Saying “I divorce thee” three times, as men in Muslim countries have been able to do for centuries when leaving their wives, is not enough if you’re a resident of Maryland, the state’s highest court ruled yesterday.
[Last week] the Court of Appeals rejected a Pakistani man’s argument that his invocation of the Islamic talaq, under which a marriage is dissolved simply by the husband’s say-so, allowed him to part with his wife of more than 20 years and deny her a share of his $2 million estate.
The justices affirmed a lower court’s decision overturning a divorce decree obtained in Pakistan by Irfan Aleem, a World Bank economist who moved from London to Maryland with his wife, Farah Aleem, in 1985.
Both of their children were born in the United States.
Fascinating. How could an Oxford-educated World Bank economist who has lived in the U.S. for 23 years think that he could get away with such a thing?
This is just too hard to pass up…
He should have just said, “I break with thee, I break with thee, I break with thee.” Then, if he was smart, like two wild and crazy guys I saw on SNL, he would have thrown dog p–p on her shoes.
My laugh muscles are hurting! I hadn’t thought of that skit in years…and then along comes this joker from Pakistan to brighten my day.
Some of those middle eastern people have yet to learn when they leave home and come into the US they are subject to US laws; all of them even divorce laws. Of course they don’t have to stay here but if their children are born in the US they automatically become US citizens and their mother might fight like the dickens to keep them here in the US.
Some of those middle eastern people have yet to learn when they leave home and come into the US they are subject to US laws; all of them even divorce laws.
Those darned middle eastern people should be more like us! We and our divorce laws are so much more superior! He should have known that it’s more sensible to fill out one of those fill-in-the-blanks no-fault divorce forms. At least that way the State gets its $400 kick-back from the proceedings! We voted the Native Americans into reservations and the Japanese into internment camps. We elected a president, the only president in the world to authorize the nuclear destruction of two American cities. Those silly middle eastern people. We’re so much better than them!
“American cities” should of course rather read “Japanese civilian cities.”
My Dad, a colonel in the Army, was in charge of German and Arab prisoners from the North African combat zone. They were located at Mira Loma Quartermaster depot in So. Cal. These prisoners were used as labor for the U S Army. I remember as a 10 year old my father saying, “Son, never ever trust an Arab.” I’ve taken his advice.
It is NOT one world…
Would this be a situation where Archbishop Williams would permit the application of Sharia law? It seems this is precisely the kind of thing he wants to see happen in Great Britain. Thank God there are clearer thinkers in the United States.
Gosh, justinmartyr, I guess that means everybody gets to live my the laws they say they had back home, and ours only apply to the natives.
I cannot continue or I shall descend to personal abuse.
#4…I am not saying what the president did was a good thing—but bombing those “Civilian Cities” (please note that the Japanese during WW2 considered all men in the service of the Empire and would be called up if needed) saved countless lives on both sides of the conflict…
“…never trust an [fill in the blank of the ethnic group ‘au courant’ ]”
I don’t know you and I never met you’re Dad but after a comment like that, I can only respond…….
Yuck!
Oh – he knew better – he was just hoping she didn’t…..bet those U.S. A. born children helped educate her…..
…and this is just the kind of ruling that is going to ultimately legalize gay marriage in this country. Once it is decided that religion and tradition are not the determining factor in marriage and that in fact it is just a contract controled by the state then gay marriage will be legal. So kick the Islamists in the teeth if you wish, but be aware of unintended consequences. They will get you every time.
If I were to become a citizen of France, would I not be expected to abide by the laws of France? Of course I would! So what did this Pakistani expect? The law is the law! PERIOD!
Amazing! #1 is the most lucid of all responses.
I disagree Palagious. Dee, #12, is the most insightful response. #1 is a close second.
My Egyptian friends have a son who is married, a U.S. citizen, and living in Atlanta. We had a hypothetical discussion about the son’s divorce options (he is happily married) in which the Egyptian parents assumed the case would be covered by Egyptian law, because both parties are Egyptian and they were married here. Nope, I said; your daughter-in-law has rights now. She’s an American. She can’t be divorced at will and given three months alimony.
#1; Well, if you knew some people (*some, Kendall!) who went to Oxford, you might understand.
#4 Harry saved my life and an estimated 1,000,000 American soldiers sailors and marines that would have died or been seriously wounded in any invasion of the Japan. Both cities were military targets as the Japanese mixed their bases and production of arms in such places the same as we do. He had no problems with 3:00 am phone calls when it cmae to saving American lives, think that the current candidates would do as well, I don’t.
The newspaper headline writer wrote, “Maryland Court denies Islamic divorce.” It’s more accurate to say that the Maryland court declined to recognize the Islamic divorce.
_ _ _ _ _ _
“Would this be a situation where Archbishop Williams would permit the application of Sharia law?” —Dan Crawford [#8]
This would seem to be the type of case he had in mind—as long as the wife had agreed that Sharia would govern divorce and marital property.
#11 – Stefano, Bushwacker is right. I have lived in the Middle East 12 years. We Christians are infidels. We don’t count. I have at least one person admit to me that they do not consider it a problem at all to cheat or lie to an infidel. As a matter of fact, that person considered it his duty to do so whenever possible. We really do not count at all to them.
There is a strain is Islamic thought that they don’t need to make their case; they just cite the Koran or the Hadith, and we are obligated to start doing it their way. Like the induhvidual who threatened a blind teaching student’s guide dog recently.
CharlesB, this way of thinking is common among what my Muslim friends call “fanatics.” When dealing with a modernized Egyptian Muslim, however, I find it’s like dealing with any Westerner — except they don’t have a concept of time here! When a time is set for something, we ask, “Egyptian time or American time?” Egyptian time is very indefinite, so an appointment is within a few hours of the specified time.
And how can we tell if someone is a fanatic? If a man has a prayer bump and a beard, he is likely a “fanatic” and you might indeed feel rightly that he may treat you as someone not worthy of full respect. As a woman, I find the dividing line seems to be between men who will shake my hand and men who won’t.
Gosh, justinmartyr, I guess that means everybody gets to live the laws they say they had back home, and ours only apply to the natives.
Considering you believe as a “native” AND a Roman that the civil divorce laws don’t apply to you, you’re one to talk about them dark, religious foreigners and their weird ways of divorcing, aren’t you?
Come on people! Our laws are hypocritical, anti-biblical, and ALMOST as easy to procure a divorce, and yet all we can talk about is those darn foreigners. What racism.
No, you come on.
My church doesn’t recognize divorce as possible, theologically. That this bothers you seems to imply that you think that the State can dictate to the Church with regards to revoking a sacrament.
Anyway, how does Catholic doctrine obligate me to tug my forelock and “yes, m’Lord” somebody who wants to stiff his old lady and his children on the cheap, just because the laws in another jurisdiction say he can? Shall we let him kill his daughter for dating a Jew while we’re at it? I guess we HAVE to allow polygamy now and ban religious conversions other than to Islam; that’s what they do in Pakistan.
Justinmartyr, Muslim women are regarded as chattel, with very few rights. Men rule…..period! This guy wants nothing more than to cut his wife off without a cent to her name, and he wants to keep every penny of his $2 million. If he were in Pakistan, and if he were still a citizen of that country…..which he isn’t…..he could probably get his way.
He isn’t, and he won’t!
Justin, it’s racist to want all men (and women) to be equal before the law? That’s a new one.
Justin [#25]: The real dispute here is over property.
Why would you side with a man who wants to deny “his wife of more than 20 years…a share of his $2 million estate”?
No, Ireneaus. I’m against divorce in most cases, and definitely support the right of the woman to get her share of the property.
Some of those middle eastern people have yet to learn when they leave home and come into the US they are subject to US laws; all of them even divorce laws.
In a country where you can abandon your wife and children of many years simply by filling in a Word Doc and paying a $500 fee, I find it offensively hypocritical and racist to read the criticism of those “middle easterners,” and the demands that they “obey our laws”– this from Roman Catholics and conservative Anglicans who read in the bible commands antithetical to these very divorce laws.
My call is simple: lay off the splinter in the eyes of them darkies until you’ve removed the log in your own. Not gonna happen, I can tell.
Justin, it isn’t that our laws are superior. It is that the laws apply to everyone, regardless of religion or nation of origin. I find it somewhat worrisome that you are offended by the idea that the law should impact all citizens equally, regardless of their religious views. The principle that disallows Islamic divorce to be recognized by civil courts also prevents honor killings, and allows churches to not recognize civil divorce absent religious proceedings (as the Romans do). Let the Civil and Religious exist in their own realms, say I.
Justin has a point to the extent that American no-fault divorce laws allow easy divorce for reasons outside the really serious adultery/abuse/abandonment realm, but American divorce law does at least provide for some sort of equitable division of property. In the Islamic system women have few property rights and can be left with little to live on. This was a system that probably worked all right when a woman simply returned to her father’s tent until she married again, but in the modern world it leaves women extremely vulnerable.
My daughter has a Muslim friend who is a second-generation born in America. They are originally from Syria. One day, the friend told her her parents had arranged a marriage for her with a 40 year old dentist from Arizona. When my daughter asked how she, as an American, could go along with that, she was told:
“Oh, but we are not Americans, we are Syrian!”
sigh. They now live in Arizona, she has a daughter, and she just turned 20. She was promised she would be allowed to get her college education, but so far, that has not happened.
Truly, this is one example, but it is rampant. They do NOT consider themselves Americans or subject to American law, even though they have lived here for two generations, but rather Syrians and subject to Muslim law and tradition ONLY.
My sister has a friend of Egyptian extraction with a similar story. Very bright girl, pulled out of high school after her junior year and married to a middle aged man back in Egypt. She came back once to visit her family for her brother’s graduation, and my sister saw her for about five minutes. Otherwise no contact, as she’s not allowed to use the internet at home. Very sad.
I’m not offended by equability Andrew. Please read my posts(!). I’d just like for the people who heaped scorn on those middle easterners to admit the log in our own collective eye.
Justin, I rather got the notion that you didn’t read most of the forgoing posts. No where was the atomic bombing of Japan even remotely, tangentialy related, and Ed’s posts didn’t strike me as racist at all.
Andrew: What was I trying to say then? Beg to try guess?
From what I can gather, that no one can ever critisize the actions of anyone, because of events that also transpire over which they have no control? I’m fairly certain Ed didn’t order to bombing of Hiroshima, nor that any of us here dictated Maryland’s divorce laws verbatim to a compliant legislature. Yes, Justin, we are all sinners. No, that doesn’t mean we can’t ever discuss anything or express displeasure over any actions.
I stand in support of the ruling by the Maryland Cout of Appeals (the “Supreme Court” in the state) as it affirms the distinction between religious and civil law. That same distinction was at the heart of the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act that was introduced in the last legislative session with a whopping 49 sponsors (40 in the house and 9 in the Senate.) That bill did not make it out of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, though the word on the streets in Annapolis was that it would have made it through the more progressive House. This decision by the Court will strengthen the hand for next year’s legislative session.
Justin, shove off. My children are black, so don’t gimme this darky BS.
I heaped scorn on a man who tried to dump his family on the cheap. You have less idea than you think you do regarding what else I heap scorn on.
One trouble is that divorce is at once sacred and secular to those who are truly married. When we get divorced, we are dissolving both the civil union, as we call it, and the true marriage, which is sacred. Should it not be the case that the civil law can dissolve only the civil union? For the state cannot dissolve a marriage for First Amendment reasons, can it. Is it not necessary for a religious ceremony to take place for the dissolution of a marriage, properly so-called? Larry
Larry, Catholic teaching (which was the Anglican teaching as well for a LOOOOONNNNG time – Henry did get Catherine [i]annulled[/i] by Cranmer, after all) says that the State doesn’t have any power to [b]dissolve[/b] marriage at all. A marriage may have been too defective to be valid, but Our Lord’s words don’t seem to admit of dissolving a sacred union except by death.
A Roman Catholic can get a civil divorce. So that in the eyes of the State they are divorced, the marriage is over. In the eyes of the Church it is a different matter. They are still seen as married, and if either re-marries without a decree of annulment, then they are seen by the church as living in sin, in a state of adultery. Now, my question would be, if the couple only had the decree of annulment by the church, would they still have to go through the civil process of a divorce in the courts? My thoughts are “yes, they would”
So this man may be seen as legitimately divorced in the eyes of his iman and mosque. But to the state of Maryland, they are still married until they go through the STATE process of divorce, under which they must agree to abide by the laws of property division. My question is: if they do not go through the Mosque and the process of their religion, even if they are officially divorced under state law, would Islam see them as still married?
Oh, the complexity of the situation!
Jim Elliott <><
But t hat’s what I said, Ed, that the state can dissolve only thje civil union. It cannot touch marriage properly so called.
And a marriage can still be dissolved according to Christ, if the wife has been unfaithful, but only for that, Yes?
TRhwe seperation of civil powers asnd religious powers in the case at hand bears directly on the marriage of homosexuals, for the same principle is involved. Question, JIm: If two homosexuals marry in Mass or in T EC, will their divorce be a violation of scripture and anysubsequent marriage adultery? Larry
That is “the separation ….” Larry
If two homosexuals enter into what they term Marriage, that in and of itself is a violation of Scripture. We don’t have to go further than that for speculation. Any sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman is a violation of Scripture and church teaching (Lambeth res. 1.10 ?).
[i]And a marriage can still be dissolved according to Christ, if the wife has been unfaithful, but only for that, Yes?[/i]
Interpretations of [i]porneia[/i] vary, and the Catholic one (small c also, historically) is “unlawful consanguinity”, not adultery.
Ed, I have never seen Christ’s remark translated as anything but “infidelity” or some synonym. How can there be a doubt as to its meaning. And how can it possibly mean “unlawful consanguinity?”
Is thqt torturing the text to make it mean what you want it to mean?
Oh, all right, Jim, my question was really dumb. Larry
I have seen porneia translated as lewd conduct, which does not point straight to infidelity of a wife, the grounds you specifically gave.
Larry, the undivided church did not permit divorce (and remarriage) for infidelity. If you think that the undivided church erred in this, well, you are neither a large nor a small c catholic.
[blockquote] the undivided church did not permit divorce (and remarriage) for infidelity [/blockquote] Ed, I’m not so sure about that. As early as the second century, Clement of Alexandria was complaining that bishops were permitting divorces, but he noted “They had [good/weighty]* reasons for doing so.”
*I don’t have the quote in front of me, and I don’t recall the exact adjective that Clement used to excuse the bishops for granting divorces.
It would be no stretch to consider that infidelity may have been one of those reasons. On the other hand, I have not seen any evidence of the early church permitting remarriage.
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
I must apologize. The early church father that pointed out the conflict between Gospel prohibitions against divorce and the ongoing practice of some bishops was Origen, not Clement of Alexandria.
Operating without the sources at hand is like a trapeze artist operating without a net.
Impressive, but sometimes fatal.
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
“Operating without the sources at hand is like a trapeze artist operating without a net. Impressive, but sometimes fatal”
But still less hazardous than having the sources and refusing to heed them.
[blockquote]I have not seen any evidence of the early church permitting remarriage.[/blockquote]
Then we don’t have a real contradiction between us.