Nikah Halala: Sleeping with a Stranger

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Introduction

Prostitution in India is illegal. Halala is legal.

Almost every day, in the city pages of newspapers, we find small news stories about girls rescued from brothels by the local police. Most girls have a sob story to relate; how they were duped with false promises of work in a big city, better income and so on. Many had been sold, bought and resold before they were rescued by police and sent to women rehabilitation centres like Nari Niketan. Much like it was with Zebun Nissa in Bhopal. For the first six years of married life, she had only known peace. A typical middle-class woman with a husband who earned well enough from his truck transport business, and in-laws who did not meddle much in her affairs. She lived with, besides her husband, her parents-in-law and a brother-in-law. What the family of five adults did not have was a little child, a baby to keep everybody busy and happy. Zebun Nissa could never conceive. She consulted many doctors in Bhopal, even went to Gwalior and Jhansi, and finally to Delhi. Nothing worked. Just as she had resigned herself to a life without the joys of motherhood, her husband dropped a bombshell. Keen to be a father, Rafiq Ahmed was advised to remarry. One evening, he said the dreaded three words to Zebun Nissa—talaq, talaq, talaq. With the utterance of talaq, Zebun Nissa’s world came crashing down. She was a sociology graduate but had never picked up a job; not even as a teacher in a local primary school. Thrown out of her husband’s house, she went back to her parents in Lucknow. This was not a long-term solution, she soon realised. The house where she had spent more than twenty years was now virtually taken over by her brother and his family. His family was young and growing and her parents confined themselves to a room on the first floor. Days turned into weeks, and Zebun Nissa tried to pick up the pieces of her life all over again. It was not easy. Adding to her lack of professional qualification was her emotional turmoil. She longed to step out of the house.

One day, her mobile rang late at night. It was Ahmed. For a minute, Zebun Nissa was speechless and confused. Should she pick up or ignore the call? As she tried to sort out the confusion in her mind, the phone stopped ringing. She heaved a sigh of relief that she did not have to decide right at that moment. Then the phone rang again. The same dilemma revisited. Zebun Nissa put the phone on vibration mode. Ahmed appeared persistent. He called again. It had been a little under a month since he snapped his relationship with Zebun Nissa with multiple pronouncements of talaq in a single sitting. He seemed desperate to find a way through to his former wife, now in iddah, the three-month-long period of waiting, after which the woman can choose to marry again.

Zebun Nissa finally mustered up enough courage to pick up the phone. For a few seconds, she could not say a word, not even the usual greeting of Assalam-o-alaikum. Ahmed was only slightly better. He kept saying, ‘Hello, hello!’ He knew she had not disconnected. Finally, Zebun Nissa spoke. Ahmed wanted her back. Overcoming her feeling of hurt and anger, she agreed almost immediately. She loved him still. He loved her too. Zebun Nissa could barely control her emotions. She fell prostrate on the floor as she thanked Allah. Her marriage was intact. She could go back to the man she loved.

Her happiness lasted only a few hours. Next morning, after the usual bed tea, she broke the news to her parents, hoping they would call up their son-in-law and give him a few tips on domestic harmony. Seeing her happy for the first time since she came back, her father agreed to send her back but added a rider, ‘Let me speak to maulvi sahib first. Is it allowed in sharia? He will tell us how we can go about it.’ Zebun Nissa did not want anybody’s involvement. Just the fact that Ahmed had called up, apologised for his action and wanted her back was enough for her. Still, she did not want to be on the wrong side of faith. So, she agreed to her father’s proposal of speaking to a cleric. That is where her happiness died.

As her father consulted a local cleric who led everyday prayers in the masjid, he was told, ‘Zebun Nissa cannot go back to her husband. After instant triple talaq, she is haram (prohibited) for her husband. Now she can only go back to him after doing halala (to make permissible).’

‘What is halala?’ her father asked. ‘She has to marry another man, obtain a divorce, perform iddah, then remarry her first husband. This is like a punishment for her first husband for not having control over his temper,’ explained the maulvi, trying to make the information palatable to Zebun Nissa’s father. It did not matter to the cleric that according to the Supreme Court, after the August 2017 pronouncement making instant triple talaq invalid, her marriage subsisted. Even when the spouses were ready to let bygones be bygones. According to Islam, the final divorce comes into effect only after talaq has been pronounced thrice with a gap of at least one menstrual cycle. Multiple pronouncements of talaq in a single sitting did not amount to an irrevocable divorce. At best, it was a single, revocable divorce that did not need the intervention of a third party to be annulled. A simple act of intimacy between the partners suffices to annul this revocable divorce. At times, even that is not needed; the husband can cancel the divorce by saying mere words within a stipulated time.

With the cleric’s ruling, Zebun Nissa’s world fell apart. All her dreams of going back to her husband were nipped in the bud. But Ahmed refused to give up so soon. He called again. This time, he seemed nervous, jittery and a shade unsure. Finally, he broached the subject. ‘Could you marry the cleric? He will divorce you soon after. Nobody will get to know. Halala will be done. We can marry again,’ he persisted.

‘What if he doesn’t?’ Zebun Nissa asked Ahmed. ‘He will. He is a decent man. He has done this earlier to save the marriages of many people. It is just a question of one night. He will marry you after isha (the last prayer of the day) and divorce you after fajr (the first prayer of the day). No strings attached.’

What Ahmed did not tell her was that the maulvi sahib had asked to be paid for his services towards ‘saving marriages of decent men’. Since they had been married for six years, Ahmed was asked to pay an amount equal to the mehr he had settled upon with Zebun Nissa, at the time of marriage, and add ₹2,000 per year of marriage to that. Zebun Nissa’s mehr was fixed at ₹50,000 at the time of her nikah. As a result, the figure came to ₹62,000, an amount Ahmed could afford with some effort. He was ready and willing. He just wanted his wife back.

‘Does it not amount to prostitution?’ Zebun Nissa asked Ahmed, ‘Like a man sleeps with a woman and pays her, here is this maulvi offering to sleep with your wife to save your marriage! I am sure, the Quran does not approve of such a marriage.’

With a finality, Zebun Nissa shut the door on a possible halala to reunite with her husband. With her instant decision, maulvi sahib’s visions of a quick marriage, furtive union, followed by the inevitable divorce were tossed away. This was a narrow shave for Zebun Nissa. However, not every woman is as lucky. Countless other women undergo the mortifying process of halala to resume wedlock with their husbands. In a 2017 survey, India Today magazine¹ found a startling number of clerics who first pushed for halala to ‘save marriages’, then offered themselves as a temporary husband, at times for a few hours and sometimes for a few days, before the woman is divorced again and allowed to remarry her earlier husband.

This makes a mockery of the Islamic injunction wherein a woman is given the choice of remarriage through halala. The Quran allows a man to divorce his wife a maximum of two times. On both the occasions, separated by at least one menstrual cycle—instant triple talaq is not mentioned anywhere in the Quran—he is allowed to cancel the divorce through word or action during iddah. If the spouses fail to resume cohabitation during this period, they are allowed to remarry without any third-party intervention. This can be done only twice. If the man takes his wife back after the second pronouncement of divorce and then divorces her for the third time, he is not allowed to marry her again because divorce is not allowed to become a plaything in the hands of a whimsical husband. The Quran instructs men not to take back women in their nikah without sincerity of purpose, and under no circumstances use divorce as a tool to harass them. A woman’s dignity is protected. If a man divorces his wife for the third time, in the way permitted by the Quran, she becomes an independent woman. She may choose to stay single or marry another man after the conclusion of the period of iddah. If things do not work out with the second husband and there is a divorce pronounced in the way approved by the Quran, or he dies, she performs iddah for her second husband. The iddah ranges from three menstrual cycles, in case of a divorce, to four months or four menstrual cycles in case of a husband’s death. After this waiting period, provided she is not pregnant, she becomes an independent woman. Once again, she is free to decide the future course of action. It may include her staying single or marrying another man. Or she may even go back to her first husband through a new nikah, provided both partners are willing. As an independent woman, she is no more haram for her husband. Notably, she is given a choice and not instructed to go back to her former husband. It has to be mutually agreed upon with fresh terms and conditions for nikah; the conditions can be written down in the nikahnama on the instruction of the woman. Here, she can use her experience to protect herself in future.

In India though, this clearly laid out procedure is made a mockery of with the pronouncement of instant triple talaq. Many clerics continue to regard instant triple talaq as a valid form of divorce, bringing up a classic case of faith overruling the court’s injunctions. When they do so, they also go against the spirit of the Quran which clearly states,

A divorce is only permitted two times: After that, the parties should either stay together on just terms or separate with kindness…. And if a husband divorces his wife (a third time), then he cannot, after that, remarry her until after she has married another husband, and he has divorced her. In that case, there is no blame on either of them if they reunite, provided they feel they can keep the limits set forth by Allah.

Halala, the way the Quran speaks of it, empowers women to take independent decisions. It saves women from temperamental husbands who divorce in a fit of anger, then take it back, then divorce again, unleashing an endless cycle of marriage and divorce, as was the practice in pre-Islamic days. At that time, many men treated women as mere objects of pleasure. They would marry and divorce according to their whims, leaving women completely vulnerable in this endless game. The Quran called a halt to this by limiting the number of divorces in a nikah to three and by completely releasing a woman trapped in such a marriage. Halala was meant to keep men who have zero control over their temper or passion at bay. However, the way it often works out in the Indian Muslim society, it only serves to fulfil the lust of the men and degrades women, reducing them to chattel. It allows women to be a plaything of men; a headstrong man divorces in a fit of anger, another man driven by lust wears the cloak of piety, outrages her modesty, divorces her after satiating his desire. It goes against the letter and spirit of Islam. The Prophet had cursed both these kinds of men: those who perform halala and those who have it performed. Both the former husband and the temporary husband were denounced by the Prophet. The short-term husband was further denounced and was called a ‘bull on hire’ by noted Islamic preacher Iftikhar Ali Hashmi.

Nikah Halala: Sleeping with a Stranger looks at the social evil of temporary marriages with a pre-decided date and time of divorce. The endeavour is to study the Islamic injunctions on the subject and present the perspectives of some of the most respected scholars of the faith, all of whom quote from the Quran and hadiths to denounce the halala’s distorted practice. Unfortunately, their opinion and interpretation are often at sad variance with the viewpoint prevalent at mohalla and qasba mosques. Many of the everyday clerics and imams, whom the common man consults for day-to-day issues, consider halala a legitimate way of reuniting squabbling spouses and term it as a punishment for a husband who has no control over his tongue. Under their questionable interpretation, women have no control over their decisions or destiny. In general, the teachings of maulanas find a great resonance with the masses, which is why their faulty interpretations often percolate down in society. Generations of women, and many men, have grown up with the idea that a marriage ends with the pronouncement of the instant triple talaq and that the same marriage can be revived through the halala route. Thus, the halala marriage sham feeds off the instant triple talaq drama, which continues to prevail even after the Supreme Court invalidated it in August 2017. Such a travesty! Worse, many of the maulanas are not above offering their candidature to play a night-long husband.

The book talks of women who have suffered because of this instant divorce, instant marriage phenomenon, and uncovers men who use the garb of piety to satiate their thirst for variety in bed. Some men charge for these services, just as there are men who do it out of a misplaced sense of piety. Incidentally, the phenomenon of nikah halala is limited to India and Pakistan and is not prevalent in any other Muslim countries. It is not much heard of among the Muslims of the US. The only country where halala is practised outside the subcontinent is the UK, which has a sizeable Muslim population of Indo-Pak origin. Noted Islamic preacher Nouman Ali Khan draws a parallel with paper marriages in the West. In such cases, the marriage exists only on paper to hoodwink the authorities. With halala, the marriage usually does not exist on paper; both the nikah and talaq are only verbal. It needs no written document, hardly any witness and no proof whatsoever. It is a simple open-and-shut case. In halala, a woman says yes or is made to say yes. The man marries her, enjoys her in bed and divorces her. The so-called married life lasts no more than a few hours in most cases, and barely a day or two in others.