaqs, has led the fight against the practice, and filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court. She contends  nikah halala is rape under Indian Penal Code section 375 and polygamy, an offence under section 493. She has requested the court that section 2 of the Muslim Personal Law Application Act, 1937, should be declared arbitrary and in violation of fundamental rights. The court has kept aside deliberations on  nikah halala  and polygamy for a future date.

Sameena says she is disenchanted with the Bharatiya Janata Party, which initially supported her cause. She says UP Chief Minister Adityanath promised jobs, and announced a meagre annual allowance of Rs 6,000, or Rs 500 a month, for triple talaq victims. 

The book also recounts cases of social and economic boycott by the community where suspected triple talaq couples defied social pressure to continue to live with each other without nikah halala.  
 

The author also discovered as part of his research that most temporary husbands are concerned about the age of the woman. If she is over 40, suitors try to withdraw pleading busy schedules.

While men are keen to be halala  husbands, none is ready to accept the responsibility of fatherhood which might ensue and insist on contraception, but equally significantly every one of them believes in instant triple talaq.

If men offering nikah halala services in India are secretive about it, they have social media pages in Pakistan with their resumes and the promise of secrecy. This when Pakistan invalidated instant triple talaq more than 50 years ago. In the UK, men from Africa and Sri Lanka are preferred as  nikah halala, husbands because families are keen to maintain secrecy, the author writes.
 

Mr  Salam suggests the need to educate the young and the old alike about the injunctions of the Quran. When a child in the Muslim community learns to read the Quran in Arabic, it should be made compulsory to read the translation in the mother tongue, which over time will weaken the hold of the clerics, he writes.