Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK

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Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
OP - February 03, 2010, 10:11 AM

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A growing number of young Muslims in the UK are entering marriages that are not legally recognised, BBC Asian Network has found. This is because couples are having an Islamic wedding without the civil ceremony needed for the marriage to be recognised under British law.
Shaheeda Khan married her fiance in a traditional Islamic religious ceremony, the nikah, at her home in Birmingham.

After the wedding the couple moved to London where they started to build a life and home together but, 13 months into the marriage, Shaheeda realised that her nikah was not legally valid.

''I had to show a marriage certificate when I was enrolling at university. It was then I realised I didn't have one and it came as a big shock to me," she said.

Shaheeda, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, said she asked her husband to register their marriage but he was against the idea.

A few months later she came home and found that the locks to her front door had been changed and that she had been thrown out of her home.

"I was homeless. I took legal action but I got nothing," explained Shaheeda. "I had been paying the mortgage on our home but the house was not in my name so I lost everything.''

Eventually, Shaheeda moved back home with her family.

''It was as though the marriage had never happened. It was the worst time of my life,'' she added.

Widespread

Family lawyer Aina Khan says that she is dealing with an increasing number of cases like Shaheeda's.

"It's a rising trend for Muslim couples to have marriages that are not legally recognised," explained Ms Khan.

''The problem is extremely widespread and it's an increasing timebomb because it's affecting mostly young Muslims, who are under 30 or in their early 30s.''

Ms Khan says that the individuals have no legal marital rights if the marriage ends or if a partner dies.

She said: ''My colleagues and I are having to deal with hundreds of cases where things have gone wrong because the wedding has not been registered.

"Because the couples only have co-habitant rights, it is extremely expensive and complicated to use the law to get the individuals any justice once the marriage ends.''

Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, the head of Britain's Muslim Parliament, says the lives of many Muslim women are being ruined because their Islamic marriages are not legally recognised.

''It is a major problem in the community," insisted Dr Siddiqui. "But it is very difficult to put an exact figure on the scale of this because there are no statistics. It could be in its hundreds if not thousands."

Shaista Gohir is the head of the UK's Muslim Women's Network. She says the problem arises, in some cases, out of ignorance as many young Muslims believe that the nikah is legally binding.

''If a couple has a nikah in a Muslim country then the marriage is recognised under UK law. But many do not realise that this is not the case if the nikah is conducted in this country,'' she explained.

However, Ms Gohir said, some couples preferred to wait and "test out" the marriage before they had their civil ceremony.

Exploited

This was something Leicester couple Saila and Riaz Choudary, both 25, wanted to do. They had their Nikah before waiting more than a year until their civil marriage.

''I wanted to be sure before I committed to the civil ceremony,'' said Saila.

''A divorce costs a lot of money and I wanted to avoid all that hassle if the marriage didn't end up working.''

Ms Gohir says many couples say they will register their marriage later, but later never comes.

Dr Siddiqiui added that he believed some Muslim women were being exploited as their partners promised them a civil wedding after the nikah only to refuse to go ahead with it.

''This allows Muslim men to control their wives because they can threaten to leave them and end the Islamic marriage by just saying the words 'divorce, divorce divorce' to her,'' he said.

''It also enables some men to commit polygamy. I know of cases where men have taken on several wives because they have just had the nikah with each partner.''

He wants Muslim women to protect themselves by always having a civil ceremony before the nikah and is also calling for all mosques to become registered to conduct civil marriages.

This would then allow the couple to have the nikah and registry at the same time under one roof.

''The problem is that only a handful of mosques across the country are registering themselves," said Dr Siddiqiui.

''I don't know why this is the case because it is very simple to do - all they need to do is fill out a form.

''Religious leaders must take a bigger responsibility to protect many Muslim women who are unnecessarily suffering.'' [/size/

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8493660.stm

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #1 - February 03, 2010, 10:18 AM

I do agree that the marriages need to be recognised, but at the same time I am very happy that my marriage wasn't legally recognised in this country.

It made leaving him easier, I didn't need to go through a long divorce process, and it also gave him less rights to the kids. He couldn't snatch them and run as that would be kidnapping since only husbands get automatic parental responsibility.

So this loophole worked to protect and serve me in the end.

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #2 - February 03, 2010, 10:30 AM

Oh yeah, that's a major problem here as well. A couple would get "married" just by having the males of both families gathered to read the Fatiha, and the couple move in together. It really becomes tragic when the woman becomes pregnant and the guy gets scared and leaves them without recognizing the child. You thought you were married and you end up with a bastard.

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #3 - February 03, 2010, 10:39 AM

Quote from: Naerys on February 03, 2010, 10:30 AM
Oh yeah, that's a major problem here as well. A couple would get "married" just by having the males of both families gathered to read the Fatiha, and the couple move in together. It really becomes tragic when the woman becomes pregnant and the guy gets scared and leaves them without recognizing the child. You thought you were married and you end up with a bastard.

Only to the rest of the world, within the Islamic community that baby isn't a bastard, and that girl was married. Witnesses being the males of her family, which is why a woman should never marry without her wali.

The other way round is my sister, not married islamically but married to a muslim with a civil ceremony, her kids are seen as bastards by the wider muslim community and her marriage isn't valid according to the imam, and my father, and my step mother because the islamic ceremony has not been done.

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #4 - February 03, 2010, 10:55 AM

I'm afraid the local society isn't as merciful as you think, BerberElla. I suppose it stems from the fact that it's a 99.9% muslim community.

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #5 - February 03, 2010, 04:36 PM

I've got a lot to say about this, will write later, bit busy now!

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #6 - February 03, 2010, 04:43 PM

Quote from: Naerys on February 03, 2010, 10:55 AM
I'm afraid the local society isn't as merciful as you think, BerberElla. I suppose it stems from the fact that it's a 99.9% muslim community.

Oh, yeah, in my community an islamic marriage with the girls parents as witnesses is accepted, but only as an islamic marriage. It's expected that you would then go register at the moroccan embassy, the english certificate is meaningless to them.

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #7 - February 03, 2010, 04:57 PM

I'm surprised at the ignorance of the women who don't insist on getting the offical civil recognition.

Talaq Talaq Talaq. Thats Islam's divorce laws in 3 easy words.

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #8 - February 03, 2010, 05:03 PM

these group of people are unaware of law nor how to access it, so its irrelevent to them for all intents & purposes - they have rarely lived outside of their own communities & are poorly educated

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #9 - February 03, 2010, 05:18 PM

Quote from: Iblis on February 03, 2010, 04:57 PM
I'm surprised at the ignorance of the women who don't insist on getting the offical civil recognition.

Talaq Talaq Talaq. Thats Islam's divorce laws in 3 easy words.

It wasn't ignorance on my part, I didn't want to be so tied to him so I knew an islamic marriage was best for me. If only some of these women learnt to use this to their advantage.

Yes, there are down sides, when the man does it and she finds herself screwed over which is why I think it should be recognised, but for a woman who is being abused and wants to run, this is candy.

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #10 - February 03, 2010, 05:20 PM

Well, you were married outside the UK first right? So that's different for you.

But for the UK citizens that are getting married in tight confines of the muslim ghetto they are essentially disenfranchising themselves from the legal marital rights that the UK gives women. Without the civil recognition they are essentially just bf/gf with kids.

Quote from: thinkfree on September 28, 2010, 07:58 PM
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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #11 - February 03, 2010, 05:28 PM

No, I was married in the UK. Just the islamic thing, I did not register the marriage.

The marriage appeased the muslim community, the lack of formal certificate appeased me.

Do you have any idea how much easier it made leaving him?

Had I been officially bound to him under uk laws he could have snatched the kids anytime he wanted and I would have been the one forced to wait months and months fighting in court for them back or a right to see them. No offically recognised marriage works against these men too, they just don't realise it at the time.

Haha it sounds like I am arguing in favour of allowing them to continue not officially registering their marriages under law, I am not though. It is open to abuse as shown in the OP. I'm just saying how it works in the womans favour if she needed it.

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #12 - February 03, 2010, 05:30 PM

OK, this really is an area in which Islam is 'different' from every other religion in the UK.

I had a personal interest in this because of the situation of a female friend of mine, and I read around the subject and discovered much that is right in front of your eyes - but nobody ever notices or talks about it. It really is loathsome, what is happening here, and it is one of those issues that shows that Muslims do demand, however tacitly, and passive-aggressively, special priveliges that are not available to others - and that Islam is not integrating into society or allowing itself to change in order to provide women with the natural rights they are born with or are given as British citizens. The situation is summed up well by a barrister from Liverpool called Neil Addison who has done a fair amount of work on this - I saved his letter to the Daiy Telegraph, because it highlights what is going on here succinctly.

+++++++

Sir, Both the Lord Chief Justice and the Archbishop of Canterbury have suggested that sharia courts could have a "complementary" role to Family Courts in cases such as divorce.

This suggestion ignores the fact that the majority of Muslim wives are in a legal limbo, with their marriages unregistered, giving them the status of a cohabitee with no legal rights.

Unlike Sikh and Hindu temples, most mosques have not registered under the Marriages Act 1949, but continue to perform "marriage" ceremonies that have no legal validity.

Invariably the wife is unaware of this, and assumes that she has all the protections of the law. It is only when problems arise that the "wife" finds that she is forced to go to a sharia court because her "marriage" has no legal status under British law.

I suggest that, before we start talking about using sharia courts as a form of mediation, the Government should ensure that all Muslim marriages are carried out in accordance with the Marriage Act. If women then wanted to use sharia arbitration, that would be their free choice, unlike the present situation, where they really have no choice at all.

Under section 75 of the Marriage Act, it is a criminal offence for anyone to solemnise a marriage that is not legal under the Act.

So imams and mosques are breaking the law by performing unlawful marriage ceremonies.

Since Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and Catholics have happily accommodated religious marriage ceremonies to the requirements of British law, the failure of mosques to do the same seems completely unjustifiable.

+++++

It really is quite outrageous.

What does this mean in practice? It means the absolute debasement of Muslim women, the denial of their natural rights under British law, and it is an example of sharia codes being coerced into society. Every other religion submits to the Marriage Act - except for Islam. IsLame, BerberElla, have all explained why this happens - women are to be ghettoised and left vulnerable and at the execution of men and sharia-matrimonial codes. But why do Muslims not submit themselves to common English law, like everyone else? It is in areas like this that the incompatibility of Islamic precepts on things like marriage, and British law and natural rights diverge.

I think this says an awful lot.

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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #13 - February 03, 2010, 05:31 PM

And of course - this way, it makes bigamy - polygamy easy to practise. And it is being practised in Britain.

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Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #14 - February 03, 2010, 05:38 PM

What does the Muslim Concil of Britain, and all those other self proclaimed leaders and activists and human rights campaigners have to say about this? Absolutely nothing. Because we must assume they do not want male privelige and sharia-codes to submit to English law on the matter of marriage. Would they protest if politicians decide to prosecute all those who carry out a nikaah ceremony without registering it simultaneously? A campaign of scrutiny would end up sending a lot of imams to court - and a lot of men to prison for bigamy.

I would welcome that, if that is what it takes in the long term.

"we can smell traitors and country haters"

Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
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Re: Wedding chaos as Muslim marriages not recognised in UK
Reply #15 - February 03, 2010, 05:58 PM

Quote from: Iblis on February 03, 2010, 05:20 PM
Well, you were married outside the UK first right? So that's different for you.

But for the UK citizens that are getting married in tight confines of the muslim ghetto they are essentially disenfranchising themselves from the legal marital rights that the UK gives women. Without the civil recognition they are essentially just bf/gf with kids.

This is precisely what the personal experience of my friend is. And she also knows someone of her own age who became part of a polygamous marriage because of this - he just married another woman in a nikaah ceremony, presided over by an imam who knew what was going on.

"we can smell traitors and country haters"

Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
God is Love.
Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.
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