Women Entitled To Dower, Meher, After Ending Abusive Marriage: Lahore High Court
New Age Islam News Bureau
20 April 2025
• Women Entitled To Dower, Meher, After Ending Abusive Marriage: Lahore High Court
• Meet The Last Female Afghan Ambassador, Manizha Bakhtari, As She Leads The Resistance Against The Taliban
• LGBTQ+ Community Protest In UK Against Supreme Court Ruling On Definition Of 'Woman'
• Bowen Yang Had Quite The Response To J.K. Rowling After The UK Supreme Court's Trans Women Decision
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/dower-meher-abusive-khula/d/135237
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Women Entitled To Dower, Meher, After Ending Abusive Marriage: Lahore High Court
Wajih Ahmad Sheikh
April 20, 2025
LAHORE: The Lahore High Court has upheld a woman’s right to recover her full deferred dower even after obtaining a divorce through Khula, ruling that the dissolution of marriage due to the husband’s misconduct does not nullify her entitlement.
Addressing a more critical aspect of deferred dower, Justice Raheel Kamran clarified that under Islamic law and the Nikahnama (a binding contract), the husband remains obligated to pay dower unless the wife seeks Khula (dissolution of marriage) without any fault on his part.
However, the judge noted that in the particular case being heard by the court, the woman provided credible evidence of cruelty and disrespectful conduct by her husband, which prompted her to seek separation.
The judge observed that giving dowry articles to daughters is a deep-rooted practice in society, followed by the parents of all classes irrespective of their financial status.
The judge stated that the concept of Khula is based on verses No 228 and 229 of Surah Al-Baqarah. He noted that the application of Khula is found in the lifetime of the Holy Prophet (Peace be upon him) and thereafter.
Justice Kamran referred to a Federal Shariat Court judgement which held that where a wife obtains Khula merely on the basis of dislike for her husband, the dower received by her is returnable.
It also held that where a wife seeks Khula due to fault on the part of the husband by providing reasonable justification, it is not valid to require from her the return of the dower already received by her.
In such an eventuality, the judge said, it is for the court to determine the amount the wife should return, keeping in view facts and circumstances of the case.
According to the judge, a Nikahnama is a valid and binding contract between wife and husband — and deferred dower is a contractual obligation undertaken by the husband.
He said that unless there were valid legal grounds to deviate from the terms of this contract, the husband is bound to fulfill his obligation.
“The mere fact that the wife sought Khula does not automatically nullify this contractual obligation,” he maintained. In order to determine the entitlement of a wife seeking Khula to the claim of deferred dower, the judge said, the key consideration is the reason for her seeking Khula.
Where a wife seeks Khula on the ground that she dislikes her husband, without any fault on the part of the husband, she loses her right to deferred dower in the same way as in the case of prompt dower, he explained.
Conversely, if the husband’s conduct compels the wife to seek dissolution, she retains her entitlement to the deferred dower, the judge added.
Justice Kamran observed that in the instant case, the wife obtained the decree for dissolution of marriage on the basis of Khula, levelling allegations of bad conduct and disrespectful behaviour of the husband towards her.
The judge stated that the unchallenged, rather reaffirmed, allegation of bad conduct and disrespectful behaviour that amounts to cruelty provides a strong justification for the respondent/wife to be entitled to the full amount of her deferred dower in the same way as she would have been in case of divorce pronounced by the petitioner.
The judge concluded that since the marriage lasted nine years and the wife fulfilled her marital obligations, denying her the deferred dower would be unjust. The judge distinguished the case from earlier judgments cited by the petitioner’s counsel where cruelty by the husband was not proven.
The judge dismissed the husband’s petition against decisions of the district courts of Sahiwal, passed in favour of his former wife.
Source: www.Dawn.Com
https://www.dawn.com/news/1905402/women-entitled-to-dower-after-ending-abusive-marriage-lhc
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Meet The Last Female Afghan Ambassador, Manizha Bakhtari, As She Leads The Resistance Against The Taliban
Manizha Bakhtari, the Afghan ambassador to Austria
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19 April 2025
Manizha Bakhtari is on a mission to show that resisting the Taliban doesn’t mean “wanting a war” again in her home country. As the last serving female ambassador from Afghanistan anywhere in the world, she is at the forefront of efforts to deny the Islamist group the international recognition it badly craves.
The UN still refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the Taliban regime in Kabul, in place since Nato forces withdrew from the country and the last democratically elected government collapsed in August 2021. Individual countries are following the UN’s lead, but many now host Afghan diplomatic missions led by Taliban appointees, often out of practicality rather than ideology.
Austria, where Bakhtari leads the Afghan embassy, has held firm. And from there, Bakhtari is trying to spread the message across Europe that it would be a mistake to recognise or deal with a Taliban regime that fosters extremism and denies women many of the most fundamental rights.
Her story has started gaining attention, and is now the subject of an 80-minute documentary entitled The Last Ambassador that received a standing ovation at last month’s Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. It follows her journey from being first appointed as envoy to Austria by the previous Ashraf Ghani-led administration to her present status as head of a mission disowned by Kabul. It also shows her activities running secret classes for Afghan girls banned by the Taliban from attending school.
In an interview with The Independent at a conference on Afghanistan’s future hosted by Madrid earlier this year, Bakhtari explains what resistance means for her.
“Resisting the Taliban doesn’t mean that I want war in Afghanistan,” she says. “That is how many politicians treat us in this world, believe me – they see [the word] resistance and they’re like ‘you are warlords and you want another war in your country’. It is very painful, you know, because resistance does not mean to take [up] arms again. It means to stand against injustice.”
The Taliban has done its best to get rid of critical voices from the previous administration and, like in many countries, it issued a diktat firing Bakhtari shortly after capturing Kabul. But Austria still recognises her accreditation, so she continues to represent the interests of Afghan nationals in the country.
“I am not taking orders from them – Taliban men,” she says. “My legitimacy is not coming from the Taliban approval. Whatever they say, whatever their rule, it is their problem. Not mine. I don’t have to accept their words because they have not been recognised within and outside of Afghanistan. They do not even have legitimacy among our own people.”
Over the past four years, Taliban representatives have steadily taken over more and more missions around the world, with Norway the latest European nation to accept an appointee from the group last month. India held out until the tenure of the last Afghan ambassador reached its time limit, and then quietly ushered in an official agreeable to the Taliban in late 2023. And the Afghan embassy in the UK was closed in September 2024, at the request of the British government, after the Taliban sacked all its staff.
Asked whether it is inevitable that foreign governments will be forced to deal with the Taliban as Afghanistan’s de facto rulers, Bakhtari is adamant. “Let’s forget the fact that the Taliban have been a terrorist group and put it aside, because right now the international community wants everyone to forget this,” she says,
“What about their policies today? Not 20 years back – let’s concentrate on the past four years – forgetting their suicide attacks and atrocities. What have the Taliban done for the prosperity and welfare of Afghans? Jobs? Respected basic human rights? Forget about girls’ education for a second. What about boys’ education? What are our boys studying?” the ambassador asks.
“They do not have proper education or educated teachers. The Taliban have long altered the curriculum and are teaching regressive subjects to millions of Afghan boys who earlier studied under working Afghan women. So yeah, I am not taking orders from those who are yet to be recognised by even one authority,” she says.
Though Bakhtari is the only female Afghan ambassador still standing, she is not alone as a woman working through diplomatic channels for the interests of the old Afghan republic. At the Herat Security Dialogue in Madrid, The Independent also met NigaraMirdad, deputy head of mission at the now shut-down embassy of Afghanistan in Poland.
Mirdad was in hospital in September last year with her 11-year-old daughter, who has diabetes and needed insulin, when the ambassador informed her that their Warsaw mission was being closed. She says she tried to fight back but in vain, and without any funds coming in from Kabul, she appealed to the diplomatic missions in Canada, Germany and the UK to help her pay for gas in the bitter sub-zero Polish winter.
She recalls how it felt when she watched TV coverage of the Taliban sweeping Kabul in 2021. “I didn’t eat for days and the tears wouldn’t stop rolling down my face,” she says.
Both Mirdad and Bakhtari knew what was coming for Afghan women under Taliban rule – the same horror they endured as young women in their early twenties.
In 1996, when she was just 12 years old, Mirdad recalls, Taliban militants entered the Panjshir valley and her neighbourhood prepared to fight. “People said girls and women should be killed and thrown in the rivers to prevent the Taliban from touching them, and the Afghan men should go and fight the Taliban. And from that time, it stayed in my mind – if the Taliban comes closer, me and the women of my family will be killed and thrown in the river,” she says.
Like Bakhtari, she has received threats from the Taliban in recent years. “I received many messages from the Taliban supporters and even the spokesperson of the Taliban’s interior affairs ministry after they came to power. He said: ‘OK, you wait when we take all the embassies in Europe, we will see you’,” she says.
Bakhtari says women like them are seen by the Taliban as a “threat to their control”. “They hate women. [They] fear that educated and empowered women will confront them and the structures of oppression they have built. With education, with empowerment and with the ruling society, women will question them,” she says.
She says women cannot afford to give up their country, or the idea that things can change. “We cannot afford to lose hope,” she says. “That is the only thing keeping millions in Afghanistan alive.”
Source: Www.Independent.Co.Uk
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LGBTQ+ Community Protest In UK Against Supreme Court Ruling On Definition Of 'Woman'
Apr 20, 2025
Thousands of people took to the streets in London and Edinburgh on Saturday to protest a recent UK supreme court ruling that defines a “woman” legally as someone assigned female at birth.
Activists, trade unions, and members of the LGBTQ+ community held rallies in support of trans rights, waving flags and holding signs reading “trans women are women” and “trans rights are human rights.”
The ruling, issued on Wednesday, has major implications for single-sex spaces and services such as toilets, changing rooms, and hospital wards. According to the court, these services “will function properly only if sex is interpreted as biological sex.”
In London, police reported that seven statues near the protest were vandalised, including one of suffragette Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square.
Justice Patrick Hodge said he and four other judges ruled unanimously that “the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman”.In the law, “the words ‘sex’, ‘woman’ and ‘man’ … mean (and were always intended to mean) biological sex, biological woman and biological man,” the judges wrote.
The court’s decision followed a legal dispute between the Scottish government and campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS), which challenged Scotland’s interpretation of the Equality Act. While the Scottish government argued that trans women with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) should have equal protections, the court disagreed.
The group lost a ruling in a Scottish court in 2022 but was later granted permission to take its case to the supreme court, which held hearings in November.
Source: Timesofindia.Com
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Bowen Yang Had Quite The Response To J.K. Rowling After The UK Supreme Court's Trans Women Decision
by Larry Fitzmaurice
20-04-2025
In case you missed it, earlier this week the UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a "woman" in equality legislation should be defined as referring to a "biological woman and biological sex." The ruling essentially said that trans women are not legally recognized as women in the UK. You can read more about the ruling here.
If you're a person with at least one shred of empathy in your body, the ruling scanned as beyond cruel — inhuman, really. On the other side of the argument is Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, who spends an inordinate amount of time — and money — essentially pushing back against the mere notion of trans rights.
Like the disgusting person she is, J.K. has spent most of the week celebrating the Supreme Court's decision. The below tweet is one example; this extremely stupid-looking picture of her is another.
It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they’ve protected the rights of women and girls across the UK. @ForWomenScot, I’m so proud to know you 🏴💜🏴💚🏴🤍🏴 https://t.co/JEvcScVVGS
Of course, there's been plenty of celebrities who have spoken out against the Supreme Court's decision, as well as J.K.'s typically abhorrent public conduct. Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan took to IG to speak out against her and the ruling, and she big-upped a trans charity to donate to as well.
Nicola Coughlan on the red carpet wearing a white shirt with text and a black jacket, smiling at the camera. Pink background with BFI Flare logo
Yesterday, SNL star Bowen Yang also spoke out directly against J.K.'s particular strain of activism — and he had strong words for her.
Bowen shared a photo of himself on his IG Story in which he was flipping the bird, presumably in J.K.'s direction. "absolute f*ck u to jkrowling," he posted, alongside an emoji of the trans flag.
Source: Www.Buzzfeed.Com
https://www.buzzfeed.com/larryfitzmaurice/bowen-yang-slams-jk-rowling-instagram
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/dower-meher-abusive-khula/d/135237