The Reconciliation Committee of the Makkah Governorate last month heard 60 cases of guardians of women refusing to marry them off, said Nasir Al-Zahrani, the committee’s executive chairman.

Women filed complaints about wanting to get married but their guardians were standing in their way.

“Saudi women filed 90 percent of the cases. Of these, 40 cases were from Jeddah, and the rest from Makkah,” he told Arab News.

“In these cases, the guardian of the woman cites reasons of incompatibility for his rejection of the marriage proposal. Or they say that one of the parents is deceased, thus rendering the married brothers busy and therefore incapable of taking care of their sisters. Some parents insist that the woman stay with them because they are old and infirm and in need of someone to take care of them,” he said.

“We handle these cases with the utmost confidentiality, in view of the extremely delicate nature of the matter.

But in Islam, if the guardian tries to bar a woman from marrying a man who is compatible with her, the guardianship is transferred to the next of kin. If all insist on barring her, as is usually the case, her guardianship is automatically transferred to the legal imam, the judge in this case, who will take the responsibility of marrying her off to someone in accordance with Islamic law,” he added.

He said that there were many interesting cases in which people were treated unfairly for no good reason. He said that the committee was able recently to marry off a young Saudi nurse to a Saudi young man who works in the same profession.

“He approached her family formally, but they turned him down, citing reasons of incompatibility. It took us four months to talk her family into agreeing to her marriage, and they finally relented,” he said.