ISLAMABAD: The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) says it is un-Islamic if a court uses ‘Khula’ (right of a woman to seek divorce) without the consent of a husband to dissolve a marriage. The powerful religious body observed on Thursday that courts were dissolving marriages in the name of ‘Khula’, which was not right because only the husband had the right to grant Khula after which a court could dissolve a marriage. Urging the civil courts to differentiate between ‘Khula’ and a unilateral dissolution of marriage through a court order, the CII said that several women who dissolved their marriages using ‘Khula’ were still not sure their marriage had actually been dissolved. “While Shariah has explicitly defined the framework and procedure for Khula, it has not been defined in the country’s existing marriage laws,” the CII observed. Therefore, a civil court decreeing dissolution of marriage on a wife’s plea without her husband’s consent, in the name of Khula, would be violating the injunctions of the Holy Quran and Sunnah, the council observed. The council observed that denying a husband the right to appeal against such a ‘unilateral’ court decision would be unjust as per Islamic law. According to a majority of religious scholars, a woman has to forfeit her financial rights when she uses ‘Khula’ to dissolve her marriage. However, the two can reach an agreement outside the law if an understanding is reached. As per the Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act passed in 1939, “Judicial khula is allowed to be authorised without the husband’s consent if the wife has agreed to forfeit her financial rights. Marriage is not considered a sacrament among Muslims, but rather a civil contract with spiritual and moral undertones.” “Therefore, legally, the marriage can be dissolved for a good cause. The wife has the right to dissolve a marriage on grounds of Khula if she decides she cannot live with her husband [any longer].”
.jpg)
