Egypt’s al-Sisi suggests a ban on Muslim husbands verbally divorcing their spouses
Egyptian President says the country’s high divorce rates is alarming and is suggesting ground-breaking legislation to ban Muslim husbands from verbally declaring their spouses divorced.
President Abdel-Fatteh al-Sisi in a televised address on Tuesday said he recently learned from the head of the state Statistics Bureau that 40% of Egypt’s 900 000 annual marriages end in divorce after five years.
Turning to the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world’s supreme seat of religious learning in Cairo, he suggested that the legislation should be adopted so a divorce would be legal only if it is done in the presence of a “maazoun,” a cleric authorized by the government to officiate marriage and divorce.
Some couples already do that, but many husbands also divorce verbally – often in the heat of an argument – before later documenting the divorce.
“They should go to the maazoun, so it’s not just a word casually uttered,” said al-Sisi.
However, his suggestion to delegalize the centuries-old verbal divorce widely seen in conservative and patriarchal Egypt as a male prerogative is a bold reformist move, but also one likely to spark a backlash from conservative clerics and harsh condemnation by militants.
