Committal orders for disobeying with maintenance orders in the Selangor state sharia courts: Literature review.

Abstract

Implementation and enforcement of maintenance order often becomes an unresolved issue at the Syariah Court. In order to ensure obedience to the maintenance order, several alternatives could be applied for the enforcement of the maintenance order, for instance; committal order. This research aims to study the concept of imprisonment in Islam. It also aims to study the legal provision related to committal order and its procedure of refusal of maintenance order, as well as the potential and challenges in enforcing the committal order due to the refusal of maintenance order at the Syariah Court of Selangor. This is qualitative research. Data collection is through document analysis, as literature is the principal method in this paper and was analyzed inductively. The outcome of this research was to discover that the concept of imprisonment in Islam was discussed in the context of ta’zir. The research outcomes also show that the gap in the provision of committal orders at Section 151(1) of the Syariah Court Civil Procedure Enactment (State of Selangor) is silent during the duration of imprisonment. Furthermore, there is also a gap in the application of cases that should be applied separately, whereby there are situations where the petitioner has to apply for divorce and maintenance separately. The research also discovers that the committal order is effective in encountering a person who refused to pay maintenance and has the potential to gain back the arrears. However, there are challenges in enforcing the committal order, such as the attitude of parties, loopholes in laws, weakness of enforcement of order, and trial duration. This research has an impact on practitioners and legislators in Selangor to upgrade the provision and enforcement of committal orders due to the refusal of maintenance orders. This research also assists in giving recent information to the petitioner on the provision and enforcement of orders related to maintenance.