How To Divorce (Muslim’s Only) Through Twitter

Despite the All-India Muslim Women Personal Law Board’s (AIMWPLB) diktat barring men from declaring talaq (divorce) by SMS, email or over the phone, the medium seems to have become the most popular way by which Muslim men are divorcing women in India.

A study on “Marriage and divorce amongst Muslim women in India”, undertaken by Ms Sahiba Hussain, reader, Centre for Dalit and Minorities, Jamia Milia Islamia, highlights that more and more men are giving talaq via SMS and email.

Where women do not have access to mobile phones or computers, men use landline phones to pronounce the divorce declaration.

“From 15 divorces that we looked at in 2008, eight were pronounced via SMS, email and over the phone,’ said Ms Husssain. “Five divorce declarations were given face to face but amongst these also, only in one case a witness present when the declaration was made,” she said.

Most of the SMS’ and emails had husbands complaining along predictable lines. They did not find the wife “beautiful enough”, “compatible enough” etc.

Arab’s don’t want to left behind in divorce by SMS bandwagon either. A Saudi man divorced his wife by uttering ‘I divorce you’ thrice through a text message. According to the Arab News, the man was in Iraq to participate in “what he described as ‘jihad’ when he sent the SMS telling his wife that he’s divorcing her.

BTW: I often wonder if such men save an SMS with three talaqs in the draft folder of their mobile, filled with wife’s phone number and all, ready to be sent at the slightest whim or whiff of anger. What an injustice!

For the moment if we forget the inhumanity behind such divorce and look at the technology, Twitter is actually better suited for sending a Talaq (divorce) message. You can DM a talaq for privacy but if you want to inflict the maximum mental anguish then just @ your talaq message:

@your_wife talaq talaq talaq

for the whole world to see and make her suffer with the biggest imaginable public humiliation possible. After all that’s the idea, isn’t it?

Seriously though, I think such mode of talaq should be banned or women should be given the same right as men to utter talaq at their slightest whim like on a bad hair day. That would be fun for men, isn’t it?