A Few Men Worth Lashing

If we could go past the debate of whether three divorces given in one instance are to be considered one or three, maybe we can focus a bit on the trauma that a woman goes through when her husband tortures her with the pronouncement of the word divorce. I am saying tortured because the intention of the man here is not to make a decision and nor to give a warning, but to play with the emotions of the woman and bring her to subjugation. There are Muslim men here who pronounce the divorce word day and night but do not let go of the wife saying they did not mean it or they were just threatening. Is that considerable?

Consider in the light of the following Hadith,

‘There are three issues that the reality of them is a reality and joking about them is also a reality; marriage, divorce and revoking divorce.’

Then there are those spectators of divorce who are busy in keeping count of the divorce rather than addressing the issue at hand. The point is that divorce by the man is supposed to be a process by which a man can make his wife understand that things have become unbearable for him, and if things are not rectified, he can exit the marriage by giving a suitable absorption time. When he gives the first divorce, it is warning count one. If the issue is not resolved within three months, the divorce matures and executes itself. Both partners are free to marry elsewhere or even remarry each other. Should the first divorce be reconciled by the man within three months, the marriage continues. Should things continue to be unbearable, the second divorce would serve as warning count two. The divorce may mature or revoke as said afore within a period of three months. God forbid, should the dilemma happen a third time, its warning count three, over and out with immediate effect. No more three months chance period together. The man and woman cannot stay together a dime further.

Few of our men know this gradual process of warnings and then the final divorce. It is a method meant to get across a message meaningfully rather than show fist power and give emotional shocks. Yet our men use the divorce word to control their domestic life by a shock-and-control method.

By Islam, three divorces cannot be given all together. A man did so during Prophet Muhammed SAW’s time and Prophet’s face turned red with anger saying,

‘Have people started playing with religion while I am still around?’

However, men continued tempering with the legal divorce process. So Syedna Umar RA used his juristic ruling right of Ijtehad and pronounced the triple divorce effective in implementation, to punish the men who were playing with the fire word divorce. In effect, they got what they gave out, lost their wife who they were trying to terrorize and got the additional punishment of fifty lashes.

Today, the instant triple divorce has become rampant in the society, with the original correct and effective method of divorce unknown to the majority. In jurisprudence, the instant triple divorce is called Talaq-e-Bidah, that is, the innovated divorce. It is a sin, but no one realizes the sin of it anymore, neither it serves as a punishment for the men in our male dominated society anymore, nor do the guilty men get the punishment of fifty lashes anymore.

The Pakistan Family Court needs to rectify two things. If a man files for divorce, the divorce should mature after three months and it should be one divorce only. Currently, the court itself automatically issues the second and third divorce, a month apart each, unfortunately closing the doors of any possible future reconciliation. Secondly, the court should re-implement the punishment  of fifty lashes Syedna Umar RA meted out to men who pronounced the triple divorce. It should be meted out to those men too who keep pronouncing the divorce word day and night and then back out. It is the digital age. The women can record the multiple divorce shouts by the husband on their mobiles and empower themselves against the divorce terrorism.

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Why Not Israel ?

Just like the Jews and Muslims are brothers in Faith, sprouting from one biological and spiritual father, Prophet Ibraheem AS, and two sequels of religious scriptures, the Holy Tablets and the Holy Quran, so are the states of Pakistan and Israel. Pakistan was born in 1947 and Israel was born in 1948, albeit … an illegitimate child.

Pakistan was created or let us say recreated for the resident Muslims of the subcontinent over taken by the British. While Israel was created out of thin air on the land of the Palestinians by transporting forsaken Jews from all over the world to it. It is similar to the scenario that some bullies should barge into Islamabad, start throwing out its residents and taking over their homes. Absurd idea? Well yes, it actually happened in Palestine. First big chunks of Palestine were taken over and then they worked on the details … chucking out Muslim residents from their towns and villages and homes and putting in their own suitcases. It is still going on …

A few days ago, one of our special seat parliamentarians made a speech in the parliament in an effort to resolve the bloody Palestine-Israel issue. She made the following two points.

She said that the Israelis are our brethren and blessed as we bless them in our daily supplications of Darood Shareef. She quoted the phrase of آل إبراهيم. She forgot that in the eyes of Islam, the bonding of religious brotherhood and lineage is based on Faith and not bloodline. When Prophet Nuh AS mounted his ark, he pleaded to Allah Almighty to save his son as he was from his family and Allah Almighty had promised to save his family. At that point, because of the Kufr of Prophet Nuh AS’s son, Allah Almighty replied,

“He said, ‘O Nuh, indeed he is not of your family; indeed, he is [one whose] work was other than righteous, so ask Me not for that about which you have no knowledge. Indeed, I advise you, lest you be among the ignorant.’” [Holy Quran, Hud 11:46, Saheeh International]

Upon realization, Prophet Nuh AS retreated and reproached his plea.

No doubt the Israelis were once the chosen people and favorites of Allah Almighty because of their prophetic lineage. However, when the masses chose to disbelieve, disobey and kill the very same prophets because of whom they were the chosen people, they became the مغضوب عليهم, the cursed upon by God’s anger, as recited in Surah Al-Fateha at least twenty times a day, before the recitation of Darood Shareef, which the parliamentarian was referring to in her speech.

She then quoted the very awe-inspiring episode of change of Qiblah as an argument for the possible division of the holy lands between the Muslims and Jews by Allah Almighty himself. First of all, let it be known that the first ever construction and worship house built on Earth was the Holy Ka’bah, by the name of Bakkah, which submerged during Prophet Nuh AS’s deluge. It was then reconstructed by Prophet Ibraheem AS and his son Prophet Ismail AS and is known as the First Qiblah. Prophet Ibraheem AS’s other son, Prophet Ishaq’s lineage settled in the area of Palestine and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was made their Qiblah. It is known as the Second Qiblah. Prophet Muhammed AS always prayed in the direction of the First Qiblah as it was in his homeland and he loved it for being the first Qiblah. However, when opposition and persecution brought the call of Islam to a standstill in Makkah, Prophet Muhammed SAW was invited by the folks of Madinah to migrate. There, three strong Jewish tribes resided. Prophet Muhammed SAW got the divine commandment to start praying in the direction of the Second Qiblah instead of the First Qiblah. Some narrations suggest that it was for the purpose of consolidating the hearts of the Jews with the Muslims; to remind them that both the scriptures originated from the same God, and hence both the Qiblahs belonged to the same God. Only, one had been abrogated in favor of the other but this was yet to be understood by the Jews. Now the words used by the parliamentarian were ‘Prophet Muhammed SAW did it too please the Jews’. There is a fine line between trying to please someone and trying to comrade someone. Trying to please someone would perhaps imply giving in to them eventually and to comrade someone would perhaps imply to win them over and bring them to your side. Prophet Muhammed SAW was invincible in his cause like all prophets are. He did not act to please anybody but to please Allah Almighty and he followed none other than the command of Allah Almighty. His heart turned towards the First Qiblah over and over again but he continued to pray in the direction of the Second Qiblah for sixteen to seventeen months until finally Allah Almighty reverted the final Qiblah back to the First Qiblah. Now three mosques stood as the holy mosques for the Muslims. The Holy Ka’bah in Makkah, the Mosque of the Prophet in Madinah and the Farthest Mosque in Jerusalem, where Prophet Muhammed SAW on his way to Miraj, the Heavenly Ascent, lead the congregation prayers of all the past prophets, thereby establishing the finality of his prophethood in the lineage of prophets.

Some thirteen hundred years later, the British government aided the scattered Jews to group together from all over the world and bag a country for themselves in Palestine after World War II. It surprises me that the Jews should be aided by the Christians, whose god Jesus, in the opinion of the Jews, is an illegitimate child of the promiscuous non-virgin Mary (God forbid). But then, perhaps it should not be such a surprise as most of the Christians and Jews today have basically converted to atheism and find humor in cartooning their own so-to-say prophets. He who does not respect his own prophet, how can he respect the prophet of others?

Our parliamentarian tried to fish for a solution to the century long Palestine-Israel conflict by some stray fragments of scripture and history, but obviously erred erroneously. Jerusalem belongs to the Muslims, after the holy lands of Makkah and Madinah. We have not, and shall never accept Israel.

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