Is ex-Pakistan PM Imran Khan's marriage with Bushra Bibi illegal? Here is what cleric says

A cleric who solemnised wedding of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his third wife Bushra Bibi claimed that the ceremony did not follow proper Islamic Sharia law. According to the Pakistani news outlet Dawn, Mufti Mohammad Saeed asserted that he performed the couple’s Nikah during Bushra Bibi’s ‘Iddat period’. On Wednesday, the Pakistani cleric testified in front of an Islamabad court before Senior Civil Judge Nasrum Minallah. The Iddat period refers to the 130-day waiting period which begins after the dissolution of a woman’s marriage through divorce, death or any other form of separation. 

During this period, the woman -- whose marriage just got dissolved -- is asked to practice abstinence and remains unmarried. The cleric gave the testimony on Wednesday, during the hearing of a petition. According to Dawn, the petition was seeking legal action against the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman for marrying his present wife while she was reportedly on Iddat. The cricketer-turned-politician married his third wife in February 2018. During the Wednesday hearing, Khan’s friends Zulfi Bu­­k­h­ari and Aon Chaud­h­­ry stated that they were the ones who acted as witnesses to the controversial wedding.   

The cleric had close ties with PTI 

In the statement before the court, Saeed revealed that he had close relations with Imran Khan and was part of the Khan party’s core committee. The cleric further stated that it was Khan who asked Saeed to solemnise his wedding which was scheduled to take place in Lahore. “I obtained, from both sides, sundry details before performing the Nikah. I also asked her about her first marriage and divorce,” Mufti Saeed asserted in his testimony. The former Pakistani PM also took the cleric to a house in the Defence Society where the two met the relatives of Khan and Bushra Bibi.

“I was told that the Nikah was solemnised during Bushra Bibi’s Iddat as she had been divorced in Nov 2017. But there was a ‘prediction’ that the PTI chairman will become prime minister if he marries Bushra on Jan 1, 2018,” the cleric further stated in his Wednesday testimony. The cleric went on to accuse Khan of getting involved in an “illegal and un-Islamic” union for the sake of a prediction. Saeed alleged that a woman who introduced herself as Bibi’s sister claimed that the marriage was under Sharia law. However, he also stated that Khan called him in February 2018 with a request to perform the Nikkah again since the first one went against the principle of Shariah laws.