Asalaamu alaikum: Can someone tell me where it states in Islamic law, shariah, Quran or hadith where family members who are secondary relations to a woman in Saudi may do this? In the Prophets Last Sermon, didn't he uphold the status of equality of most Muslims? How can a woman "marry beneath her"? This must be a throwback to the Arab tribal rivalry. Insane! Found at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080120/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saudi_for ced_divorce_3;_ylt=AohZYlLlJcX9WpnVRnqSprUE1vAI
Forced annulment keeps couple apart
y DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jan 20, 4:14 PM ET
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Two years ago, a knock on Fatima and Mansour
al-Timani's door shattered the life they had built together. if(window.yzq_d==null)window.yzq_d=new Object();
window.yzq_d['xr1jL0LEYuM-'] ='&U=13bmep6a0%2fN%3dxr1jL0LEYuM-%2fC%3d571921.12086570.1253 1797.1414694%2fD%3dLREC%2fB%3d5166954';
It
was the police, delivering news that a judge had annulled their
marriage in absentia after some of Fatima's relatives sought the
divorce on grounds she had married beneath her.
That was just the beginning of an ordeal for a couple who � under Saudi Arabia's
strict segregation rules � can no longer live together. They sued to
reverse the ruling, publicized their story and sought help from a Saudi
human rights group.
But the two remain apart and Fatima said she is considering suicide if her recent appeal to King Abdullah does not reunite her with her husband.
"Only the king can resolve my case," Fatima told The Associated
Press by telephone in a rare interview. "I want to return to my
husband, but if that is not possible, I need to know so I can put an
end to my life."
Fatima's case underscores shortcomings in the kingdom's Islamic
legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not
always present and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.
The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer severe
restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot drive, appear
before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without
a male guardian's permission.
Recently, the king did intervene and pardon another high-profile
defendant � a rape victim who was sentenced to lashes and jail time for
being in a car with a man who was not her relative.
The two cases have brought Saudi human rights once again into the
international spotlight, revealing not only the weakness of the
kingdom's justice system, but the scant rights of Saudi women.
"When I heard that the (rape victim) was pardoned, I couldn't
believe it. My case is so much simpler than hers, since my divorce is
invalid," Fatima said.
Fatima said her husband, a hospital administrator, followed Saudi
tradition in asking her father for permission to marry her in 2003.
"My brother reported good things about him, so my dad accepted his
proposal," said Fatima, a computer specialist who was 29 when she
married.
She said her father knew that Mansour came from a less prominent
tribe than hers, but that he did not mind because he "cared about the
man himself."
A few months after the wedding, several of Fatima's relatives,
including a half brother, persuaded her father to give them power of
attorney to file a lawsuit demanding an annulment, she said.
Then her father died, and Fatima said she had hoped the case would be dropped.
But on Feb. 25, 2006, police knocked on the couple's door to serve
Mansour with divorce papers � which said his marriage had been annulled
nine months earlier.
"We were shattered. How did this happen? Why?" Fatima asked.
Under Saudi law, a woman needs the permission of her family to marry.
Saudi lawyer Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem, who used to represent the couple,
said local interpretations of Islamic law hold that relatives of a
married couple have the right to seek an annulment if they feel the
marriage lowers the extended family's status.
He said authorities are reluctant to overrule such annulment
orders, believing they are private matters within extended families.
Fatima took the couple's 2-year-old daughter and 4-month-old
son to live with her mother, who had persuaded her to let Mansour deal
with the legal issues on his own.
But after three months without her husband, Fatima and the
children sneaked out of her mother's house and flew with Mansour to the
western seaside city of Jiddah, where they sought to live in anonymity.
Saudi police soon discovered them and imprisoned the family for living together illegally.
"The police told me I either return to my (mother's) family or go to jail," Fatima said. "I chose jail."
"My children and I were thrown in a cell with women sentenced
for pushing drugs, practicing witchcraft and behaving immorally,"
Fatima said. Authorities allowed her to send her daughter back to live
with her father, but the infant stayed with Fatima in jail.
"He learned to speak in jail, he learned to walk in jail and his teeth came out in jail," she said.
Meanwhile, Mansour went to court to appeal the divorce ruling, but a Riyadh appeals court upheld the decision in 2007.
Last September, the head of a prominent Saudi human rights group
reportedly asked the kingdom's highest court to review the case.
Bandar al-Hajjar, head of the National Society of Human Rights,
submitted two Islamic studies concluding that the divorce was invalid,
according to the Arab News, a Saudi English-language daily.
The studies, conducted by Islamic researcher Adnan Al-Zahrani
and Bassam Al-Bassam, a counselor at the Court of Cassation in Mecca,
said that if a woman's legal guardian represented her at the original
wedding, then other relatives have no right to object to the marriage
based on compatibility.
Both studies concluded that Fatima married Mansour with her
father's permission, and that only the wife can decide whether she
wants her marriage annulled, the paper reported.
Despite their legal fight, Fatima and Mansour remain apart.
After nine months in jail, Fatima moved to an orphanage where she and her son share an apartment with several other women.
Fatima said she is holding out hope the king might pardon her, and recognize her as "married to Mansour, before God."
"I love him more than ever. He's the only one who has stood by me," she said.
------------- "Every good deed is charity whether you come to your brother's assistance or just greet him with a smile.
|