AIMPLB campaigns to convey ‘right to practise Muslim personal law’

The campaign will also involve organising meetings of Muslim men and women across the country, after which resolutions will be passed and copies sent to the President, Prime Minister, judges, law commission and women’s commission to assert the community’s right to follow its personal laws.

On Sunday, the AIMPLB executive committee had accused the central government of trying to interfere in the community’s personal laws in the guise of showing sympathy for women. At the gathering at Iqbal Maidan here on Monday, speakers again accused the Centre of interfering in personal matters of the community. “A propaganda is on for the last three years to project Muslim women as the most oppressed and unhappy, but that’s not true. We are here to protect the Shariat,’’ a woman speaker said. She referred to Muslim women who celebrated the Supreme Court verdict as “rented”.

Addressing the gathering, Dr Asma Zehra, an executive committee member of the board, said that allegations were being levelled against the community’s practices for some time. “A propaganda is on in the media that Muslim women are harassed and that if the laws are changed their lot will improve. We have to assert ourselves — that we don’t want our laws to be changed,’’ she said. Islam gives more rights to women than any other religion, she said, “Do we need freedom? We got it 1,400 years ago from the barbaric practices prevailing then.”