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Fatima Case Verdict Opens Door to More Forced Divorces
Ebtihal Mubarak, Arab News
JEDDAH, 6 February 2007 — A couple in the Eastern Province, who asked Arab News not to publish their names, were surprised to discover a month after their wedding that the wife’s half brothers and a cousin had approached officials in Alkhobar and Dhahran seeking to annul the marriage if a sheikh could not certify the husband belonged to a particular tribe.
“Police officers tried to reason with them and come up with some sort of conciliation, but they refused,” the husband, 32, told Arab News yesterday. “I’m not a Bedouin, so how can I prove my background through a tribal sheikh? I come from a famous family in Qassim.”
The husband said that his wife’s brothers are on the couple’s side and even traveled to Dhahran to vouch for him. But the cousin and the half brothers are seeking legal means to annul the marriage. “My relationship with my half brothers is not a close one,” said the wife, 22, who had been married and divorced once before. “We only see each other occasionally.”
The wife says she is happy in her second marriage and she hopes the divorce being sought by her cousin and half brothers will not be approved. But the plaintiffs in this case have managed to bring their complaint far enough into the justice system that a hearing is expected to take place soon. Although the couple have not hired a lawyer yet, they may soon have to.
Lawyer Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem says such tribal customs-based divorce requests are getting attention in the courts based on the concept of “damage.”
“Even distant relatives can claim that a man who is not equal to the wife in tribal hierarchy can cause them direct damage and so their case is viewed as valid,” he told Arab News yesterday.
This case is similar to one revolving around Fatima, a mother of two children who was divorced in absentia by a judge at the request of her half brothers, and may open the floodgates to future similar interventions that run contrary to Islamic principles, Fatima’s lawyer told Arab News yesterday.
In Fatima’s case, an appeals court on Jan. 21 ruled in favor of the half brothers, thereby upholding the divorce of Fatima and Mansour Al-Timani. The half brothers sought the divorce on the ground that Mansour deceived the family on his tribal background when asking for Fatima’s hand in marriage.
Al-Lahem said he would be announcing details soon regarding two similar cases that have emerged in Riyadh. He said the appeals court ruling is an affront to women’s rights under Islamic law as well as international human rights agreements to which Saudi Arabia is a signatory.
“Shariah law can rely on social customs in the absence of a clear Islamic law,” Al-Lahem said, but in these cases Saudi tribal tradition is undermining Islamic law that would prevent intervention by family members in marriages that have already taken place and adhere to Islamic rules.
The lawyer insists that Islamic law would prohibit such interventions.
Al-Lahem says he is concerned that the appeals court ruling would set up a legal precedent in the case law that could be used in future rulings and cause more marriages to be broken up based on Bedouin tribal rivalries.
Al-Lahem has sent a legal memo against the appeals court verdict that he hopes will make it to King Abdullah.
Human rights activist Fawziya Al-Oyoni told Arab News of another case that has been mentioned in a petition that a group of women activists plan to present to the king.
Rania Albou-Enin, a physician from Alkhobar who is in her last month of pregnancy, is awaiting an appeals court decision in a forced-divorce case that separated her from her husband, Saud Al-Khaledi, against the couple’s wishes.
Albou-Enin’s case is slightly different from Fatima’s because she was married to her husband abroad. Her father, who she claims has physically abused her, refused to let her marry. She sued her father in an Alkhobar court on the basis of the fact that he was not allowing her to marry anyone.
Albou-Enin decided to flee to Bahrain to marry Al-Khaledi. The father then appealed to the court to divorce his daughter from her husband, citing tribal incompatibility.
The judge dismissed the physical abuse charges and upheld the father’s request on the basis that the daughter did not seek the consent of her legal guardian before getting married.
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