JEDDAH, 5 February 2007 — Fearing for the future of the rights of Saudi women that are slowly being taken away from them in the name of Shariah after an appeals court upheld the forceful divorce of Fatima and Mansour, a group of Saudi women from across the Kingdom have launched a petition to be presented to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah.
The petition urges the king to allow Fatima’s case to be sent back to court and to disregard the divorce ruling so that the family can be reunited. The petition also calls for guidelines to ensure rejection of divorce cases that are taken to court by parties other than husband and wife.
The plight of Fatima, 34, has been highly publicized and attracted the sympathy of the Saudi public since details of the case first appeared last year. Fatima’s half-brother contends that Mansour misled the family about his tribal background to win the family’s consent to marry his sister.
Shariah law (Islamic law) does not prohibit a woman from marrying a man of a different tribal background and therefore according to Islamic law, which is the law of the Kingdom, Fatima’s marriage was perfectly legal.
Fatima’s husband, Mansour Al-Timani, 37, has repeatedly denied that he lied about his tribal background. Fatima, who has two children from her marriage to Mansour, has been in prison in Dammam since October with her youngest child Suleiman, aged 1.
Fatima has refused to return to her family since she was arrested in Jeddah for living with Mansour, who she had legally married with her father’s consent three years ago. The older child, Noha, two-years-old, is in her father’s custody and occasionally visits Fatima in prison.
According to the petition, Fatima’s case is not unique. The petition also calls on King Abdullah to intervene in the case of Rania Abou Al-Enin, a physician based in the Eastern Province, whose father filed a lawsuit to divorce her from her husband Saud Al-Khaledi.
“When the divorce is carried out with the couple’s approval then this is just the way it happens all over the world. But when the divorce is forced on the couple with an order from a high court then that is a massive disaster,” said human rights activist Fawziya Al-Ouyoni, one of the women behind the petition and a member of the women’s committee at the Dammam Literary Club.
Al-Ouyoni said the petition invites women from all over the Kingdom to sign it as the recent happenings threaten the safety of the Saudi family.
Fatima’s husband Mansour said he does not accept the appeals court ruling and that he still considers Fatima as his wife.
“This ruling is a non-Islamic one and, therefore, I refuse to acknowledge it. If her family wants to marry her to another man while we both still consider ourselves married then there is nothing I can do. But God will be our judge,” he said.
Mansour argued that he recently heard of a similar case that took place in the city of Unaizah in the Qasim region, north of Riyadh. A year ago, a woman’s brothers and father filed a lawsuit calling for her divorce claiming that the husband was tribally incompatible.
“The appeals court in Riyadh disapproved the divorce ruling from the court in Unaizah. Why did they not take this case which came after that one as a legal precedent?” he asked.
Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem, the couple’s lawyer, said there was only one way out. “I’m going to write a letter to King Abdullah urging him to look into the case. Once he is convinced by the details, he may then transfer the case to the Higher Court Council to look at it one more time,” he said, adding that the Higher Court Council has the right to revoke or uphold an appeals court decision.
