Muslim Personal Law as Community Outreach

October 9, 2025

In my previous essay, I suggested that Muslim Personal Law (MPL) in postcolonial India functions as a powerful symbol—one that indexes the identity of the Muslim minority for both its defenders and its detractors. The state plays a central role in maintaining this symbolic function, but so too do Islamic institutions and community leaders. However, an exclusive focus on this symbolic dimension of law as part of a politics of recognition obscures other important facets of Islamic law and minority politics. Islamic law is also part of an effort to unify a community by shaping institutions and norms and by meeting the needs of Indian Muslims.

In this essay, I turn to the discourses of Indian Muslim scholars (ʿulamāʾ), in particular, as they appear in the Urdu-language weekly Naqeeb. Published by the Imarat-e-Sharia, an Islamic institution where I have conducted ethnographic, textual, and archival research for my current book project, Naqeeb offers a rich archive of commentary on local, national, and international news, on Islam and Muslim practices, and on the Imarat's role in colonial and postcolonial India.[1]

Although Naqeeb has been in print since 1921, articles from the mid-1970s are of particular interest. As I have noted elsewhere,[2] during the 1970s, the Indian state initiated reforms that many Muslim leaders perceived as direct encroachments on Muslim Personal Law. In 1972, for instance, an adoption bill designed to implement a uniform adoption law for all Indians was introduced in parliament, only to be allowed to lapse in 1977 after opposition from some Muslim leaders.[3]

The debates of the early 1970s were nothing if not defenses of Muslim Personal Law as a symbol of the Indian Muslim minority. In response to debates about Muslim Personal Law, the ʿulamāʾ even formed a new group called the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) to prevent any changes to it. The first General Secretary of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Minatullah Rahmani, was also the amir (leader) of the Imarat-e-Sharia, a position he had held since 1957.

The pages of Naqeeb during this period also chart a position against state reform of Muslim Personal Law. For instance, Rahmani wrote articles elaborating a history of Muslim Personal Law as the outcome of a process that narrowed the scope of Islamic law in colonial and then postcolonial India and that granted authority over it to state rather than religious officials.[4] The account he gives coincides with the consensus of historians of Islamic law in India.[5] The upshot is that the only domain over which the ʿulamāʾ still have authority are personal law matters; the institutions over which they maintained authority were mainly non-state institutions that adjudicate personal law matters. Rahmani argues that this domain must be protected from further incursions.[6]

But contrary to popular belief, this is not where the story ends. In striking contrast to Mona Oraby's argument that minority leaders seek out and assent to recognition by the state as a way of consolidating their difference,[7] leaders of the Imarat-e-Sharia worked within parameters that they could not change in a moral effort to build and sustain a unified Muslim community. For example, in February 1975, Rahmani wrote in an editorial that "a just society will emerge only when Islamic laws are applied in their totality. This is not conservatism but emerges out of a preference for truth (haqiqa pasandi)."[8] While the ideal that Rahmani articulates is the full application of Islamic law, his more immediate argument two-fold: Muslims should seek to follow Islamic laws; and, as a minority religious leader, his aim is not to seek state recognition but to build institutions in which to implement such laws.

Rahmani understood that the scope of such institutions was delineated by the state's legal structure; he even invoked the Indian constitution as the basis for religious autonomy: "The Indian Constitution grants permission to follow personal law, which is a religious right." But he argued that the constitutionally granted architecture of (Muslim) Personal Law implied a boundary that the state should not cross. "Personal laws are not a part of Indian law; they are an independent set of laws," he wrote in 1974.[9] "Therefore, they cannot be assessed or made in accordance with principles that underlie other state laws."[10] According to this formulation, only the ʿulamāʾ have appropriate knowledge and training to interpret, adjudicate, and reform religious personal law.

Contrary to popular views, and despite an overall commitment to a patriarchal social order, the ʿulamāʾ do call for reforms. Articles in Naqeeb call on Muslim men not to overuse "triple ṭalāq" (unilateral, instantaneous divorce).[11] Naqeeb beseeches Muslims not to give or accept dowry, which in this context refers to money or property that a bride's family gives to a groom's family. As an extensive literature documents, demands for large dowries before and during marriage put pressure on families with girls.[12] In this context, Naqeeb demanded that pious Mulims boycott the weddings of those who practice this "custom," which they deem un-Islamic.[13]

But beyond reformed practices, the Imarat calls on Muslims to gather under its auspices, out of a duty to God. One Qur'anic verse appears so frequently in Naqeeb as to constitute a refrain: "O believers! Obey God and obey the Messenger and those in authority among you. If you should quarrel on anything, refer it to God and the Messenger, if you believe in God and the Last Day. That is better, and fairer in the issue."[14] The verse is interpreted to mean that Muslims in this minority context have a duty to bring their disputes to a dar ul-qaza (sharīʿa court) where qazis (judges) trained in Islamic jurisprudence mediate and judge disputes.[15] This is the general call.

Every single issue of Naqeeb that I have read also includes specific injunctions addressed to individuals. These read as follows:

Notice to the defendant: In this case, the plaintiff has filed a suit against you for faskh (often translated as judicial annulment) in dar ul-qaza at Imarat-e-Sharia [place] on the grounds of disappearance, non-payment of living expenses, and non-fulfillment of marital rights for four and a half years. The defendant is asked to present himself at Dar ul-Qaza Phulwari Sharif before the given deadline to dismiss the allegation, failing which the case will be decided.[16]

Every issue of Naqeeb I have studied includes three calls like this one, addressed to a defendants whose wives have requested divorce by annulment at the dar ul-qaza. Some of the details vary, including the specified dar ul-qaza to which the defendant is called, but all are announcements of faskh cases, and the grounds for the petition are nearly identical.

The notices suggest that women seeking divorce have heard the Imarat's call. They also indicate that the Imarat's commitment to addressing Muslims' needs is not mere rhetoric. Though they may seek to build an Islamic counterpublic—a group that shares a discourse counter to that of the broader society—they are not just after a shared arena of discourse.[17] As the next essays will show, ordinary Muslims, in particular Muslims sidelined in a Hindu-majority country, actively approach the Imarat for help. Their cases animate the project of Islamic self-governance—and, in doing so, help to shape a minority project that neither depends on nor defers to the state for recognition or legitimacy.

Acknowledgments: The research on which these essays are based was generously funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. I am grateful to Nadia Hussain and Abdul Majeed Peedikayil for their excellent research assistance.

Notes:

[1] While more recent issues of Naqeeb are available online, the sources I discuss in this essay are located in the Imarat-e-Sharia archives in Patna, Bihar.

[2] Katherine Lemons, "Incapacitation and the Intensification of law," History of the Present 16, no. 1 (forthcoming); Katherine Lemons, "Beyond Rights and Recognition: Muslim Personal Law in India," Islamic Law Blog, October 2, 2025, https://islamiclaw.blog/2025/10/02/beyond-rights-and-recognition-muslim-personal-law-in-india/.

[3] Flavia Agnes, Law and Gender Inequality: The Politics of Women's Rights in India, (Oxford University Press, 1999), 98; XIII X Lok Sabha Debates 231–312 (18 July 1978).

[4] Minatullah Rahmani, "Report: Presidential speech at the Muslim Personal Law conference," Naqeeb, April 14, 1975, 4.

[5] Julia Stephens, Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Wael B. Hallaq, Sharīʻa: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 371–83; Scott Alan Kugle, "Framed, Blamed and Renamed: The Recasting of Islamic Jurisprudence in Colonial South Asia," Modern Asian Studies 35, no. 2 (2001): 257–313.

[6] Minnatullah Rahmani, "Bangalor main All India Personal Law Board ka Ikhlas [All India Personal Law Board Meeting, Bangalor]," Patna: Naqeeb, February 3, 1975, 12.

[7] Mona Oraby, Devotion to the Administrative State: Religion and Social Order in Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2024).

[8] Minatullah Rahmani, "Muslim Personal Law Kya Hai? [What is Muslim Personal Law?]," Naqeeb, February 3, 1975, 4–6.

[9] Minatullah, Rahmani, "Should Muslim Personal Law be Amended or not?," Naqeeb, February 4, 1974, 1.

[10] Rahmani, "Should Muslim Personal Law be Amended or not?," 1.

[11] Muhammad Ghiyasul Islam Rahmani, "Muslim Personal Law aur Is ke tahafiz ki dara [Muslim Personal Law and the Way to Protect It]," Naqeeb, February 10, 1975, 7.

[12] For an excellent analysis of the history of dowry demands and associated violence against women see Veena Talwar Oldenburg, Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime (Oxford University Press, 2002).

[13] "The Curse of Dowry and Jahez," Naqeeb, June 16, 1975, 3.

[14] Quran 4:59 in A.J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted: A Translation (New York: Simon and Schuster: 1995), 109.

[15] Hazrat Maulana Qari Muhammad Tayyib, "The Organization of the Islamic Millat as an Important Aspect of Islam, Obedience to the Amir is Obligatory after Allah and the Messenger," Naqeeb, February 10, 1975, 4–5.

[16] "Notice," Naqeeb, April 14, 2014, 11.

[17] Ayala Fader, "The Counterpublic of the J(ewish) Blogosphere: Gendered Language and the Mediation of Religious Doubt among Ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23, no. 4 (2017): 727–47; Michael Warner and Project Muse, Publics and Counterpublics (Zone Books, 2002); Charles Hirschkind, "Civic Virtue and Religious Reason: An Islamic Counterpublic," Cultural Anthropology 16, no. 1 (2001): 3–34.

Suggested Bluebook citation: Katherine Lemons, Muslim Personal Law as Community Outreach, Islamic Law Blog (Oct. 9, 2025), https://islamiclaw.blog/2025/10/09/muslim-personal-law-as-community-outreach/.

Suggested Chicago citation: Katherine Lemons, "Muslim Personal Law as Community Outreach," Islamic Law Blog, October 9, 2025, https://islamiclaw.blog/2025/10/09/muslim-personal-law-as-community-outreach/.