Hey friends,
Just browsing randomly online through the gulf newspapers, I was startled to read two articles on similair topics: marriages in Saudi Arabia. While one article talks about the alarming increase in divorces- 1 in 4 marriages end in divorce - the other article talks about how the lawmakers- men always- allow for new policies to be legalized to allow the local men to have various kind of marriages, including the weekend and friendship marriages (as quoted from Emirates Today that unfortunately don't have an archives section as of yet online). The point being made that Saudi lawmakers, both religious and liberals, are passing fatwas and laws to allow for men to have marriages of convenience, and hurting the women's life in the process.
I am sure everyone has heard of Misyar marriages, which "can be described as a legal framework of marriage in which a Muslim couple is united by the bonds of marriage, based on the usual Islamic marriage contract, but without the husband having to take the usual financial commitments with respect to his wife." But what's this new concept of weekend and friendship marriage?
And the real question is why are these marriages are failing? A lot of critics will indeed say its because of the cultural invasion from the West and the increasing freedoms the women in the kingdom are getting, but I think the issue stems from within the Kingdom. I don't know the answer to this question, but there could be several factors. Arranged marriages could be one, with the young girl and guys unable to talk with their potential husbands/ wives before marrige. The concept of dating is nil. There are youths trying to hook up with girls/ guys through technology.
Will the society in the Kingdom allow for more freedom, or continue its way through restricting the contact between the sexes, possibly causing for these marriages to fail? Is there any connection between the freedom granted to women to work, thereby giving them more independence and assertiveness, causing for marriages to Saudi men to fail? I don't know, and I am not sure we will get a definite and clear answer since there is no civic body to sit down and discuss and analyze this extremely worrying trend.
In America, 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce. In Saudi Arabia, 1 in 4 marriages end in divorce.
Mansur
2 comments:
"weekend marriages" really just sounds like pseudo-halal dating.
i'm so sick of "the west" being the scape goat of everything that goes wrong in the rest of the world. Men are men wherever they are. women are women wherever they are. men are just horn-dogs and they should just admit it. they will do anything to get into the pants of as many women as possible, and if it can happen in a way that makes them feel 'halalified' then that's what they'll do. women are no better either, they love to entise men, not caring whether they are married or whatever. i don't think this is a particularly western problem, it is as old as time and a part of every culture,
the struggle with the nafs is humanity's greatest struggle, and it happens irrelevent to culture.
just some cultures hide it under veils of fatwa's.
the islamic religion has been hijacked by the extremists, who are always men...so men are the root cause of the sick form of islam in ksa. women are unfortunately caught in it.
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