India’s Supreme Court Strikes Down ‘Instant Divorce’ for Muslims
22, 2017
NEW DELHI — India’s highest court struck down a legal provision on Tuesday
that allowed Muslim men to instantly divorce their wives, taking a stand against a practice increasingly deemed unacceptable in the Muslim world.
Instead of making husbands responsible for helping support divorced wives, the new law
left women "to beg at different places for maintenance," she said in the 2014 study.
"Muslims should be ready." There are no official statistics on the prevalence of instant divorce in India, but one study found
that among a sample of more than 4,700 women, 525 had divorced, 404 of them through triple talaq.
That law was a grave disservice to Muslim women, according to Noorjehan Safia Niaz, co-founder of the Bharatiya
Muslim Mahila Andolan, one of the Muslim women’s advocacy groups that filed a brief in the Supreme Court case.
"Women are talked about as if they are in need of protection, not in terms of their rights." She added, "Nearly every reference to the Muslim woman in the majority
and dissenting opinions reduces Muslim women to ‘suffering victims.’ " The Supreme Court has often taken the lead in making landmark changes to Indian law.
Of those who voted against, two said the practice was unconstitutional and one said it went against Islamic law.