So, I was struck by a thread that I came across yesterday "Positive test yesterday, Islamic divorce today":
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/pregnancy/5233026-positive-test-yesterday-islamic-divorce-today
which left me amazed that people just have a religious marriage without also having a legal one.
Then, entirely coincidentally, there was an article in todays Times which shows that this is really quite widespread.
This is the Times article with a share token:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/00986a27-c06a-4f98-a7b7-b3d90c4cf0c3?shareToken=312474580d7f8eeec6fb69b240cfd7a7
Women trapped by sharia: ‘I must pay my husband ransom to divorce’
About 100,000 marriages in the UK are believed to fall under the authority of sharia councils, also known as courts
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After suffering an onslaught of psychological abuse from her husband and increasingly unhappy in her marriage, Aisha finally decided she wanted a divorce.
There was one problem, however: her husband refused to allow it unless she paid him a five-figure sum covering all the money he spent on her during their marriage.
She offered instead to return her rings but he demanded the money they cost, a sum of thousands of pounds she could not afford.
“I feel like I have to pay ransom to get out of my marriage,” she told The Times.
Welcome to sharia, British style.
Because an Islamic marriage allows polygamy and permits only men to divorce at will, Aisha faces being trapped forever while her husband takes on new brides. The marriage was not officially registered so Aisha has no recourse to English law.
Aisha’s wedding was among 100,000 Islamic marriages estimated to have taken place in Britain and falling under the religious authority of sharia councils, also known as courts.
An investigation by The Times into the use of sharia in Britain has also found:
• A British sharia council states that husbands may dispose of their wives instantly by saying “divorce” three times, a practice banned in many countries in the Muslim world.
• Muslims are being encouraged by another sharia council to download a mobile phone app that creates sharia-compliant wills where daughters inherit half as much as sons.
• The app, aimed at users in England and Wales, has a drop-down menu for men to specify how many wives they have, up to four.
• Women are being asked to disclose when they had their last period in order to get a divorce.
• One of the country’s most prominent sharia councils was founded by a scholar who said men should not be questioned over why they hit their wives.
Britain is seen as the western capital for sharia councils, the informal guardians of religious law over the country’s fast-growing Muslim population.
Home to the first such institution in Europe in 1982, Britain is now expanding sharia services to Muslims overseas.
The Council of Europe, which protects human rights, has expressed concern about Britain’s sharia councils — estimated to number as many as 85 — discriminating against women, and the social pressure upon Muslims to use them.
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The women
Aisha (not her real name), who is in her twenties, was appalled when Dewsbury’s sharia council entertained her husband’s requests for compensation before setting her free.
Since she lacked the thousands of pounds requested, her husband offered to let her pay in instalments.
“Until I’m officially divorced Islamically, I still believe that I’m married to my husband. It’s hard to comprehend that I’m having to pay this amount just for something that’s spiritual.”
She remains in the marriage but is receiving help from Apna Haq, a women’s support group.
Another woman who struggled to divorce is Shakilla Malik, 45, from Manchester. She told the Karma Nirvana charity she suffered 13 years of domestic violence after being forced at 16 to marry a cousin in Pakistan.
She said the Dewsbury sharia council kept her waiting nearly three years for a divorce when her husband’s brother became involved.
“He wrote a letter to them saying that what a good dad his brother is, what a good husband he’s been, what a good person he was, [that] he prays five times a day,” she said. “This had nothing to do with my brother-in-law. They shouldn’t have given him the time of day.”
The Dewsbury sharia council said: “We understand that emotions can run high and that outcomes may not always meet everyone’s expectations, but our role is to guide couples towards constructive dialogue and decisions.”
A mother in the Midlands obtained a civil divorce after a decades-long arranged marriage to a cousin she wed as a teenager during a visit to Pakistan.
“In our culture and religion, if you don’t get divorced Islamically they say you’re still married. I wanted an Islamic divorce. I went to find somebody in the community … connected to the mosque,” she said.
The go-between made an indecent proposition that she should enter into a “mut’a”, a temporary religiously sanctioned union, sometimes branded a “pleasure marriage” because it enables couples to have sex and then part.
“Apart from my husband, no man has ever touched me. I sobbed my heart out when this guy proposed this to me,” she said.
The woman, in her forties, explained how some Muslim men such as her ex-husband use religiosity to exert patriarchal control over women.
He would demand sex, citing a hadith about Muhammad requiring wives to agree to intercourse even if on a camel’s back or saddle. The saying is used by some scholars to argue that there is no concept of marital rape in Islam.
Tanya Walker, a Tehran-born academic, explained in her book Sharia Councils and Muslim Women in Britain that some women used the councils due to community pressures. One woman said “religion is not important to me”. Another believed in God but not Islam and hated Islamic religious authorities.
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‘Divorce, divorce, divorce’
While Muslim women in Britain struggle to obtain divorces under sharia, the same is not true for men.
The Birmingham sharia council, part of the Birmingham Mosque Trust charity, explains on its website the concept of pronouncing talaq, the Arabic word for “divorce”. When declared by a husband, it effectively means “I divorce you”.
The council states online: “Men can divorce their wives unilaterally by pronouncing talaq three times either consecutively or on three separate occasions, depending on the Islamic school of thought by which the married couple abide.”
The Times asked Birmingham sharia council why it told couples that Muslim men may divorce in this way when the practice has been banned by 23 countries with large Muslim populations. They include Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.
Amra Bone, a panel member, said: “Thank you for highlighting the point on the website. It needs to be explained further that three talaq in one sitting is sinful etc.”
Triple talaq is rejected by prominent Islamic thinkers and scholars. Praising the abolition of the practice in Morocco, Ziauddin Sardar, a former British equality and human rights commissioner and author of Mecca: The Sacred City, described the custom as an absurd convention that had generated much abuse. The Islamic Sharia Council, based in Leyton, east London, told parliament that it refused to accept the validity of triple talaq, which existed in some Muslim communities, as it contradicted all Islamic guidelines regarding divorce.
Khola Hasan, one of the council’s scholars, said: “Triple talaq is really common among the Asian community in Britain.”
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The article is very long and goes on from here, the above is about half of it. It was interesting to read that Islamic rules vary between countries