Fatwas have no legal standing: Supreme Court

By admin-s On Jul 10, 2014

(Times of India) – The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that fatwas issued by shariat courts or muftis had no legal sanctity, asserting that the defiance of fatwas will have no civil or criminal consequences.

The court said it would be illegal to impose these religion-based opinions on personal issues on citizens in violation of their fundamental rights.

“Whatever may be the status of fatwa during Mughal or British rule, it has no place in independent India under our constitutional scheme,” a bench of Justices Chandramauli K Prasad and Pinaki C Ghose said.

“Any person trying to enforce a fatwa by any method shall be illegal and has to be dealt with in accordance with law,” it added.

There have been bizarre fatwas covering almost the entire spectrum of social life of Muslims — from banning a popular all-girls Kashmiri band leading to its disbanding, to asking Muzaffarnagar’s Imrana to treat her husband as her son after she was raped by her father-in-law.

In fact, it was the mushrooming of fatwas, ranging from dissolution of marriage to dress code for women, which led advocate Vishwa Lochan Madan to file a PIL questioning jurisdiction of shariat courts, Dar-ul-Qaza (personal law courts) and Deoband muftis in dictating social behaviour of citizens and, in the process, virtually setting up a parallel judicial system on issues relating to Muslim personal law.

“A fatwa has no legal sanction and cannot be enforced by any legal process either by the Dar-ul-Qaza issuing that or the person concerned or for that matter anybody. The person or the body concerned may ignore it and it will not be necessary for anybody to challenge it before any court of law,” said Justice Prasad, who authored the judgment.

“In case any person or body tries to impose it, their act would be illegal. Therefore, the grievance of the petitioner that Dar-ul-Qazas and Nizam-e-Qaza are running a parallel judicial system is misconceived,” the bench said.