READER COMMENTS

There have to be strict rulings regarding divorce and giving priority to Sharia. There has to be protection for the wife, if she is oppressed or she has the right.

Peace be upon you…. There are many discrepancies in our Kuwaiti society. I was extremely keen on establishing a good family and having good children, and my only conditions before marriage were that my wife must not work, and I pledged to fulfill all her needs. I did what I promised, and provided her with servants and good monthly pocket money, and I spent on her generously. However, after ten years of marriage, she asked me either to allow her to work, or she would divorce me and we would go to court. I said to her that God supports the truth and the people who are in the right. I did not beat her or even stop spending on her, but she just kept harassing me. I tried to resolve the case cordially, but she insisted and filed a case against me. She also brought false witnesses and she won it, without any investigation or the like. The judge even altered the testimony in the records of the session! I pleaded, but my plea was rejected and the ruling was confirmed without any evidence. The judge felt that I posed a threat to my wife and children, based on the false testimony. The law took my children and money from me and destroyed my life, without my being guilty of anything other than my insistence on having children who were dutiful to their parents and home. Unfortunately, the girls of this generation do not want to be mothers. They only want a job and a car, in addition to being allowed to go out for the most trivial reasons, leaving the children for the house cleaner. I would like to ask a question, although I know the answer in advance: does the Muslim husband have the right to eat three daily meals from the hand of his wife and to help her, as the Prophet, peace be upon him, used to do? Does the Muslim husband have the right to be the leader in his house? Does the child have the right to be raised by his own mother rather than by the housemaid? Etc.?

Divorce always happens due to either the wife or husband having money. When the two spouses become independent from each other financially, each would prefer to live his/her own life as he/she likes, and this is the consequence of having money.

The wealth of Kuwaitis has also contributed to the high rates of divorce, because many men illegally have illicit relations with other women at the expense of their homes, which makes their wives demand separation. Also, wealth contributes to the lack of a deterrent, such as the deferred dowry, which hinders a lot of husbands from thinking of divorce, because men, in this case, will be burdened by the big deferred dowry. Here I think that civil society organizations and the Kuwaiti government should perform the role of the social worker in Kuwait, who works to give advice for a successful marital life, and promotes public education that limits divorce cases and shows how dangerous it is to the future of society, as it destroys family ties in the Kuwaiti society, let alone the loss of the future of the children who will be the victims of failed marriages which end in divorce.

Divorce is illegal.

There are a lot of newly married couples who have been married for just one year and decide to separate. Often when we discuss the reasons, we find them to be trivial and silly reasons that do not warrant divorce to occur between them. You may find that the woman’s mind has been controlled by her bad friends, whom she perceives to be her best friends; they control her and impose their views on her, nurturing her with useless, fake and crazy ideas. They say to her, for example, not to serve her husband, not to take care of him, to leave him alone, and that he does not deserve her. That she deserves to live in a better house, and that he must get her a maidservant to take care of her, and other similar words that provoke women and lead them to end their marriages by divorce. Other times, you find that the parents are the source of sedition, whether the wife's mother or the husband’s mother, where mothers may intervene directly in their daughter’s or son's lives, leading them to a failing life, full of problems, eventually separation between the couple takes place. Divorce may occur as a result of the man's mistakes, as he may travel a great deal and it usually happens that he meets women in other countries and admires them. He then may propose Muta marriage to a woman, because he has gotten attached to her and has passion for her; when he seeks to enjoy life with one of those women, he will surely lose his first life with his wife, the mother of his children.

Some other social traditions lead to separation and divorce. For instance, the wife asking to break free from the traditions of the oriental societies. This demand is generally rejected by men. Divorce can also happen because the marriage is unbalanced in terms of education, culture and traditions. All these reasons increase the divorce rates in Kuwait. The situation is ominous if things remain the same, in the absence of a real study to find out the reasons and set up suitable solutions to reduce divorce rates. The spreading of divorce can bring about many problems in the Kuwaiti community, mainly problems affecting children. In fact, children would be subject to different psychological complexes, due to the absence of one of their parents or due to the repercussions of divorce that leave the children and the structure of the family victims. Therefore, I think that the Kuwaiti government must study this phenomenon in order to find out the reasons behind its increase, set up the necessary procedures to reduce it, and activate the role of researchers in sociology. Those researchers raise people’s awareness about family and sensitize spouses as to how to overcome their quarrels and how to solve their problems. They can promote awareness among spouses on how to overcome household problems or marital problems and resolve any differences rather than resorting to divorce as the easy way out. They should be told that divorce must be the last option. Spouses must resort to divorce only if they can no longer live together, or they are unable to bury the hatchet and overcome their problems and disagreements. The increase in divorce rates is not beneficial to Kuwaiti society, it will rather destroy society and increase its problems.