Nadia Al-Shehrani
I READ the news of a Saudi woman who spent 32 years of her life in a failed marriage. Her husband deserted her and her son and did not act responsibly. The court ordered that the husband divorce her and pay her SR3 million in alimony for 32 long years he did not care for her.
This is as far as we know from the news report. We do not know why the woman spent half of her age in this marriage while other women around her were enjoying their marital life and giving birth to children.
I am sure she did not think for one second that she would go through all these hardships more than 30 years ago when she got married to this man. The question that poses itself here is: Why did he not divorce her long time ago? What about their family members and why none of them did ask the husband to divorce her? How come they kept silent about the injustices this woman suffered throughout these years?
One of my friends explained it by saying, “Saudi women are patient”. Saudi women are forced to be patient because of family and social pressure. If this type of patience were something advisable in Islam, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) would have ordered the wife of his companion Thabit Bin Qais to be patient. Instead, he asked her to leave him if she did not want to live with him.
Some Saudi men refuse to divorce their wives even if the latter ask for divorce. They do it out of pride. They feel their ego is hurt because their wives asked for a divorce. So they let their wives remain suspended, knowing that legal procedures for divorce can drag on for years and that many families do not want their daughters to go to courts.
Marriage is a partnership between two parties and is governed by conditions and duties that should be honored. Sometimes a husband and a wife cannot patch things up and then they can decide to go their separate ways. It is their right and why should they spend the rest of their life in an unhealthy relationship? We have to respect the sanctity of marriage and be courageous enough to end it when it does not seem to be working out. There is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is to continue this marriage despite the fact that even our children can feel it is not working out.
We have so many women who have not been able to get a divorce because their husbands refuse to. I know a woman whose husband told her that he would only divorce her when her little son becomes adult and be responsible for her. This husband has clearly been influenced by social traditions that treat women as incompetent creatures who need custodianship. Unfortunately, judgments in these cases are at the discretion of the judge; he might force the husband to divorce and he might not.
My message to men: if you find it difficult to live with your female partner, then be courageous enough and divorce her.
