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Maulvis takes money for one-night stand with divorced Muslim women

Muslim Women, Maulvi, Muslim Clerics, Nikah halala, Triple Talaq, Divorced Muslim women with maulavi, National NewsPhoto of a Muslim woman.

New Delhi: It’s terrible to know that lots of Muslim Clerics in India are offering them self for a one-night stand with divorced Muslim women who are using Islamic law to save their marriages, in a media house investigation it has been found.

 

 

The women are charged anywhere between Rs 20,000 (£240) and Rs 1.5 lakh (£1800) 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 remarry her first husband under personal laws, the probe discovered.

The findings have blown the lid off the taboo tradition that has remained largely unnoticed amid intense debates over triple talaq in the media and the country’s top court.

Rising above their political differences, Hindu and Muslim leaders called nikah halala a criminal act after an India Today investigation revealed the findings of its investigation.

They demanded the perpetrators shown in the network’s special report be prosecuted for rape.The investigation found many Islamic scholars putting themselves up for sale to 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.

The cleric was already married. But he was negotiating his role play as a husband for a night with the reporters posing as relatives of a fictitious divorced Muslim woman.

The Moradabad imam admitted he had officiated several nikah halala marriages.This time, he proposed a package deal for the entire service, including sex. ‘It’s Rs 1 lakh,’ he said.

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, as the media house investigation observed. At Delhi’s Jamia Nagar, the team met Zubair Qasmi, a qualified maulana married with two wives.

He nominated himself for a 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 Qasmi based his fee on mehr, money or a gift a Muslim 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 Rs 40,000 or Rs 50,000 (in return for participation in nikah halala). No problem in it,’ Qasmi said.

As India awaits the Supreme Court’s judgement over triple talaq, the dangerous trapdoor of nikah halala remains wide open for divorced Muslim women, the probe noted.

 

 

The head of the Imam Council of India said ‘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, ‘These people should be thrown out of the mosques. They should be booked.’

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 men offering themselves for nikah halala.

They should be beaten with the shoes and thrown out of the mosques. They should be charged with rape. Nikah halala is a regressive un-Islamic practice,’ he said.

BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia, himself a lawyer, underscored the need for abolishing nikah halala like ‘sati’ in Hinduism. ‘Nikah halala and polygamy, as triple talaq, are regressive. Sati is abolished. So should be these practices,’ he said.

sonalika arya
the authorsonalika arya