LGBTQIA+ should not to be allowed space in religiously governed personal laws: Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind to SC

Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind, a prominent Muslim body, has opposed before the Supreme Court a plea for giving legal sanctity to same-sex marriage, saying LGBTQIA+ must not be allowed space in religiously governed personal laws of the communities.

The organisation, through its president Maulana Mahmood Asad Husain Madani, contended the principle of constitutional morality invoked to justify same sex marriage based on the fact that in some part of the world this is legal; can be very harmful for the social order of the other part.

"This logic that other countries have legalised it cannot be introduced in India," it said.

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It is believed by Muslims, marriage is a socio-religious institution between a biological man and a biological woman and any different interpretation given to the marriage shall lead to the persons claiming to be married under this category as 'nonadherents'.

In the Islamic paradigm, fathers and mothers are complimentary to each other but not interchangeable, it said.

The plea filed through advocate M R Shamshad also said the legislative policy of a “marriage” in the Indian legal system, whether penal, constitutional, or personal, has been between a biological man and a biological woman. There are categorical and definitive binaries with the usage of terms such as “husband”, “wife”, “mother”, “father”, etc.

"Any deviation or dilution of such definitions is a matter of legislative policy based on social realities, acceptance and on extensive socio-legal research," it said.

The plea also said that prayer in the writ petitions have been framed in a manner that seemed to suggest that the Legislature is subordinate to the Union Judiciary, rather than being equal pillars of the sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic, Republic of India.

The organisation also said it is crucial to point out the context and the social structure in which the LGBTQIA+ movements brewed from LGBT to LGBTQ and further to LGBTQ+ and thereafter LGBTQIA+.

"The background of these movements has been expanding day by day and has been the atheistic paradigm and not the one that is based on theistic value system. If we trace the epistemology of the Western sexual liberation movements, the defining figures are nearly all staunch atheists. Since the atheistic worldview had a decisive influence qua the present alterations in the ideas of sexual morality, it must not be allowed to create any space within the religiously governed personal laws of communities," it said.

On March 13, the top court had referred a plea related to recognition of same sex marriage to a Constitution bench for final hearing on April 18, finding the issue as of seminal importance.