Your advocate
This week your advocate is Barrister Omar Khan Joy of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh and Head of 'The Legal Counsel'. His professional interests include commercial law, corporate law, family law, land law, constitutional law, banking law, arbitration and intellectual property laws. Our civil and criminal law experts from reputed law chambers will provide the legal summary advice.
Reader's query
I, being a beneficiary of the valued column "Your Advocate", would first of all like to thank you. Insofar as rights in Islamic inheritance law are concerned, it's reliably learnt that as per recently enforced amendments, sons and daughters are equally distributed on 1:1 basis of both movable and immovable properties, unlike in the original, rights of sons 2:1 for daughters. Your valued comments and elaborations in details of the above will be most welcome.
Sincerely,
Putool
Response
Thank you very much for your query. Yes, we have seen movements and campaigns in recent times for equal rights of son and daughters in inheriting their deceased parents' properties. Few women rights and human rights organizations led such campaigns. There was a discussion at governmental level as well. However, such change has not yet been adopted. As such the current scenario remains as it was before. For your better understanding, I am briefly elaborating the present law.
In Bangladesh the question of inheritance of property of Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Buddhists are governed by personal law. Personal law is that branch of law, which is applicable to the persons of a particular religious community. Therefore, Muslim personal law means that portion of Islamic law that is applicable to the Bangladeshi nationals professing Islam.
Consequently, it is clearly understood that so far as the inheritance of property of a Muslim is concerned, the laws stem from the holy Qur'an will apply for Muslims in Bangladesh. Accordingly, in the presence of son, daughter is regarded as residuary and in the absence of son, daughter is regarded as sharer. Female gets half of the share to their male counterpart. No distinction is made between movable and immovable property in this regard.
The very common objection frequently raised against personal laws including Muslim Personal law is discrimination between male and female, i.e. gender inequality. In view of the above discrimination, it is demanded by the secular thinkers that Uniform Family Code should be adopted in Bangladesh with a view to eliminate gender inequality and with a view to apply the same law for people of all religions. Though there were some movements towards this direction at one point, it has been understood that there is too remote a possibility that such Uniform Family Code will be adopted in the near future.
For detailed query contact omar@legalcounselbd.com.
