More Mullah News The Media Ignored

From Feb 2008:

It was a tiny item on an inside page of one of the three newspapers I read: "Muslim girls free to marry whom they want."

That was the opinion, not of some liberal Muslim semi-kaffir or some non-Muslim Islam-baiter, but of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), about as hidebound a collection of mullahs as ever trod the earth. Yet here they were saying that under Islam there was nothing wrong with a Muslim girl choosing her own partner, and if she was forced to marry against her will, there was nothing wrong with her leaving her husband after the marriage as well.

The most striking thing, however, is not that they said it but that the media virtually ignored it.

You see, the AIMPLB is known for making statements on the length of skirts allowable to Muslim girls and how a Muslim woman raped by her father in law (the Imrana case of 2005) would have to leave her husband and regard her father in law as her husband. And when it makes such statements, it's justly pilloried by the media.

Yet when it makes a sensible and rational observation, rather than highlighting it as a sign that all's not beyond hope for the Muslims, the media ignores it.

I can think of two reasons:

First, the concept of women being free to choose their partners is virtually unknown in most of India to this day - whatever the religious community.

Second, it's so much easier to paint the Muslims as an alien "other", part of a hidebound religious  fanatic community of enemies within, that positive things absolutely cannot be talked about.

Incidentally, I'm sure the AIMPLB's views will come as welcome news to the Muslim women will continue to be forced to marry against their wishes every day by their parents. There's nothing quite like an unenforceable law, after all!