Our greatest cricketing hero returned a few days ago to his native land after officially initiating a lengthy process of investigations in the UK — a move that is bound to impact Karachi in one way or another. Asserting to “Fight till the last ball...”, it is apparent that this is one innings which will not be declared until a result is clear.

Imran Khan has filed a petition with Scotland Yard on the ‘alleged involvement of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief, Altaf Hussain, in the May 12 carnage in Karachi,’ along with substantial ‘evidence from Pakistan’. Prepared by a legal team in London, a formal case according to the local laws of the UK was submitted to Scotland Yard which will enable one of the most respected law-enforcement organisations to open investigations on Mr Altaf Hussain, a British citizen residing in London for the past 12 years.

The Imran-Altaf/MQM match, which promises to be interesting for spectators, is likely to raise a spectre of violence. The freshly whitewashed walls of Karachi are just a fraction of how dirty the game may yet become. The most crucial moot point at the present juncture is the upcoming election. While Imran has remained a political nonentity in Karachi so far, the present saga has by default earned him respect in the eyes of those whose cowardice never allowed them to speak their minds on Karachi politics the way Imran is currently doing. And just this one act of Imran which many predict might even end in bloodshed has given him much more political worth than he probably deserves, in a city which otherwise has an intrinsic distrust of politicians from Punjab from where he hails.

Strange, how politics makes heroes out of fools and brings on the downfall of the mighty with just one miscalculated move. And May 12 is turning out to be that one error of judgment which will probably be responsible for the fall of many mighty men.

In retaliation to Imran’s attack on their party leader, the MQM has filed a ‘rare reference’ in the National Assembly Secretariat seeking disqualification of Imran as an NA member on the basis of his alleged ‘immoral activities.’ But you don’t need a political

analyst to tell you that allegations on personal behaviour can hardly be a cause to disqualify an MNA when numerous NA members with FIRs and a prolific criminal record in their name are ‘governing’ in provinces and as high officials on critical posts.

And, to this effect, Imran Khan has been very vocal, categorically stating on air that if his MNA status is cancelled on the grounds stated, a retaliatory reference from him is bound to empty half the National Assembly!

While the Imran-MQM battle is predicted to be lengthy, dirty and dangerous, the concern for Karachiites is that its severest repercussions will be felt mainly in this much abused city yet again. While Imran will retreat to his haveli in Mianwali, the situation in Karachi will again be fraught with peril. There are however some optimists who feel that because of the delicacy of the situation in an election year, political parties may refrain from exercising their street power to the full. But then there are those too who fear that extreme evil will be revisiting Karachi, bringing back the trend of cut-off limbs and body bags thrown on the streets – a daily Karachi feature not so long ago. Perhaps it is wrong to speculate so much in the extreme. After all one is always guilty until proven innocent, or was it the other way around?

(The first instalment of this article was published in Saturday’s Dawn)

LONDON: But not all councils are as committed to liberal interpretations of Sharia. Estimates of the number of mosques across the UK range from 1,000 to 2,000. They serve a hugely diverse Muslim community – at 1.6 million people, Muslims are the largest religious minority in Britain. Each mosque has its own imams, some of whom are scholars like Sayeed, while others are simply devout Muslims fulfilling a need for religious guidance in their communities. The Islamic Sharia Council is one of the oldest and most respected, but it admits that there is no single body that can claim to be fully representative of all British Muslims.

Neither is there any regulation of imams, or any benchmark for the quality of advice that they give. Abdul Jalil Sajid, former secretary of the mosque and community affairs committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, estimates that 35 per cent of imams are unqualified. No one knows how many of them are operating in Sharia councils, applying their own interpretations of Islamic law.

According to Cassandra Balchin, of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), too many of them promote a highly conservative interpretation of Sharia that overemphasises the rights of the husband. “They don’t seem to recognise the multiple forms of divorce that are available to women,” she says. “There are usually no women involved, whereas in a lot of Muslim countries you can have women judges involved in family courts.” “They are bringing the husband in and saying, can he please release her.” But, says Balchin: “If the husband has violated his wife’s rights within the marriage, Islam gives the wife the right to divorce irrespective of his consent. The woman is left with this feeling that she is powerless and that she has to beg for everything. This is a very conservative interpretation.”

The question of which councils are at fault is as hard to pin down as the range of interpretations of Sharia. Shahien Taj, founding director of the All Wales Saheli Association, says that this confusion itself leaves many women bewildered and uncertain of their rights. “If I can’t get my head around it, I can’t expect anyone else to,” she says.

Parvin Ali, founding director of the Fatima Women’s Network, which is based in Leicester, counsels women on the receiving end of one-sided judgments. She says she has not seen women from the Islamic Sharia Council in Leyton, but has heard complaints about councils elsewhere.

Another major problem is bad advice over what exactly constitutes a valid marriage and divorce in the first place. The councils “seem to imply that their decisions would be valid in some other legal context”, says Balchin, “but that, in fact, is not the case”.

Islamic marriages and divorces conducted in Muslim countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh are recognised as valid in the UK, but the British courts do not recognise Islamic ceremonies carried out in this country unless they are registered separately with the civil authorities. The result is that some Muslims think they are protected by family law when they are not, and others think they are properly divorced when, in fact, they are still married. In one case, Luton police contacted WLUML after pursuing a man for bigamy who had married in Luton, then flown to Pakistan and married again. After looking into the case, they found that the first marriage was invalid as it had been conducted by an imam in an unregistered mosque. His first wife was left with no legal protection by the family courts, and the husband was free to bring his second wife back to Britain as his legal spouse.

There are also consequences for ex-husbands. One 39-year-old man came to the Islamic Sharia Council after he had split up with his wife, whom he had married Islamically but not civilly. They have a young daughter, and he had provided the down payment on their home, which is in his ex-wife’s name. All the Sharia council could do was issue a recommendation that under Sharia law their assets should be split proportionally, and that both parents should have equal access to their daughter. But as they were not legally married, the husband had no claim over the family home, and when his wife began to prevent him from seeing his daughter, he found he had very limited rights as a father.

“I don’t have a leg to stand on,” he says. “If I approach her house holding a letter from the Sharia council . . . if she calls the police, it’s not a letter that can be used in a court of law.”

The Islamic Sharia Council, along with other Sharia councils, argues that much of this confusion could be swept away if Sharia law on marriages and divorces were recognised under UK civil law. But according to Lord Justice Thorpe, deputy chair of the Family Justice Council, there is already legislation available to them. “It seems to me they haven’t really got a problem at the marriage end,” he says. “All you have to do is register your place of worship and, once registered, then marriages solemnised will be good in civil law.”

And as far as divorces are concerned, he sees no reason why a recent act brought in to tackle the problem of so-called limping marriages in the British Jewish community, could not also be applied to British Muslims. But that is as far as it is likely to go. “What we can’t accept is marrying polygamously under English law,’ Lord Thorpe says.

According to Werner Menski, professor of South Asian Laws at the School of Oriental And African Studies and an expert on comparative law, the rather vague demands of the Sharia councils are as much about British Muslims attempting to define what they mean by Sharia, as they are about incorporating Islamic law into the British legal system.

“At the moment, there is a period of confusion and insecurity,” he says. “The question is, how far can we go in this pluralism, how far can we go in accepting these things? But don’t expect any answers – it’s really very difficult. Everybody in this field is scratching their heads about how to do this.”

In the council’s backroom, however, surrounded by gold-embossed tomes of Islamic jurisprudence and brown cardboard boxes, Sayeed puts his hand on his chest with pride as he explains what his work means to him. “I feel I could at last do some real good thing in the practical life of people,” he says. “I am not doing it for any financial gain in this world; I am doing it for immense reward from the Lord Almighty in the hereafter, so it fills my heart with all these riches.”

—Dawn/The Guardian News Service

Concluded