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Bangladeshi Muslim Group Stage Rally Against Ban On Religious Edicts
WASHINGTON & DHAKA, Feb 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Thousands of Muslim activists staged a noisy protest in the Bangladeshi capital Friday against a controversial High Court verdict last month banning Islamic religious edicts, "fatwas".
Police fired teargas and made baton charges during a brief melee at the end of the protest and detained a dozen protestors as they tried to stone passing vehicles.
Religious leaders at the rally, attended by up to 10,000 activists, criticized the government and the judiciary for allegedly trying to interfere with Islam and called for a daylong protest strike in Dhaka on Saturday.
Friday's rally, called by the local Islamic group, Ulamaye Mashayekh, was followed by street marches and shouts of "Hartal [strike], Hartal," witnesses said, adding that the protest and earlier police cordons sparked huge evening traffic jams in downtown Dhaka.
Although rights groups and other organizations welcomed the January 1st High Court ruling, it angered some religious leaders, including the general secretary of Jote Maulana Fazlul, Haque Amini, in the Islamic country to the extent that they labeled the judges "murtad", or apostates, declared their judgments un-Islamic, and called for them to be dismissed.
The international human rights watchdog organization Amnesty International had hailed the court ruling as a "landmark verdict."
The Supreme Court, however, put the controversial ruling on hold on for six weeks on January 14.
The stay was ordered after two local religious leaders, Moulana Abul Kalam Azad and Mufti Mohammad Toyyab, appealed the court ban handed down by judges Golam Rabbani and Nazmun Ara Sultana who had declared fatwas unauthorized and illegal.
It also followed a warning from the chief cleric of Bangladesh's Baitul Mukarram National Mosque that the ban would "destroy" Islam.
The High Court was reviewing the case of Shahida Begum, a woman from a small village in northern Nawgaon district who was ordered by an impromptu religious court to marry another man in order to revive her first marriage, when it issued its ban.
Shahida's first husband, Saiful Islam, had divorced her in a fit of rage and reportedly later regretted his own action and desperately wanted to save the marriage. A religious court delivered the verdict that their marriage was no longer valid and that the only way they can revive their marriage is to go through 'hila nikah' in which Shahida had to marry another man for a short time.
The Bangladeshi High Court then took action and ordered the arrest of the mufti, Azizul Haque, who had issued the fatwa in question.
The court also ruled that the Bangladeshi Parliament must enact appropriate laws prescribing severe punishment for those who issue fatwas, that schools and madrasas must include the Muslim Family Law in textbooks to underline the un-Islamic nature of fatwas, and that imams must preach at Friday congregations about the "ill effects of edict-like fatwas."
Speaking to a crowd of over 20,000 on Friday, Amini said, "The NGO activities must be banned immediately and the court judgment be repealed.''
"The High Court verdict banning all kinds of fatwa was dangerous and would destroy Islam," Moulana Ubaidul Huq said at a Friday prayer sermon.
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