Our Moslem Sisters: A Cry of Need from Lands of Darkness Interpreted by Those Who Heard It
Religion
Our Moslem Sisters: A Cry of Need from Lands of Darkness Interpreted by Those Who Heard It
Women -- Orient
It would be interesting to bring in here everything that Mohammedan law
says about divorce, but the rules are many and complicated and almost
too revolting to put into words. It is enough to say that the husband
may divorce his wife without any misbehavior on her part or without
assigning any reason. It is all left to the will and caprice of the man,
and he has only to say, "Woman, thou art divorced," or he can even use
metaphorical language which must be understood by the ever-on-the-alert
wife to mean divorce, as when he says, "Thou art free!" "Thou art cut
off!" "Veil yourself!" "Arise, seek for a mate!" etc., etc. A certain
man had been away for a week or so on a business trip. He came home and
the first words he said to his wife, were, "I thought you had gone home
to your father's house!" She understood him to mean, and rightly too, "I
divorce thee!" so she packed up her things and went off.
If a man pronounce his sentence of divorce only once or twice it is
revocable, but if he pronounces it three times it is irrevocable, and
the divorced wife cannot be taken back by her husband till she has been
married to another man, has lived with him and been divorced; then her
former husband can take her back. This is the most revolting and
degrading of all the divorce laws, and the prophet Mohammed instituted
it thinking that the very repulsiveness of it would act as a restraint,
but strange to say it only seems to give more license.
A man will get into controversy with his friends perhaps. To strengthen
his statements he uses all sorts of oaths, the strongest of which is, "I
divorce my wife by the triple divorce." It takes legal effect. The poor
man is in great distress, for he really loves his wife. What is he to
do? He must go through the process of law to get her back. He hires a
servant or a strange peasant to marry her. The revolting part is that
the poor woman has to live with this hired husband till he is again
hired to divorce her, when she is free to go back to her former husband.
This case actually happened, and many like it with varying circumstances
might be related, although it can gladly be said that the irrevocable
divorce is not of such frequent occurrence as the revocable.
Some incidents will illustrate the various circumstances which cause
divorce or are excuses for it.
Abraham, the carpenter, came to his employer one day asking for an
advance of wages. "Why?" was asked. "I am going to get married," he
said, "and it costs much money." Then he proceeded to relate his
domestic troubles, how he had lived with his one wife sixteen years,
explaining that he deserved much credit for doing so, seeing that his
father during his lifetime had indulged in thirty-nine wives, but that
he had come to the point where he must divorce this wife as she really
did talk too much, so of course he would have to marry another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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