Putting on the onus on Islamic clerics to give correct information on various issues such as talaq, Mehboobali Padaganur, member of the Muslim Personal Law Board of Vijayapura district, has said that clerics should not confine themselves to merely giving sermons on the basics of Islam.
“Islam does not mean only offering namaz or reading the Quran; Islam offers solutions to various critical social issues too. Clerics must educate people about these aspects to dispel misconceptions in Islam,” he said. Speaking at a programme to create awareness on Muslim personal law organised by Jamat-e-Islam-e-Hind as part of a national-level event here on Sunday, he said that awareness was essential to understand the true meaning of Islam.
Criticising the efforts being made by the Union government to bring in a Uniform Civil Code, he alleged that the government was trying to interfere in the Sharia law which is part of the Muslim personal law guaranteed by the Constitution.
“What is strange is that even the British who ruled India did not interfere in Islamic affairs; this is why the British government then formulated the Muslim personal law in 1937. The law makes it amply clear that States shall not interfere in the personal laws of Muslims and allow the community to address the issues such as property right and talaq as per the Sharia law. But the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre is making efforts to bring changes in the law which is unacceptable to Muslims,” he said. In his address, Mohammad Yusuf Kazi, district president of the Jamat, said that the NDA government was forgetting the fact that fundamental rights were different from Directive Principles of State Policy.
“In a conflict between fundamental rights and Directive Principles, the former always overrides the latter,” he said. He said that the objective of the 15-day event was to give clarity on personal law of the Muslims who were committing crime such as divorcing their wives by pronouncing talaq thrice at one go.
