Muslim wives legally invisible

its possible to have a Jewish wedding without a civil wedding, but I think its very unusual. Usually they are done at the same time. I remember someone from the rabbinic office bringing me civil documents to sign during our Jewish wedding.

I don't think its a widespread issue in the UK regarding Jewish weddings.

But of course anyone can find a complicit Rabbi to do a chuppah without the civil formalities if they want. I don't think you even need a qualified Rabbi.

In the US i think the Jewish and civil weddings are done entirely seperately.

Remember when Jerry Hall thought she'd been married to Mick Jagger for years, until they split!

When she filed for divorce it turned out their romantic ceremony in Bali wasn't an official wedding.

I don't see how that would work in a country that doesn't have Islam as any kind of state religion and also has freedom of religion and speech, no. It requires buy in from the people concerned, which isn't something that can be imposed.

So for example I'm British, I had a wedding in a Catholic church that incorporated both the sacrament and the legal ceremony. I don't actually recognise any rights the British state might assert over the former. It simply isn't for them to decide whether a Catholic sacrament is valid or not, any more than the RC church should have a say on whether the legalities were validly completed or not.

So let's say we do create some kind of structure for recognising nikahs conducted in the UK as legally valid if registered, and say they don't count otherwise. This doesn't then mean the people having the nikahs think the British state gets to decide whether they're valid or not. It creates the possibility that such ceremonies will still happen outside of the legal registration process. This is where the need for change via education and culture comes in.

Absolutely, it doesn’t fix the problem completely but it does level the playing field a bit.

I think, to be fair, it hasn’t needed legislation for the many other religions and ceremonies British people undertake which aren’t legally binding so you can see why they wouldn’t feel the need for one religion? Or I can, at least.

True! So many on MN.

Difficulty is that many Moslem women are in relationships with men who are also “married” to other women. So making registration obligatory would only work for the first wife.

I think those women are similar to the women in the wider population who live with their partner for years, have children and a property and think it gives them the same legal rights as married women.

A neighbour is married both ways. UK law screws her just as much as Sharia because she doesn't have the freedom to dismiss family elders advice.
She didn't know about the company set up in her name but I hope the one.gov thing resolves that sooner or later. Her husband is a criminal, and has already taken her son once and had the police rescue him.

I agree the £50k fine would work.

Even so, with a legally recognised marriage that woman still wouldn’t be able to get a divorce through the sharia court, even if legally divorced in the uk, so it doesn’t help with that situation.

many people would think themselves still married if the Muslim marriage wasn’t dissolved

Easy, 50k fine for performing a religious ceremony without a prior civil marriage. If 60% of women are affected in that community then it’s a big enough problem to crack down hard on. I read of one woman who couldn’t obtain a divorce from a shariah court because her husband was demanding 100k in the negotiations. i have no problem with people wanting to use their own courts but tbh the whole area needs to be looked at. Shrugging our shoulders and doing nothing about it because of religious sensitivities is just throwing a bunch of women under the bus. Fuck that frankly.

www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/sharia-law-women-marriage-wedding-3gtt6xk8v

It's not always trying to cheat the women. My inlaws genuinely did not know that a Hindu marriage is not legal without registration. They assumed it was after a whole day of rituals!

Luckily my dad knew. Once my inlaws were told, they and DH were keen to register too.

I worked with a UK educated Muslim woman. She only understood that she was not legally married when she was looking into what she needed to do to register the birth of her first child. She had not realized that her Nikah was not legally recognized. It should have been required that the Imam explain to the couple that they were not legally married. She and her husband married at the town hall as quickly as they could manage as they wanted their marriage and their children to be legitimate.

Many mosques are increasingly refusing to do a religious wedding until the civil wedding has been done first, so it is something that is being addressed by many imams.

The issue is it isn’t being enforced by enough of them.

I won’t roast you but that’s a big assumption about Muslim family solicitors

Yes i was going to say this.

Sometimes a woman is thankful that her marriage isnt legally recognised when it comes time for her to leave.

Same. Our church wouldn't have offered a purely religious Catholic marriage to people who aren't also having the legal part during the ceremony (they did do blessings in some circumstances but not a wedding under canon law). That, afaik, is the choice of the RC church itself not the law of the land. As the religious part was before the legal part, I wondered what would've happened if we'd just walked out between the sacrament and the register signing!

That’s very clear and firm from the Gudwara. Leaves no room for misinterpretation. That’s the sort of support people need from their institutions to navigate marriage

I think in secondary schools under the statutory sex and relationships curriculum would be a good place to teach this. My sister works in an abortion clinic. She sees lots of Muslim women who get pregnant in one of these Nikah marriages; it is very easy for the husband to then disband the Nikah and the woman is left with the shame of an unmarried pregnancy, which is still looked down on in many cultures.

Agreed but also suspect in many Muslim marriages both man and woman wouldn’t be educated in the uk so not sure how schools help really.
My Muslim female friends here are educated professionals and not the type to not understand whether they’re legally married. I suspect that generally falls to the girls brought over from Pakistan to marry a British man.

I was thinking along those lines aswell
most Muslim lawyers or solicitors would be male (dont roast me )and wouldn't give a female muslim a very strong argument or defence

That’s what happens when men come to the uk but don’t want to change to uk ways, preferring to do things the traditional way. And there is no incentive to change. Why would they want forced to pay their ex maintenance in the event of a divorce!

There should be more recognition of this issue by imams and no shame on the woman for insisting on a uk recognised marriage.

My friend had a uk one (paper marriage, ie civil ceremony by a registrar) not being Muslim herself, and her husband subsequently married another woman in Islam, who was then considered by his family to be his one and only wife as it was a long standing arrangement with his family since childhood. What a mess.

Yeah it’s very worrying, my temple ensured I had a civil marriage before my religious marriage. We had to get the paperwork sorted before the Gudwara would book my wedding, I had the option of doing it elsewhere in advance or having it done at the temple just before the wedding. It stops people from just not doing it afterwards.

This is a problem with religious institutions. Ideally they should be refusing to perform a nikah without either evidence of a civil marriage taking place prior to the Nikah or conducting it themselves. the sceptic in me thinks it works out fine for men in these communities and thats why the some Mosques aren’t enforcing it. Glad to hear muslim lawyers are raising it, muslim women should be entitled to the same legal protections as any other british woman.

It leaves women in a really shitty situation. I do wonder if we need to introduce legislation around no religious marriage being able to be performed without a civil marriage taking place beforehand and then just fine the shit out of anyone who does it. But thats a bit dicey in terms of religious freedom.