New law to stop Muslim men divorcing by text
July 29, 2008 2:49 pm Other Divorce News
It seems the new trend for Muslim men is telling their wives by text they want a divorce, its reported in the gulf daily news. Bahrain Women’s Union are concerned that there needs to be a family law implemented as its wrong that Muslim men can legally divorce their wives with a text which is such an inhumane way to treat their wives.
The union wants the family law to ensure the husbands provide for them and their children and divorce in an ethical manner. It seems the men don’t worry about their wives because there is no law stating they have to. A final draft of the family law, which is called the Personal Status Law, will be submitted by the union by the end of July.
There have been several cases where Sharia courts have granted the divorce where the husband has just sent a short SMS message to his wife like “If you don’t leave your parent’s house, you will be divorced”. It seems Muslim women are being confused by their husbands if they really want a divorce or if indeed the divorce is legally valid by text. Some husbands send a SMS demanding a divorce and then make-up several hours later.
It seems madness that for the traditional Muslim marriage the bride and groom would usually take several months discussing with their families and meeting before making the commitment, to be able to end such a traditional value in two seconds seems ridiculous.
According to Islam, a husband who wants to divorce from his wife, must say in front of a witness three times she is divorced, this is then to repeated in court.
To divorce in Sharia it is very simple, the judge will simply ask if he meant what he said in the text, if he answered yes then it would count as a divorce, some judges say that they can’t write that they want a divorce unless they can’t speak; this generally depends on the judge.
Then they have to wait for three months and reside in the same house, in this 3 months they could get back together if they don’t the divorce is granted.
It seems the that 70% of Muslim men are not following Sharia law, a lot of them want a divorce out of anger, but if they followed Sharia law properly, many of them wouldn’t even be eligible for divorce.
An example of Sharia law is that a husband could not divorce his wife while she was having her menstrual period. Likewise, a husband who had sex with his wife after she finished her last menstrual period should wait for her to get and finish her next menstrual period before he could divorce her. But a lot of these laws are not being followed.
What do you think of the Sharia law for divorce?
