Bangladesh Declares Fatwa Illegal

All extra-judicial punishment, including passing religious edicts or fatwa, have been declared illegal in Bangladesh.

The petitions were filed following several newspaper reports and investigations by the petitioners into violence inflicted on women in the name of fatwa by local religious leaders and powerful corners.

It was alleged in the petitions that a number of deaths, suicides and incidents of grievous hurt of women were reported arising from punishment given in salish, but the law-enforcement agencies took no action to prevent those unlawful actions.

This can only be good news for the thousands of victims of extra-judicial punishments, the large majority of whom have traditionally been women. A catalogue of abuses against women by decree of sharia court and by fatwa have been recorded in Bangladesh over the years by human rights groups. Some of them have been described in this article. Interesting to find Bangladeshi clerics quoted in that article, warning against the travesties of justice instigated by spurious sharia judges who, for a fee, spout fatwas:

Maulana Haq said an Alem or Mufti (Islamic scholar) can pronounce ‘fatwa’ but none has the right to punish anyone. “Punishment can be given only by a court, not the people who utter fatwa,” he observed.

The Khatib admitted that due to ignorance of some village leaders and illiterate ‘morals’, poor women are victimised by fatwa. “They are like quacks, they don’t deserve the right to utter any fatwa.”

More recently, there is the incident of the sixteen year old girl who received 101 lashes by order of a sharia court because she had become pregnant as a result of being raped.

Bangladesh’s High Court has ordered authorities in an eastern district to protect and produce in court a 16-year-old girl who was lashed 101 times earlier this month after becoming pregnant as the result of a rape. The girl, who has not been named, received the punishment on the orders of village elders in the Brahmanbaria district who issued a “fatwa,” or Islamic ruling, declaring that she be flogged for immoral behavior. The elders pardoned the 20 year-old rapist. The incident occurred five months after the country’s highest court issued a ruling ordering authorities to investigate incidents of extra-judicial punishments and take action against those responsible.

The August ruling came after a rash of earlier floggings of women, including one who spoke to a man from a different community, another who filed a rape complaint, and a third who refused sexual advances made by a relative. In each case locally-issued fatwas ordered punishment of 101 lashes.

In the latest case, Bangladesh’s Daily Star reported that the assailant, who used to taunt the 16-year-old on her way to school, raped her last April. She kept it quiet and her family subsequently married her off to a man in a neighboring village.

But when medical tests shortly after the marriage showed her to be months into her pregnancy, he divorced her. After an abortion she returned to her family home, but village elders then declared the family should be isolated until she was punished.

The banning of fatwas will not stop violence against women or misogyny in general, but it will certainly help to prevent the miseries inflicted on women compounded by fatwa punishment.

Congratulations to Barrister Sara Hossain and her team for successfully pushing this through the courts and onto the statute books.

So, great news for the women of Bangladesh. But bad news, we suspect, for Islamists and Sholto Byrnes and his friends at the New Statesman. Not that we’re sorry.