Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology: ''' Skewed '''

The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) wants to formally legalise a social ill that is already prevalent in our society. Under the current law, the minimum age for marriage is 18 for boys and 16 for girls but this is observed only in the breach as cultural traditions have tended to have more weight than the force of written law. Now the CII has declared that there should be no age limit for marriage, declaring that a girl can be married off at any age and her wedding consummated once she reaches puberty. This is a ruling that is both inadvisable and ahistorical. As life expectancy has increased through the ages so has the socially acceptable age at which marriages take place. Girls who have barely reached their teens do not have the maturity to deal with the responsibility of marriage and those who are forced into it usually have to endure the marriage because their parents want to express tribal solidarity, keep property within the family or simply for economic reasons so that the child becomes someone else’s property. None of these reasons should be good enough for the CII to endorse a practice that we desperately need to wipe out.

The government has the authority to decide if it should accept CII recommendations. In this case the decision should be swift and simple. The CCI advised another change in the law which should be similarly rejected. Right now, men have to obtain permission from their current wives before contracting another marriage. The CII would prefer if men had the right to marry anyone without needing consent from those they are already married to. In the minds of the CII members, so long as the men are able to provide equal time to their wives the question of assent need not be considered. This recommendation, too, makes light of the rights of women since there are considerations other than time that a women would take into account before allowing her husband to take another wife. At a time when we should be devising ways to increase the rights of women, both on paper and in the unwritten traditions of society, the CII has instead taken the opposite tack.

We wonder why the CII and its members do not give their views on customs that involve the handing over of women to settle a dispute, such as ‘vani’ and ‘swara’, and against ‘honour’ killings or jirga-ordered gang rapes. These are undisputedly anti-Islamic. Yet even though such barbarities continue and are regularly reported, the CII has not seen it fit to comment on them. Priorities then are quite evidently skewed. There is much this body could do to create a state which stands closer to the ideals of Islam. Greater social equity would be one step in this direction. Yet these issues are ignored, and others raised which do not serve us well as a society. We need more safeguards for vulnerable citizens and a wider focus on the issues which contribute to injustice rather than a tunnel-visioned approach that keeps us locked in behind barriers, creates unnecessary controversy. The CII’s failure to take up issues that can contribute towards this is disturbing.

Its rulings, one should keep in mind, reflect only the view of some and do not convey a consensus view. These views must be rejected as antithetical to our human rights obligations. A new and better balanced CII may also be considered.