In case you didn’t know it already, scriptwriter, lyricist and poet Javed Akhtar can do many things with words: entertain, enthral, entrap. “If Muslims were to fear Allah even 10 per cent of the fear they have of fellow Muslims, it would make them better Muslims and more sensible human beings too,” I have heard him say in public gatherings of Muslims in Mumbai, Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad, Hyderabad, Aligarh Muslim University. The spontaneous response to this apparently provocative statement everywhere is assenting nods, sheepish smiles, loud guffaws.

What Javed Akhtar keeps saying in public, a top drawer maulana from the Jamiat-ul-ulema-e-Hind told me in private last year. “The biggest hurdles before us,” he said, “are the Urdu press (read Muslim media) and Muslim leaders.” In the name of Islam anything goes. And he who dares utter the dissenting word had better beware!

But if Muslims are so terrified of fellow Muslims, what so frightens the Law Commission of India as to prefer public embarrassment to plainspeak? The commission’s 277th report, recently made public, observes that the “traditional understanding of Muslim law on bigamy is gravely faulty and conflicts with true Islamic law in letter and spirit”. Well said. But look where it goes from there. It proposes a new clause in Hindu family law to abort sham conversions purely for bigamy’s sake but, mindful of something called “religious sensibilities”, stays totally mum about what must necessarily be done with the country’s Muslim Personal Law.

Dr Tahir Mahmood, a jurist specialising in Islamic Law, Hindu Law, Religion and Law and Law Relating to Minorities, is one of the commission’s members. There can be no doubt that he is party to if not the prime inspiration behind its observations on bigamy in Islam. Spare a thought for the man: it has been more than apparent for some years now that he is torn between his conscience and his community. His knowledge of Islam tells him that sections of the Muslim Personal Law are anything but Islamic. His knowledge of the Muslim world including the Islamic states also tells him that country after Muslim country has introduced wide-ranging reforms, often with the concurrence of the mullahs, in recent decades.

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