Editorial
Fatwa-related crimes
Should be dealt with an iron hand
From Noorjahan in the 1990s to Hena just last month, hundreds of women who have fallen victim to fatwa-related violence have made headlines which have, since, died out. The crimes, however, have not -- despite the High Court's January 2001 ruling against fatwa as illegal. In as far later as in August 2009, in response to a public interest litigation filed by some human rights organisations, the Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives (LGRD), law-enforcing agencies and union parishads and pourashabhas were directed by the High Court to take immediate measures against extra-judicial penalties in salish (arbitration).
Yet the recent cases -- among the 503 documented between 2000 and 2011 -- are testament to the fact that fatwa-instigated violence continues. The numbers and severity of punishments have actually risen. The majority of victims are women, most of them among the rural poor. Their "crimes" are those of "immoral behaviour" (which includes being raped), determined by local influential leaders and rural mullahs who, setting aside the laws of the land, have taken upon themselves the responsibility of setting social and moral standards of behaviour, interpreting religion and meting out extra-judicial punishments which are a breach of fundamental rights.
Despite an apparent sanction of religion to fatwa purely as an interpretative medium for Islamic scholars, it has had nothing to do about faith but much about power relationships of class and gender, the enforce-ment of social conformity and the restriction of free-doms in our context. We urge the government to take strict action against the instigators, perpetrators and abettors of fatwa crimes in order to put an end to such barbaric practices. We also urge the media and other social groups to aid in the dissemination of information about human rights, including the right to legal remedy together with sensitisation of the fact that fatwa is not law.
In our efforts to establish grand notions such as those of liberation and democracy, incidents of fatwa-related violence call into question our very claim to being a civilised society.
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