HUMBUZZ - Tajikistan To Ban Divorce By SMS

PHOTO CREDIT: JonJon2K8 / Flickr(HN, April 13, 2011) Divorce by text message will soon be banned in the mainly Muslim Central Asian nation of Tajikistan.

The Tajikistan Ulema Council will address the issue of imposing the official ban on the practice of divorce by SMS message, said the head of the Committee for Religious Matters, Abdurakhim Kholikov.

According to Islamic traditions it is enough for a husband to tell his wife ‘talaq’ three times to make their marriage invalid however, state religious officials have ruled that sending an SMS with the ‘triple talaq’ breaches Islamic law.

Divorce by text message has become common in the country, particularly among migrant laborers living abroad. Many Tajik migrant workers, 1 million in Russia alone, have met new women there and prefer to send the ‘triple talaq’ SMS message to their wives than travel to their home country to get a legal divorce.

“Such a divorce practice by SMS is illogical, unreasonable and irrelevant and contradicts both secular and Shariah laws,” Kholikov said.

The Islam legal scholars will be making a decision on this matter soon.

Kholikov says, “Families should not be destroyed, however, if there is a need to divorce, our men should treat women with respect and properly announce the decision in the presence of their wives.”

- HUMNews Staff