“This is lust. It’s not permissible in Islam. This is a criminal offence committed in the name of religion,” said Maulana Maqsood-ul-Hasan Qasmi, the head of the Imam Council of India. “These people should be thrown out of the mosques. They should be booked.”
The problem with that is that this practice is Islamic. Allah’s regulations for divorce emphasize regarding women that “men have a degree over them” (Qur’an 2:228). This may be why men can divorce their wives simply by saying, “Talaq” — You are divorced — but women may not do this. Such an easy procedure leads to divorces in a fit of pique, followed by reconciliation — and the Qur’an anticipates this and attempts to head it off by stipulating that a husband who divorces his wife three times cannot reconcile with her until she marries another man and is in turn divorced by him: “And if he has divorced her [for the third time], then she is not lawful to him afterward until she marries a husband other than him” (Qur’an 2:230). This has given rise to the phenomenon of “temporary husbands,” who marry and divorce thrice-divorced women at the behest of Islamic clerics even in our own day, so that these poor women can then return to their original husbands.
“Exposed: How maulvis take money for one-night stand with divorced women trying to save marriage,” by Sushant Pathak and Jamshed Adil Khan, India Today, August 16, 2017 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
As awful as that may sound, a number of religious scholars are offering themselves up for one-night stands with divorced Muslim women trying to save their marriages under a disputable Islamic law, an India Today investigation has found.
They charge anywhere between Rs 20,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh to participate in nikah halala, a controversial practice that requires a woman to marry someone else, sleep with him and get a divorce again in order to be able to remarry her first husband under personal laws, the probe discovered.
India Today’s investigative team has blown the lid off the taboo tradition that has remained largely unnoticed amid intense debates over triple talaq on the media and in the country’s top court.
The probe found many Islamic scholars putting themselves up on sale for women desperate to restore their broken marriages.
At a restaurant in Ghaziabad, the undercover team first met Mohammed Nadeem, an imam at Madina Masjid in Moradabad’s Lal Bagh neighbourhood.
MARRIED CLERICS READY FOR ONE-NIGHT STAND
The cleric, the investigation found, was already married. Still, he negotiated his role-play as a husband for a night with India Today’s reporters posing as relatives of a divorced Muslim woman.
“Will your wife object to it?” asked India Today’s reporter.
“No, no. She won’t have any objection,” imam Nadeem replied.
“Have you spoken with her?” prodded the reporter.
“No, I haven’t spoken with her. I haven’t told her. What’s the need to tell her?” Nadeem shot back.
The Moradabad imam admitted he had officiated several nikah halala marriages before. This time, he proposed a package deal for the entire service, including sex.
“It’s Rs 1 lakh,” he demanded. Imam Nadeem guaranteed issuing divorce after spending a night with the bride for her to become eligible to go back to her first husband in accordance with the personal law.
The business of one-night grooms is widespread, the India Today investigation observed.
DELHI
At Delhi’s Jamia Nagar, the team met Zubair Qasmi, a qualified maulana married with two wives. He nominated himself up for a third at the prospect of nikah halala, in exchange for money.
“I spend many nights out. It’s much easier to manage this with two (wives). One would think I am with the second. And the second would think I am with the other. It’s not at all difficult with two (wives),” he bragged.
Zubair Qasim based his fee on mehr – money or gift the groom pledges to his bride during Islamic marriages.
“Don’t worry about anything. I’ll make every arrangement. If Rs 30,000 is set as mehr, it will be either 40,000 or 50,000 (in return for participation in nikah halala). No problem in it,” Qasim said.
The rot runs deep.
Next, India Today’s investigative journalists visited Mohammad Mustaquim of Delhi’s Darul Uloom Mahmoodia Madrasa.
Educated in Islamic studies, he was keen to do what he had done several times before — sleeping with divorced women to consummate nikah halala.
“There was a woman in the room. I went there and had sex. Before leaving at 2-3 am, I divorced her,” he confessed….
“This is lust. It’s not permissible in Islam. This is a criminal offence committed in the name of religion,” said Maulana Maqsood-ul-Hasan Qasmi, the head of the Imam Council of India. “These people should be thrown out of the mosques. They should be booked.”
Zafar Sareshwala, chancellor of the Maulana Azad National Urdu university, blamed personal laws for certain regressive practices in Islam.
“These people should be put in jail and charged with rape,” he said, demanding strong action against men participating in nikah halala for one-night stands. “I think the genesis of the problem lies in the Shariat Act of 1937,” he insisted. Authors of the personal laws, he added, had been “millions of miles away” from the teachings of Islam.
Maulana Ansar Raza of the Gharib Nawaz Foundation called for immediate ex-communication of religious scholars offering themselves for nikah halala. “They should be beaten with shoes and thrown out of mosques. They should be charged with rape. Nikah halala is a regressive un-Islamic practice,” he said. “I salute India Today for this story.”
In his comments, BJP spokesman Gaurav Bhatia, himself a lawyer, underscored the need for abolishing nikah halala like the sati practice in Hinduism. “Nikah halala and polygamy, as triple talaq are regressive. Sati is abolished. So should be these practices,” he said. “India Today’s expose will help the civilised society to come forward for human rights and dignity.”