Keep Thy Faith

Finally!

Finally I'm back... and this time... I do intend to stick around for good. Interestingly, I had been toying with the idea of returning to this platform for a few days now and even wrote another post (but had to save it for completion for some reason) for the same. However, I keep that aside to come back with a good piece of news. In fact it is what drove me to write today. So here I go.

This morning, when I opened the paper, I was expecting the usual dope on crime, politics, Rahul Gandhi, Hanif Sayyed's conviction etc. etc., however, I was pleasantly surprised to see a front page item in TOI captioned 'Bigamy (actually its Polygamy) against spirit of Islam, says law panel'. Aha!! What a joyous moment for me! Finally... I mean finally someone took a closer look and figured out the true nature of this much misunderstood concept.

Read more about what Islam says about Polygamy here

The Law Commission has come to understand that the concept of polygamy conflicts with the true spirit of Islam and the traditional understanding of the Muslim law on the same is gravely faulty. Well, its such a relief that this concept can no longer be twisted and used by cheap, ill-intentioned men to justify a second marriage. A case in point can be the trashy 'love-saga' between the convert-to-Islam Chand Mohammad and Fiza. An embarassment for Islam and for human beings in general. Lets hope this observation of the Law Commission serves as a wake-up call to the million of people who try to take advantage of the general ignorance towards the 'Shariah'. As unfortunate as it is, Muslims have always misrepresented Islam and one can't really blame others for misconstruing any idea or concept laid down by Islam.

However, speaking of Shariah, it is interesting to note that polygamy is the only concept that one may find worthy of criticism in the law that governs the Muslims over the world. There is no other angle, and I say that with absolute knowledge, there is is no other angle in the whole of the Shariah that one can criticise for the sake of being outdated or irrelevant or unjust.

In fact, I would suggest that in the absence of any other code of conduct, why don't we actually adopt the 'shariah' as the uniform civil law of the country. For the well read it will come as no surprise that until 1807, the criminal law of the land was as laid out in Islam. Yes, the British were astute enough to follow 'Islam's way' to deal with crime. So why don't we take it up to govern the country. And before anyone takes offence or thinks that I am biased, let me make this very clear that it is not communally motivated and is a simple suggestion for uniform governance of the people of the country. Rest, obviously, is for the people in power to decide.

But coming back to where we started, I'm really happy that some bit of fog has been lifted and people may get a better view of Islam on this concept at least.

Until next time...

posted by Shanya @ 6:38 PM