by DR. TANVEER AHMED
PHOTO – www.opposingviews.com
Divorce is almost always painful for all concerned, not least when young children are involved. It becomes even more complicated when the expectations of traditional ethnic or religious groups are concerned, particularly when transplanted to the hyper-modern urban communities of the Western world. In Islamic tradition, when it comes to the matter of divorce, there is another dramatic component involved: Once a man repeats the phrase talak, translated as “repudiation,” three times, divorce can then be granted. Contrarily, the process can be much more complicated when it is the woman seeking to initiate legal and final separation.
Perceptions of Divorce
My psychiatric practice in an outer metropolitan section of Sydney has a high proportion of immigrants from Asian and Arab countries. I often see female patients from such backgrounds, many who are newly arrived and a proportion of whom are divorced.
Within Islam, divorce is traditionally initiated by the man. This fact can add further stigma to a woman going through a divorce, even when it is she that initiates it. The automatic assumption by many is that the woman was somehow unworthy, perhaps unable to have a child or unlovable in some way. Thankfully, however, some of these attitudes are being forced to shift, driven more by forces outside Islam and a new generation of women asserting an Islamic brand of feminism.
There are still countless stories of families becoming overwhelmed by shame and embarrassment when one of their children, particularly a daughter, cannot sustain a marriage. It can be particularly traumatic for first-generation parents, who are often more connected to traditional, community norms. I have an elderly patient with a South Asian background who barely leaves the house and is profoundly depressed because her youngest daughter’s arranged marriage ended within a year. Her sense of shame and perceived failure in the eyes of the community prevents her from facing the outside world. She hides it from her daughter, for she rationally knows that the divorce was the right thing to do, but she wears the blame of failure on her own shoulders.
The pain also overlaps with increasing divorce rates in communities such as those to which Muslims belong. Divorce among American Muslims, for example, stands at approximately 30 percent, which approaches the wider community norm, but is almost three times higher than the average rate in most Islamic countries. In my view, it makes sense that Muslim couples would approach the norm of their wider communities, particularly as Muslim women in Western countries have more opportunities to be independent after divorce and also have access to state sanctions and support. Moreover, the stigma has traditionally been greater due to stronger beliefs towards sustaining community cohesion often at the expense of individual, but the stigma is weakening.
Divorce as Liberation
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