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New Delhi: The All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board (AIMWPLB) has released the Shariat Nikahnama that they claim would give equal rights to both Muslim men and women.
Women belonging to both the Shiite and Sunni sects, are demanding a revolutionary nikahnama that does away with contentious issue of triple talaq (divorce).
Entitled to divorce
If the board has its way, a Muslim woman would be entitled to seek divorce if her husband was found having illicit relationship with another woman.
The board has also rejected any divorce done through SMS, email, phone as well as video conferencing, besides rejecting divorce done on provocation.
A Muslim woman can seek divorce if she is forced by her husband to indulge in unnatural sex. She can also seek divorce if her husband contracts Aids.
"People use SMS, email and the internet to give talaq in the absence of a witness. Such ways have been banned in the new Nikahnama," said Shaista Amber, President of the AIMWPLB.
"We have framed the new nikahnama strictly in accordance with the tenets of Islam, which clearly prohibits any kind of harassment or oppression of a married woman by her husband," Amber said.
She added that the sharia also entitles a woman to get separated even when the husband refuses to grant a divorce. "Besides extra-marital relationship, [the guidelines] include absence of physical relationship between the husband and wife for more than a year, abandonment of the wife for more than four years, failure of the husband to look after the wife and family or any kind of ill-treatment or torture," says the new nikahnama.
The new nikahnama has 17-point guidelines for marriage under the sharia for bride and groom, while eight points on the divorce process.
Key issues
Controversial points of new nikahnama
- --Triple talaq said in one go will not be acceptable
- --Talaq to be spaced out over a period of 3 months
- --Talaq not be allowed via phone or SMS
- --New Nikahnama insists on free will for the girl in case of nikah
- --Talaq cannot be given under the influence of alcohol
- --Talaq given to pregnant woman should be considered illegal
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