Tajik men using SMS to end marriages
Source: Agencies |
April 28, 2011, Thursday
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SOME marriages end in a burst of anger, others with a whimper. Marina Dodobayeva's ended with an SMS.
The 33-year-old mother of two was sweeping her yard one October morning when her mobile phone vibrated with a three-word text message from her husband of 14 years.
"Taloq taloq taloq," it read - divorce, divorce, divorce.
With those words, Dodobayeva found herself among the growing ranks of women in predominantly Muslim Tajikistan whose husbands have used mobiles to issue the "triple taloq," an Islamic ritual in which men can end a marriage by reciting the word for divorce three times.
Dodobayeva immediately called her husband, who was working in Russia as a laborer, for an explanation.
"He told me not to call him any more," Dodobayeva said, "because now he has a new family."
Islam frowns upon divorce but allows it, generally when a husband announces his intention to his wife and a cleric ratifies the decision. Except in rare cases, Muslim women are not allowed to divorce their husbands.
Since the early 1990s, conservative Islamic values and customs have grown stronger in this Central Asian nation. Many Tajik marriages are undocumented, meaning it's impossible to say how many divorces have been carried out by SMS. But religious authorities say they have seen a soaring number of digitally dumped women visiting mosques with desperate pleas for help and guidance.
The growing numbers have prompted Tajikistan's religious authorities to condemn the practice, and moves are afoot to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against it. Abdurakhim Kholikov, head of the government's religious affairs committee, blames the phenomenon on Tajik men who move abroad in search of work and end up starting new lives.
More than 1 million of the country's 7 million people are believed to be living abroad. One-third of them will not return home, according to International Labor Organization estimates.
Dodobayeva's husband, Anvar, is one of them. He was forced by mass unemployment to seek work in Russia, leaving his family behind. The couple never registered their marriage, diminishing Dodobayeva's already slender prospects of securing alimony.
Tajik legal expert Rakhmatullo Zoirov said courts can oblige salary-earning men who divorce to pay child support, but it's difficult to enforce the decisions on migrants. "The majority of migrants have no fixed place of work and calculating the amount of alimony they should pay is impossible."
The 33-year-old mother of two was sweeping her yard one October morning when her mobile phone vibrated with a three-word text message from her husband of 14 years.
"Taloq taloq taloq," it read - divorce, divorce, divorce.
With those words, Dodobayeva found herself among the growing ranks of women in predominantly Muslim Tajikistan whose husbands have used mobiles to issue the "triple taloq," an Islamic ritual in which men can end a marriage by reciting the word for divorce three times.
Dodobayeva immediately called her husband, who was working in Russia as a laborer, for an explanation.
"He told me not to call him any more," Dodobayeva said, "because now he has a new family."
Islam frowns upon divorce but allows it, generally when a husband announces his intention to his wife and a cleric ratifies the decision. Except in rare cases, Muslim women are not allowed to divorce their husbands.
Since the early 1990s, conservative Islamic values and customs have grown stronger in this Central Asian nation. Many Tajik marriages are undocumented, meaning it's impossible to say how many divorces have been carried out by SMS. But religious authorities say they have seen a soaring number of digitally dumped women visiting mosques with desperate pleas for help and guidance.
The growing numbers have prompted Tajikistan's religious authorities to condemn the practice, and moves are afoot to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against it. Abdurakhim Kholikov, head of the government's religious affairs committee, blames the phenomenon on Tajik men who move abroad in search of work and end up starting new lives.
More than 1 million of the country's 7 million people are believed to be living abroad. One-third of them will not return home, according to International Labor Organization estimates.
Dodobayeva's husband, Anvar, is one of them. He was forced by mass unemployment to seek work in Russia, leaving his family behind. The couple never registered their marriage, diminishing Dodobayeva's already slender prospects of securing alimony.
Tajik legal expert Rakhmatullo Zoirov said courts can oblige salary-earning men who divorce to pay child support, but it's difficult to enforce the decisions on migrants. "The majority of migrants have no fixed place of work and calculating the amount of alimony they should pay is impossible."
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