Another crazy panchayat

I found this article on rediff..where else

A mother of four has been driven out of her village in Murshidabad district by a Muslim panchayat after being allegedly raped by a local man three months ago.

The panchayat ruled that her marriage stood annulled in the wake of the incident and that she could neither live with her husband nor enter the predominantly Muslim village, which is about 200 km from Kolkata.

The village council ruled that the couple should pay Rs 50,000 if they wished to stay together, a condition which the victim’s husband, a daily wage labourer, failed to meet.

The victim, who was raped on July 25 in Katabagan village, filed a case at the police station in Behrampur on Friday following the intervention of Superintendent of Police Rahul Srivasatava.

The local police had earlier refused to register a case.

In her complaint, the woman accused Mansoor Ali, a local thug, of raping her in front of her four children.

“I want to keep my wife as it is not her fault, but people are not allowing me to keep her. Who will look after our four children?” her husband added.

His family was opposing his wife’s stay in the house after the incident and the matter was taken up by the panchayat of the village.

Also, her stepmother prevented her from entering her father’s house.

The panchayat also imposed a fine of Rs 18,000 on the rapist. He did not pay the fine.

First I wonder why it is being called a Muslim panchayat? Are they governed by the laws of Shariah? The judgement, if true, is inane and any sane mind will reject it.

Anti-feminism is reflected by the ruling which is so inherent in Indian villages. They represent the ideal patriarchal society were women are mere objects of exploitation. Recently in a village in MP women were asked to plough the village fields topless so as to facilitate the acceptance of prayers for rain! Its not about Islam or Hinduism but its about being illiterate and backward. The wings of modernity is still to touch these villages. Blind following of doctrines is something which is so set in their society and any attempt to deviate from this leads to the label of infidel. No doubt education has reached these villages but a change in mentality takes time. Education should bridge the gap between superstitious beliefs and being logical. Logic is something that comes after many years of education and not all member of society adhere to that. A huge majority still have the herd mentality, blindly following what is being presented to them and never contemplating on reason being their practices.

I cannot comment much as I have never experienced village life.

Regarding the Imrana case and as Polite Indian feels that it was a flaw of Islamic laws, i have this (These are the words of Dr. Zafarul-Islam Khan)
In this particular case, we had two problems. One: the media deliberately distorted the verdict of a village council (panchayat) as “Shariat Panchayat” which was a lie and caused a lot of uproar and problems here because that verdict ordered the alleged victim to marry her father-in-law: a patently wrong and insulting advice.
The other problem was with the Hanafi fiqh which surfaced because of this incident. In some of their old books it is said that even zina (rape) is like marraige and it invalidates the marriage of a son whose wife is “raped” by his own father. This interpretation is peculiar to the Hanafi fiqh where a crime (haram) is considered enough to invilidate a solid contract like marriage while in the Quran the words used are “la tankihoo ma nakaha aabaokum” where “nakaha” can mean only marriage and not a crime like rape whose perpetrator has to be punished if the crime is proved. This problem with the Hanafi fiqh will not go away as our mutis and scholars are very rigid. But at the same time people from their own ranks have called for ijtihad in such matter where no clear text from the Quran or Hadith supports such a view.
Ulama of other masalik have spoken out against this opinion.  

 The media here is not sympathetic to Muslims and uses such rare incidents to demand abolition of that tiny bit of Shariat (personal laws) which is still operative in India.
It is preposterous to say that Imrana’s option is to marry the rapist. No scholar or mufti has said it. This was the opinion of illiterate village elders who were headed by a Hindu headman!
In any case, the rape even if it has taken place does not repudiate the marriage except in the opinion of the Hanafi school. Imrana is perfectly free and able to follow Ahle Hadith or any other school which does not consider that rape by a father-in-law invalidates his dauther-in-law’s marriage. It is common here that in cases of “triple talaq” Hanafis follow the Ahle-Hadith who do not consider it “triple” if talaq was said in one sitting.