Debunking the viral misinformation regarding second marriage

Somewhere between the headline and the comment section, Bangladeshi women were recently told a right had been snatched away. Apparently, overnight, the courts decided wives no longer mattered, consent had been cancelled, and patriarchy had received a fresh High Court seal of approval. Islam, of course, was dragged into the mess because no moral panic in this country is complete without a selective religious cameo. Except none of that actually happened. The law has been settled for decades. The problem lies in the careless spread of misinformation through selective reporting, truncated quotations, and headlines that prioritise virality over accuracy. What followed was not a debate about women’s rights or Islamic principles but a textbook example of how legal judgments are distorted when only the most provocative line is circulated.

The recent judgment of the High Court did not introduce a new rule, dilute existing safeguards, or re-engineer family law. It dismissed a writ petition and reaffirmed the operation of Section 6 of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 1961. That is the entirety of what happened, but the public was not told this in full. Instead, one fragment of the judgment was isolated, stripped of context, and circulated. “Wife’s consent not required” became the headline, while what is required, how decisions are made, and what consequences follow were quietly omitted. This is not a misunderstanding. It is a misrepresentation.

At the centre of the controversy is Section 6 of the law, a provision that regulates polygamy for Muslim men. Section 6 does not permit a man to remarry freely. It imposes a procedural barrier. A man who wishes to contract another marriage during the subsistence of an existing one must apply in writing to an Arbitration Council led by the concerned union parishad chairman, stating his reasons. The council, also comprising one representative nominated by the husband and one by the wife, must hear both parties and decide whether the proposed marriage is “necessary” and “just.” If a man bypasses this process and marries anyway, the consequences are immediate and tangible. The marriage cannot be lawfully registered. The entire dower (denmohor) to the first wife becomes payable at once. Penal liability follows. This is not symbolic regulation. It is enforceable law.

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The law has always required prior written permission from the Arbitration Council before a second marriage can be contracted. It has always imposed penalties if that process is bypassed, required notice to the existing wife and an opportunity for her to be heard. It has never framed her consent as a statutory prerequisite. The court did not newly discover this. It did not announce it as a reform. It simply restated the law as written. The writ petition asked the court to either strike down Section 6 or read into it a mandatory consent requirement. The court refused to do either. That refusal was reported as a rollback.

What the headlines did was focus obsessively on what the law does not require, while remaining conspicuously silent on what it does. There was little mention of the Arbitration Council, its composition, its decision-making role, or the consequences of marrying without permission. The judgment was not read as a whole; it was cherry-picked, sensationalised, and released into the wild. This style of reporting reshapes public perception. When readers are told only that consent is not required, they are led to believe that nothing stands in the way of a second marriage. The procedural safeguards disappear from view. The state’s regulatory role vanishes. The law is reduced. And it is not accidental. Outrage travels faster when complexity is removed.

However, what is particularly troubling is how the selective reporting erased women’s actual legal tools from the conversation. Bangladeshi family law recognises the enforceability of conditions in the Nikah Nama (Muslim marriage contract). A woman may stipulate restrictions on polygamy or reserve the right to divorce if her husband remarries. Courts enforce these clauses. They offer concrete protection. Yet, these protections rarely make it into viral posts.

In my conversation with Barrister Mariha Khan, advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, she explained that the judgment was never about sidelining women. It was about reaffirming where statutory authority lies. The Arbitration Council is the decision-making body. By circulating only the particular line, the actual regulatory structure was obscured, which left women feeling exposed rather than informed. This pattern of selective amplification has consequences. It undermines trust in institutions, creates panic without offering remedies, and positions courts as adversaries rather than interpreters of law. Most damagingly, it denies women the information they require to protect themselves in real, practical ways. Misinformation disorients.

None of this is to argue that the law is sufficient or beyond critique. Section 6 remains vague. Arbitration Councils operate unevenly. Enforcement is inconsistent. These are legitimate issues that deserve sustained scrutiny. But critique must begin with accuracy. Reform cannot be built on a misreading of what the court actually said. By slicing one sentence out of a longer legal reasoning and presenting it as the whole story, some headlines replaced understanding with alarm. If there is a lesson here, it is not about polygamy, consent, or religion; it is about the cost of misinformation in a legal system where rights are procedural, contextual, and often misunderstood. Women are not protected by outrage triggered by half-truths; they are protected by full information, honest reporting, and the ability to distinguish between what the law says, what it does, and what it does not promise.

Barrister Noshin Nawal is a columnist for The Daily Star. She can be reached at nawalnoshin1@gmail.com.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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