S FROM MAULANA'S DIARY

It is the grace of God that there are thousands of people today within whom this kind of thinking has been created after reading Al-Risala. May God spread the voice of Al-Risala further and make arrangements to convey it to the world through every language! We receive letters almost every day and meet people who express similar sentiments. Muslim leaders, however, have not yet given importance to the voice of Al-Risala. In contrast, leaders of other faiths have appreciated the message of Al-Risala. This turn of events is no surprise. This is always the case with the unadulterated and pure call towards the truth. January 6, 1986 A Muslim elder came to meet me. As he sat down, he said: “The judgement given by the Court of India concerning the provision of a divorced woman is an aggressive interference in the Islamic jurisprudence. Why don’t you write against it.” He was referring to the case of Shah Bano Begum v. Muhammad Ahmad Khan. I asked him to first correct his sentence. This sentence is not correct as per my knowledge. The real thing that has happened is that a Muslim woman (Shah Bano Begum) went to an Indian court. She claimed that she should be given maintenance from her husband under one specific law of the country. The court accepted the claim of the Muslim woman after hearing the matter in detail and ruled that the defendant should pay her Rs 180 per month as per her demand. You cannot call it the aggression of the court, because the aggressor is the one who takes the initiative. Here, the court did not take any action on its own in the matter. And it could not take any action in this regard of itself. If there is aggression in this case, it is from the Muslim woman. It was the Muslim woman (Shah Bano Begum) who went to court herself and presented the case. It was she who asked the court to get her the said money under the law of the country. The fact is that in this case, calling the court aggressive is to blame others for your mistake. If you are pained to see Islamic law being interfered with, then reform Muslim men and Muslim women. Train them not to take their disputes to court. When the hypocrites of Madinah took their disputes to the Court of the Jews, the Quran accused these hypocrites, not the Jewish courts. o