Council of Islamic Ideology Recommends Special Inheritance Tribunals to Protect Women’s Rights, Also Calls for Licensing Religious Channels
The Council of Islamic Ideology devoted much of its 247th meeting in Islamabad on Thursday to a problem that rarely makes headlines but ruins lives quietly: women who wait years for an inheritance that is already theirs. Chaired by Dr Muhammad Raghib Hussain Naeemi, the council recommended that special inheritance tribunals be set up so that women’s property and inheritance cases are decided quickly. The recommendation was made in light of a Federal Shariat Court decision, and it lands on familiar ground — inheritance suits drag through the courts for years, and it is usually the female heirs, whose shares are fixed in both Shariah and the law, who pay the price for the delay.
Who was in the room
Members attending included Tahir Mahmood Ashrafi, Dr Intikhab Ahmad Noori, Pir Shamsur Rehman, Rana Shafiq Khan Pasruri, Sahibzada Hafiz Muhammad Amjad, Syed Atiqur Rehman Bukhari, Allama Yousuf Awan and Allama Iftikhar Hussain Naqvi, while Syed Saeedul Hassan and Dr Uzair Mahmood Al-Azhari joined online. The meeting also agreed that the maintenance rights of minor children and wives for past periods do not lapse, and it backed, with some amendments, Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri’s Muslim Family Laws (father’s maintenance) Amendment Bill 2026.
Religious channels and other business
The council said religious television channels should be issued proper licences, like other channels, rather than being left to operate on a no-objection certificate alone, and that the relevant laws and rules should be amended to make that happen. It approved ringtones concerning respect for flags and banners used during Muharram, and endorsed a Supreme Court decision in a blasphemy case.
Concern over security at home and at sea
The meeting expressed concern over the deteriorating law-and-order situation and continuing terrorism in the country, and condemned the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Houthi interference in the Bab al-Mandab, which has disrupted shipping, also came under discussion, while members voiced grief over the killing of three Pakistanis in a Somali pirate attack on the open sea and offered prayers for them.
