Syria’s top family judge in Damascus Mahmoud Maraoui said that the rate of divorce among Syrian migrants outside the country is now exceeding divorces inside the country, stating that the rise in separations is one of the consequences of the current crisis.
In comments to Al-Watan, Maraoui said: "There are people who the crisis has exposed as having no conscience or morals. When he decides to travel outside the country, he abandons his wife and divorces her, and thereby harms his wife greatly.
The judge added that there have been cases of husbands communicating with their spouse over the phone or through instant messaging application WhatsApp with the suggestion of divorce.
Maraoui said that WhatsApp was not a means of proving divorce as in cases where a husband divorces his wife without witnesses, indicating that from the Sharia perspective the situation is that the issue lies in proving the case in court, which cannot be done without witnesses or means of proof and not without the wife being present.
Maraoui added: "We always advise the wife in these cases that she raise a suit to separate due to disunity, if she wasn’t given proof of the divorce through witnesses, not to mention that the husband is outside the country and could be marrying another woman and that it is difficult to inform him given that he is outside the country. So the suit to separate due to disunity is one of the best solutions for the wife to finally be be done with him."
He said that there are many people who return to the Sharia court asking about these cases, especially relating to wives who have traveled with their husbands and were divorcees in foreign countries, indicating these cases have become rampant.
Maraoui said that if a couple are divorced in a foreign country, then the wife must ask her husband to write out the divorce, and have two witnesses sign it notarized by the Islamic center in that country, especially if it is a non-Islamic country.
He said: "There are some people who resort to civil courts in these non-Islamic countries, or where there are not Sharia courts, and these cases are studied individually when the divorce is proven."
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
