The debate over reforming Muslim personal law in social media and the mainstream press in Sri Lanka.
Securing equality within the family remains one of the biggest challenges for women across the world. Central to this is the struggle to rewrite personal status and family laws that are deeply hetero-patriarchal. Sri Lanka’s constitutional reform process has brought this into sharp focus particularly with respect to equality in the family for Muslim women. At its center are Article 16(1) of the current Constitution and Sri Lanka’s Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA).
Sri Lanka’s MMDA, which is applicable to the Muslim minority community, was first codified during Dutch and later British colonial rule as part of a plural system of family laws. Successive post-independence governments guaranteed the maintenance of the MMDA, while recognising the prerogative of the Muslim community to reform these laws at their own initiative. Since then the MMDA was ‘reformed’ by male elites in 1929 and then again in 1956, ostensibly to reflect the ‘true spirit of Islam’. Yet the efforts of Muslim women’s rights activists, who have for more than 20 years, been calling for reform of these laws to reflect the values of gender justice and equality have been to no avail. Political parties claiming to represent Muslims have long refused to push for progressive and gender-just reform of personal law for fear that such reform will alienate their vote bank. Muslim women have also been unable to rely on Article 12 of the Constitution, which guarantees gender equality due to the presence of Article 16 of the Constitution. The latter holds that that all unwritten and written laws at the time the Constitution came into effect (1978) shall remain valid and operative notwithstanding any inconsistency with its fundamental rights guarantees.
