nikah marriage and divorce

[BluebonicPlague]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-51508974
The couple had an Islamic wedding ceremony in a west London restaurant in 1998 in the presence of an imam and about 150 guests, but no civil ceremony subsequently took place, despite Mrs Akhter repeatedly raising the issue.

They separated in 2016 and Mr Khan tried to block his wife's divorce petition two years ago on the basis they had not been legally married in the first place.

Am not Muslim so feel unqualified to comment much on this. But on first principles I wonder if
a) mostly, people assume nikah marriage is legal and protected under English law
b) mostly, people don't assume that and prefer to be governed by shariah law
c) people don't have a clue
d) actually some people do have a clue and don't care

Somehow, I suspect c) and d).
It's tragic if so. It means that some Muslim women are woefully unprotected when marriage breaks down. One solution might be to license imams to conduct marriage ceremonies, but that's not going to help people already stuck in damaging scenarios.
What should we be doing to improve matters?

I think it’s reasonable that women know what a marriage is in legal terms before entering into it. Marriage isn’t compulsory; nobody needs it. It’s a basic point that can be covered in school. It is not complex to understand either.

There are lots of cultural issues with nikah that means it is very unlikely ever to be recognised as equivalent to a formal civil marriage in England. The state is right to keep the legal status of marriage as it is. It is not exactly demanding on people. It’s done as it is to prevent exploitation of people and forcing women into legally binding scenarios without consent.

The other situation where you don’t check what your marriage means or is? I think that is where you bear some responsibility yourself. Common law or nikah, these are not marriages and rightly so. You would be developing parallel systems of law for certain groups and that is not a good thing for women.

I think this is really more complicated than it seems. My dds school friend (late 20's) agreed to an Islamic marriage with her partner to keep her parents happy. She doesn't want to be legally married to him. She was happy with living together, her family were not. Turning her Islamic marriage into a legally recognised marriage would not be a good thing for her.

Yes I think she should dump him.... but they do have a child and it's taking her a while to get there. She's the high earner AND primary carer

I thought this was common knowledge. It has bween on the news in the past to raise awareness of the issue. and at least 2 examples given shows that the couples were aware.

If you want a nikah recognised in UK law, but don't want a legal marriage for some reason, do it abroad, where it will count as one of the millions of marriage types UK recognises as foreign-and-valid but can't offer themselves.

Dowries, whichever side gets the money, are illegal, in the UK, as is polygamy.

Along with most other countries in the world, the nikah could thus never be legal here. I'm with the court on this one. DC aren't really affected as long as the father's name is put on the birth certificate, although in the event of a split it's much easier for the father to abandon them.

"Sign a form in a government office and boom, you married. Then have whatever ceremony you want."

As a non-Anglican Protestant, this is the option most people who are married in my church went for. (A few married in the Anglican church or in other churches which were licensed.)

The difference between my church's wedding ceremony and a nikah is that the minister wouldn't marry you if you didn't also have the civil paperwork in place. Legally I assume he could, but he wouldn't, both because there's pretty clear instructions in the Bible about doing things where possible according to the law of the land, and to protect the lower earner/ more vulnerable partner and any children in the event of a divorce.

(For completeness, I have heard of crazy American Christians proposing marriage without state involvement but never of anyone in the UK proposing such a thing - and I think it's pretty niche in America. Incidentally the crazy Americans propose it precisely because it means a wife doesn't get anything if you divorce. I say proposing rather than having because I've never seen any evidence that these people have found a woman who can tolerate them, so afaik they're at least mostly single.)

"If you want a nikah recognised in UK law, but don't want a legal marriage for some reason, do it abroad, where it will count as one of the millions of marriage types UK recognises as foreign-and-valid but can't offer themselves."

I'm not an expert but I thought some/all of the "foreign-and-valid" types of marriage weren't held to be valid if you were born in the UK? (This is, I was told, to stop underage marriages of UK citizens being valid just because they happened outside of the UK.)

No, not at all. Otherwise nobody born in the UK would ever be able to conduct a legally binding marriage abroad. I've known people who were born here and had a nikah in Pakistan, which our law recognised.

Father’s find it very easy to abandon children post relationship split regardless of whether they’ve been legally married or not.

Marriage isn’t needed to apply for child maintenance. But that’s all the mother will get bar anything that’s in her name.

Dowries aren’t a thing in Islamic marriages, the bride gift is equivalent to the engagement ring scenario, wealthier people agree on giving higher value jewellery to the bride. Sometimes the bride asks for non monetary bride gifts, one in India was recently in the news as she asked for a hundred books of her specification.

I'm no expert either, but underage marriages don't count anywhere, although they're permitted in some bits of some religions n/inc Islam.

@frazzledasarock oh I see re the bride gift. I'd like books too. Thing is, the history of marriage payment in the UK is a long and dishonourable one, and that's why specific payments about the bride are illegal, as they are in Islam.

You start off with selling the bride, which no one has ever approved of but went on like anything. Slavery, simple.

Then you move onto marriages made for land and property consolidation which lasted for centuries until the UK got primogeniture ie all the females were stripped of their property expectations because the oldest son got the lot (also to maintain military power and county wealth).

Then you get to the stage where the male child gets the land and the girl gets the money. People had specific sums settled on them when they 'came out' ie debuted in society.

Jane Austen's Emma had £20k, famously. Not so famously, Austen herself had £0.00 as her father gave the lot to his DS and DIL, and Austen couldn't marry as she had no dowry. Women really did get stuck if they had no dowry.

Both sexes put up with this for a long time - men were told who to marry too.

In the 19th cent. thanks to the industrial revolution, land stopped making so much money, and British girls were kiboshed. That's why our aristocracy married American heiresses - they had buckets of cash from railroads and factories, whereas the wilting English roses had a couple of ornaments and barely enough to pay the scullery maid.

Not until 1857 (or thereabouts) was the Married Woman's Property Act made legal, where wives could own their own property, children and cash. Until then, you were at the mercy of your husband - you paid a lot on marriage that was supposed to be given back when he died/you left but no one ever saw their settlement again.

Nowadays all estates are businesses and in trust so it doesn't make much odds who you marry - nothing can be lost via divorce. .

We definitely recognise under age marriages contracted abroad by people born abroad for at least some purposes - I've worked on data processing where this was relevant.

We definitely recognise under age marriages contracted abroad by people born abroad for at least some purposes - I've worked on data processing where this was relevant.

We definitely recognise under age marriages contacted abroad by people born abroad for at least some purposes - I've worked on data collection where this was relevant.

Patte, a lot of Muslims believe that too about adhering to the law of the land.

'Sayyiduna Abd Allah ibn Umar (Allah be pleased with him) narrates that the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him & give him peace) said: “It is necessary upon a Muslim to listen to and obey the ruler, as long as one is not ordered to carry out a sin. If he is commanded to commit a sin, then there is no adherence and obedience.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, no. 2796 & Sunan Tirmidhi)'

When women are being exploited it's generally by someone without a strong moral code and links more with culture than faith.

I agree that strong campaigns would be good around rights for women but anecdotally a lot of women know this and aren't driven to have a civil marriage.
So maybe targeting premarital discussion groups would be good?

Sorry, my phone was playing up!

@SuperLoudPoppingAction

That sounds pretty similar to the (standard) Christian position. Genuine question though - why in that case don't Imams take the same position as all the Christian ministers I've known and just tell people that they must get the civil certificate first? Is it just that people don't realise they need it? I understand people in general not knowing but I would have thought this was the kind of thing an Imam should be aware of?

Most Christian marriages do not require a civil certificate first. If you marry in the Church of England then you marry under canon law and this is recognised in civil law. If you marry in most other denominations then the minister is often registered as a registrar though you still need to give notice at the registrar’s office first.

@Supersimkin2 the bride gift is the property of the bride. In Islam a woman’s property is her own. It doesn’t belong to her family it’s hers.

The bad things I’ve heard about the bride gift, is when the groom agrees to the gift, then post marriage puts pressure on the bride to forgive it, so he doesn’t have to give it to her.

My friend had this, she naively assumed that’s what the bride gift was, you never actually got it, you forgave it. I put her right on that, she had a plot of land (in her husband’s home country) as her bride gift.

I wouldn’t want books, I’d want cash, in a scenario where the marriage doesn’t work, it’s easier to have a realisable asset to start a new life.

Aesop

That's not my experience - I suspect we probably come from/ have come into contact with different Christian traditions.

Ex wanted all my jewellery when I got divorced, jewellery that was meant to go to my children so not realisable assets as such. Jewellery given to me by my family.

Thankfully the judge in my case agreed.

In a friends case the judge didn’t agree and she lost family heirlooms to an abusive ex, instead of being able to pass it on to her dc as she’d expected.

@Patte in my experience most mosques do make the civil marriage a pre requisite to conducting a nikah. They also insist on checking age and resident status.

However, an imam or religious leader isn’t necessary in carrying out an Islamic marriage.

A nikah is a contract, it states that the couple agree to marry, and the amount of the bridge gift the groom will give the bride, and anything else the couple want in the contract. Both bride and groom (or their representatives) say they’ll agree to this in front of witnesses and they’re islamically married.

I know women who’ve married in their living rooms, one friends brother conducted hers. So long as you know how it’s done anyone can officiate it.

@frazzledasarock you are a diamond mine of info.

My mate who is Hindu had to pay her arranged DH a fortune to move out. Not via divorce - that was later - but under religious rules. He'd turned out to be a DV enthusiast, and her family booted him out pretty fast. He wouldn't go until they'd coughed up. He thought that all English were loaded, and couldn't understand why he wasn't just getting a huge cheque.

Frazzled

Thanks. That makes sense as you can't necessarily expect everyone to be aware of the law, so if you don't need an Imam or other official, it's easy for people not to realise it's not legal.

@frazzledasarock and I am as ever impressed with the Islamic history of women being allowed to own property.

In Britain women could only own property if they were widowed - married, it belonged legally to DH, single it was administered by DBro or DF. Always assuming you got anything in the first place, which you didn't if you had any male relations who copped the lot automatically.

Men owned children too. Until the UK divorce courts changed the rules - rather too recently - a man automatically had residency of all DC, if he wanted them.

Mothers couldn't see DC, let alone bring them up. Unless DF didn't want them, when they were dumped with the mother and no maintenance. That would .never happen in Islam, I assume.

Children are under the custody of their mother till aged seven, then the custody goes to the father having taken the child’s wishes and feelings into account.

The father is meant to fully carry the financial burden of bringing up the child. All costs housing, feeding, clothing education is the fathers responsibility. If the ex-wife is breastfeeding then the father pays all her maintenance too till the child is weaned completely the maximum age recommended is two.

I’ve never seen this pan out in real life.

In India often (I only know as that’s where my family ties are) and one friend very heartbreakingly in Africa had her tiny children taken and she was kicked out of the home with nothing. There are pretty dire religious warning against splitting a child from its mother without good reason. But an abusive family are not going to be afraid of that.

Most women haven’t got a clue what their rights are, and as so many girls are married off young and only ever given a very basic religious education so don’t know anything apart from what their parents tell them (not much apart from cultural norms and expectations). I think that’s why girls are married young, so they won’t have time to learn and know what their rights are and have very low expectations.

This happened to a friend of mine - religious wedding, nothing ‘legal’ and of course he buggered off, divorced her and went off and married a teenage relative that his mum had lined up.

He and her (hideous) in-laws just refused to get a register job and made her feel stupid/greedy/suspicious for asking for one.