‘Certain depraved elements have again raised their head and are conspiring to rob the weaker sex of their cherished treasure of chastity by holding out false prospects of their rights in an attempt to push them again into the abyss of disgrace in which they had been rotting in the dark ages.’
Maulana Ihtisham-ul-Haq thus forcefully expressed his dissent from the proposals of his colleagues on a Commission set up in 1955 in Pakistan1 to consider possible reform of the traditional Islamic law of the family and particularly of the position of women.
The Commission had proposed, inter alia, that a husband should not be allowed to exercise either his right of polygamy or his right of unilateral repudiation without the consent of the court. This consent to a second marriage should only be given, it was suggested, where the first wife was insane, or was suffering from some incurable disease or there were other exceptional circumstances, but not where the husband merely wished to marry a prettier or a younger woman than his existing wife. Permission to repudiate should only be given when the position of the wife could be adequately safeguarded by requiring payment of the dower and suitable maintenance until her remarriage, or for life if necessary. It is perhaps a little difficult to see in such proposals a depraved conspiracy against the chastity of Muslim wives; but the intensely hostile reaction of the traditionalist member may be better appreciated when it is remembered how revolutionary these* The report of the Commission was published in the Gazette of Pakistan, Extraordinary, dated June 20, 1956, and the note of dissent in the issue of the same journal dated August 30,1956.1 have discussed the work of the Commission in my article: Reform of Family Law in Pakistan in Studia Islanuca, Ease. VII, «957-
proposals in fact were at the time. A brief account of the contemporary state of Islamic law will serve to explain this.
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