When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami receded from Sri Lanka’s coasts, leaving a lattice of destruction in its wake, Aneesa Firthouse was one of many social workers who flocked to the displaced camps to assist those who had been affected. While working with women and children in the tsunami camps in Sri Lanka’s eastern province, she kept encountering troubling patterns among Muslim families that soon began to thread its way in her community work in Sri Lanka over the years.
Numerous women-headed families filled the camps and there were many separated Muslim women who did not know where their husbands were, even before the tsunami ripped families apart. Aneesa encountered many married women struggling to support their children – women whose husbands had taken on second wives without their first wife’s consent and lived with their new families just down the road. Meanwhile, others were afraid to go to the male-dominated Quazi courts, which dealt with matters under Sri Lanka’s Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA), as women were known to be mistreated, and many were unsure of the process.
“Though we supported the women, we found the problem was not ending,” reflected Aneesa, noting that many of the short-term solutions were untenable to what were clearly continuing and compounding challenges.
While working with other organizations, the Islamic Women’s Association for Research and Empowerment (IWARE) — the Kattankudy-based organization Aneesa co-founded with a friend — soon realized that critical gaps in the MMDA contributed to these challenges. In 2014, IWARE expanded its ambit to begin working on policy reforms to the act.
Archaic Inequality
Muslims and activists in Sri Lanka have been calling for the reform of the MMDA for over 40 years. In Sri Lanka, the Kandyan Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Muslims have separate laws for marriage and divorce on the basis of ethnicity and religion. The 1951 MMDA in its current iteration is a piece of colonial legislation that sutures together Batavian Islamic rulings codified during Dutch rule, Tamil customs, English procedural rules, and provisions based on shariah.
Activists working in the field of gender, human rights, and family law, such as the Global Campaign for Equality in Family Law (GCEFL) and Equality Now, repeatedly point out that the law has multiple gaps that leave women and children vulnerable to exploitation, detract from Islamic legal practices, and fail to take into account the lived experiences of Muslim women in Sri Lanka. At the 56th Session of the U.N.’s Human Rights Council in Geneva last year, GCEFL highlighted ongoing challenges facing women forced to marry under these archaic laws, and urged governments to stand up for crucial reforms.
Muslim family law in Sri Lanka is adjudicated by a system of Quazis — traditional courts that deal with matters pertaining to Islamic law — and the lack of training and mandatory requirements for Quazis have resulted in unjust decisions, case inefficiencies, bribery, and more over the years. The broader call to reform the MMDA by activists and women’s groups has also includes calls to reform the Quazi courts and better equip its everyday administration and functions. There is also a vocal call for women Quazis to be seated into the system and governing bodies – currently women are not allowed to be Quazis under the MMDA.
Gaslighting and Emotional Blackmail
A freelance artist who has lived in Sri Lanka for the past six years, Safiya Sideek’s artistic oeuvre is usually centred on natural landscapes, but her long-drawn experience of getting a divorce under the MMDA – nine months in the Quazi court and then three-and-a-half years with the Board of Quazis due to the appeal process initiated by her former husband – and navigating custody court prompted her to turn her paintbrush toward her own life.
The preconditions for divorce differ for men and women, often resulting in unequal treatment and protracted divorce proceedings.
Safiya notes that while divorce is permissible in Islam, there was a visible reluctance on the part of Quazis to grant divorces throughout the process. “I understand that mediation and such things are necessary, but there is a lot of pressure, gaslighting and emotional blackmail that comes with the process,” she reflected. “There were a lot of comments – ‘Oh your parents have done so much, so much was spent on the wedding. You have a child, think of the child.’”
A triptych of paintings titled “And with every hardship,” which draws its name from Surah Ash-Sharh, was exhibited in Colombo this January. In the paintings, Safiya portrays the feeling of submersion and engulfment she went through while navigating the long process of ending a marriage under the MMDA, fighting for the custody of her son, and being forced to exist in limbo.
In the first two paintings of the triptych, an unnamed woman’s hand slowly slips from view underneath the waves. “A body of law is meant to protect its citizens and the best way it can is to speed up the procedures or make it easier to go through it,” says Safiya. “It should be such a simple thing, it should not be this feeling of being drowned.”
The second painting in Safiya Sideek’s triptych, titled “And with every hardship.” Photo provided by Equality Now
Child Brides, Silent Brides
Beyond the difficulties faced by Muslim women attempting to divorce under the MMDA, the act is also used to justify and legitimize child marriages, as it does not stipulate a minimum age for marriage.
A recent study on child marriages in Batticaloa and Ampara noted that “child marriages occur in all communities in Sri Lanka, and teenage pregnancies are a concern nationwide.” Pointing to a lack of data, the study observes how the Sri Lankan state has paid little attention to a growing issue – especially in context of the COVID-19 pandemic and Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic crisis – as child marriage is often perceived as a “solution” toward escaping poverty, teenage relationships and teen pregnancies. The study found that child marriages took place in impoverished families, child brides had poor educational achievement and high burden of housework as well as little authority and decision-making power while violence in child marriages was a recurring experience.
Registration of marriages are not mandatory in the MMDA, and this has led to recurring challenges when claiming maintenance, child custody cases and with partners deserting their marriages, noted Aneesa.
There is also no requirement of mandatory and written consent from the bride in the MMDA. There is no space for the bride to sign in the marriage certificate — it is her wali (male guardian) who signs for her. In Sri Lanka, most Muslim women are not present at their own nikah ceremony, which is often an all-male function.
A Community Effort to Reform the MMDA
In recent years, there has been growing awareness of these gaps as well as vital community work assisting women and children, and robust public conversation around the MMDA. In 2021, Muslim women in Sri Lanka took to social media to share their thoughts and experiences of not being allowed to sign their own marriage documents. Women’s organizations also work with the Quazi courts and regulatory authorities, providing support to women navigating the system.
But reform efforts have been challenged and blocked by conservative religious groups and Muslim community leadership. Muslim women activists have faced threats to their families and livelihoods, carrying out their work amidst targeted and organized misinformation campaigns and harassment from within the Muslim community. Their advocacy has also taken place amidst a wider anti-Muslim atmosphere that was prevalent in Sri Lanka, which added a further layer of hostility.
Government committees to reform the MMDA were set up 1970, 1984, 1990, 2009, and 2020; however policy reform is yet to materialize. In November 2024, Cabinet spokesperson and MP Vjitha Herath announced that Sri Lanka’s newly elected NPP government had no plans to reform the MMDA; his statement was met with criticism from activists and civil society organizations.
Despite these challenges, the movement to reform the MMDA continues to grow — and this solidarity is giving energy to the fight, at national and individual level.
In the final painting of Safiya’s triptych, we see a hand that re-emerges from the ocean. It is surrounded by legal documents and an array of children’s toys, clothing, and a baby cot, depicting the solace and support the artist received from her son while traipsing through courts and navigating a challenging chapter mediated by anachronistic legislation. No longer engulfed by the sea, the hand rises above the paraphernalia floating in the waters — unwavering, resolute and unflinching.
The third painting in Safiya Sideek’s triptych, titled “And with every hardship.” Photo provided by Equality Now.