What About ‘Normal’ Marriages?
Lubna Hussain, lubna@arabnews.com

Over the past few weeks I have read with wide-eyed amazement the heated discourse in the local press dedicated to the concept of marriages of convenience. There has been great uproar in society against the recent legalization of these contracts. So what’s all the fuss about, you may ask. Supposedly, these new fangled forms of wedlock deny Saudi women the basic rights afforded to them through the umbrella of regular matrimony. They allow men to marry without taking any form of responsibility for their wives and also make it very easy for them to divorce without suffering the usual consequences. After all, boys will be boys.

Lubna Hussain, who writes frequently about women’s issues for the Arab News, offers her opinion here. Women who are in traditional marriages, she notes, already have a hard enough time asserting their rights. Why bring in new ways to deprive women of dignity and their basic rights, she asks. Interesting piece.