On Saturday morning, while I was globetrotting via my smart phone, I came across a story of growing divorce epidemic in Tajikistan on BBC online. Husbands working away in Russia, leading to serious social issues, are divorcing growing numbers of Tajik women, reports the BBC’s Rayhan Demytrie from Tajikistan. However, I was attracted to the story because of the mode of divorce often employed by these men.
Tajikistan is among the few Muslim nations where men can divorce their wives by repeating the word “taloq” – divorce – three times. They can do it face to face, over the phone, or simply by sending an SMS. SMS is the most widely used data application in the world, with 3.6 billion active users, or 78 per cent of all mobile phone subscribers. The term SMS is used as a synonym for all types of short text messaging as well as the user activity itself in many parts of the world.
The idea of adding text messaging to the services of mobile users was not frequent in many communities of mobile communication services at the beginning of the 1980s. The first SMS message was sent over the Vodafone GSM network in the United Kingdom on 3 December 1992. SMS was originally designed as part of GSM, but it is now available on a wide range of networks, including 3G networks.
Text messages are powerful because they’re ubiquitous, easy to create and consume, relatively cheap, and can be used to do things such as deliver mobile banking (M-Pesa in Kenya), alert the police when someone has trespassed on your property and even pay for insurance services (Tigo Life Care Insurance in Ghana).
Now there is yet another thing SMS is capable of doing: divorcing a wife. How I wish I were dreaming. However, unfortunate I am not even dozing. I am not only awake. I am alive. In several countries today, once a married couple had an argument, it is nothing out of the ordinary, or is it? After the quarrel, the husband sends a text to his wife telling her that he might as well divorce her.
The woman goes to a judge, tells the judge what happens and because of how the law of Islam is structured, she is granted divorce. Just like that? Yes, just like that, to quote the late iconic Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. In 2011, a Saudi girl who had thought she could fulfill the dream of her life by marrying a well-known lawyer got the shock of her life when she was divorced by a text just three days after marriage.
The unnamed woman from the western town of Taif said she had agreed to marry the lawyer because of his high position and good manners.
“Three days later, he asked her to go to her family’s house and wait for him until he finishes some work,” Taif Arabic language daily said. “One hour later, she received a SMS on her mobile from her husband telling her that she is divorced.” Well, it is not in my place to determine or judge how a marriage should put an end, much less if it is right to use SMS to put “asunder to what God has put together”, but this is rather shocking, and downright callous for a man to end “a God-ordained marriage” with an SMS. Whatever happened to the vow “till death do us part”?
However, let us see the perspectives of Islam and Christian religions on divorce before you make up your mind. Allah provides general guidelines for the process of divorce with emphasis on both parties upholding the values of justice and kindness in formalising the end to their marriage (see Quran 2: 224-237 for general guidelines regarding divorce).
Allah encourages the husband and wife to appoint arbitrators as the first step to aid reconciliation in the process of divorce. If the reconciliation step fails, the man and woman are guaranteed the right to divorce as established in the Quran, but the difference lies in the procedure for each one. When the man initiates a divorce, it is known as Talaaq.
The pronouncement by the husband may be verbal or written, but once made, there is to be a waiting period of three months (Iddah) during which there can be no sexual relations, though the couple is living under the same roof.
The waiting period helps to prevent hasty terminations due to anger and allows both parties time to reconsider as well as to see if the wife is pregnant. If the wife is pregnant, the waiting period is lengthened until she delivers.
At any point during this time, the husband and wife are free to resume their conjugal relationship, thereby ending the divorce process. During this waiting period, the husband remains financially responsible for the support of his wife.
The divorce initiated by the wife is known as Khul (if the husband is not at fault) and requires that the wife return her dowry to end the marriage because she is the ‘contract-breaker’. In the instance of Talaaq, where the husband is the ‘contract-breaker’, he must pay the dowry in full in cases where all or part of it was deferred or allow the wife to keep all of it if she has already been given it in full.
In the case that the husband is at fault and the woman is interested in divorce, she can petition a judge for divorce with a cause. She would be required to offer proof that her husband had not fulfilled his marital responsibilities. If the woman had specified certain conditions that are Islamically accepted in her marriage contract, which husband did not meet, she could obtain a conditional divorce.
Christian views on divorce find their basis both in biblical sources dating to the giving of the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 24:1-4) and political developments in the Christian world long after standardisation of the Bible. According to the synoptic Gospels, Jesus emphasised the permanence of marriage, but also its integrity.
In the book of Matthew, Jesus says “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries commits adultery”.
Paul of Tarsus concurred but added an exception, known as the Pauline privilege. The Catholic Church prohibits divorce, and permits annulment (a finding that the marriage was never valid) under a narrow set of circumstances.
The Eastern Orthodox Church permits divorce and remarriage in church in certain circumstances, though its rules are generally more restrictive that the civil divorce rules of most countries. Most Protestant churches discourage divorce except as a last resort, but do not actually prohibit it through church doctrine. However, in Tajikistan, divorce is done via SMS.
Sola Fanawopo, a communications analyst, contributed this piece via sola@emaginationsng.com
