Appeals Court Upholds Ruling in Controversial Fatima Divorce Case
Ebtihal Mubarak, Arab News

JEDDAH, 29 January 2007 — An appeals court yesterday upheld the decision of a judge in the northern city of Al-Jouf in October to divorce a couple in absentia at the request of the wife’s half brothers.

The 34-year-old woman, Fatima, mother of two children by her marriage to Mansour Al-Timani, 37, has been in a prison in Dammam since October with her youngest child, Suleiman, a year old. She has steadily refused to return to the custody of her family since she was arrested in Jeddah for living with the man she legally married with her father’s consent more than three years ago. The older child, Noha, 2, is in her father’s custody and occasionally visits her mother in prison.

Prison officials have prevented Mansour from talking to Fatima since her interview with this newspaper in November. He told Arab News yesterday that he would continue to fight the ruling even though the judiciary has given its final verdict.

Fatima’s lawyer, Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem, issued a statement yesterday, saying the ruling “contradicts both Islamic principles and (secular) laws and also abrogates a very basic human right: the wife’s wish to stay by her husband’s side.”

I admit to being surprised by this verdict. I had imagined that once the ‘grown ups’ in the Saudi legal system looked at this case, the verdict of the lower court would be overturned. I fail to see on what basis this ruling is permitted to stand. As the article makes clear, Islamic law, i.e., Sharia law clearly provides no justification for this decision.

As the public and press are still seized with the unfairness of this issue and as the woman involved is preferring to stay in jail rather than in the custody of her brothers, this will end up being sorted out by the King. It’s too bad that the law is so weak.

To quote Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist: “If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot.”

And all those who would bash Saudi Arabia and its religious establishment as being cruel, anti-women, and mindlessly tied to precedent will now have a new cudgel with which to strike.