At last, an anti-Sharia ruling by a U.S. Court. This ruling is significant far beyond this particular case, because there is always more Sharia to accommodate, and someone has to draw the line somewhere if we don't want to end up accommodating the whole thing.
From Associated Press (thanks to WriterMom):
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A Franklin County judge ruled that a man does not have to pay his former wife $25,000, promised as part of a dowry before their traditional Muslim marriage.The judge says the payment is part of a religious agreement, not a legal contract.
The decision is the first of its kind in Ohio, and a departure from rulings in other states, which have enforced dowries as part of Islamic marriage contracts.
...it is indeed time to start saying "NO" to anything Islamic....
A few questions: Are pre-nuptial agreements legal in Ohio? Are they legal in the other states where the article says moslem marriage arrangements were respected? In the other states, did the couples involved make a pre-nuptial agreement in addition to the moslem marriage ceremony? So much depends on the details of each case.
Also, is the man involved moslem? Presumably he is, or at least agreed to become one. So maybe the imam will just send a few of the mosque's goons over to beat the stuffing out of him.
It's about time we start to draw the line. We need more of this now if not sooner.
This is very good, and promising, news!
Even after finding out that I leave a smaller carbon pootprint than Gore's butt.
Islam be gone!
Apparently there was no prenuptual agreement (contract). If there had been, the judge would have had to rule on the enforcability of the contract.
Although Columbus Imam Mouhamed Tarazi said the dowry was part of the marriage contract signed by both the bride and groom before a wedding, there was no indication that there was a contract in this instance.
There is nothing to prohibit religious concepts in a contract. This may have been a simple promise with no reciprocal burden. It would be like a pledge or a promise. For example, a pledge to a fundraising event is not a contract and is not enforceable - unless Jerry Lewis promises to entertain at you kids' bar mitzfah in exchange for your donation.
"The decision is the first of its kind in Ohio, and a departure from rulings in other states, which have enforced dowries as part of Islamic marriage contracts."
You have got to be kidding me, US courts have upheld third world slavery contracts for women, sometimes it seems we'er going backwards not forwards.
When is unacceptable, primitive and barbaric behaviour going to be deemed unacceptable, whether the person promoting it is brown skinned or white?
Double standards, don't you just love them?
I would have thought that the Divorce Agreement and Ohio Family Law provisions would basically void any marriage agreement?
Would the dowry have gone to the (former) wife or her parents?
My view is that this is a form of prenuptual agreement. I.e, the wife gets the $25,000 if the husband wants to divorce her. In this case, it was for the women's protection. Now did the agreement meet the form required for it to be a contract? That's not clear. But I don't have a problem if the court upheld this agreement.
Now, if they start upholding polygamy, then I have a problem. But not this matter.
David, while one may feel sympathetic towards the woman, a higher principle is a stake: whether religious agreements without a legal contract are enforcable. I agree with the judge's decision.
So one case of meher (this dowry) makes news. Every muslim male promises some money to each and every of his wives that is paid in case he utters the fateful words "talaq ! talaq ! talaq !". I do believe that the words hold weight only when uttered in the presence of an imam or some other "islamic scholar" but there seems to be some sort of a debate going on this topic as some muslims hold that they can utter the words anywhere to get a divorce. They have been having this debate for years now, sometimes in islamic style (involving daggers and heads), and still have not arrived at a conclusion. When the brides are young (kids), this meher is paid in advance (we might call this paedophilia or slavery but we are infidels and don't know naught). Rest assured, for every case of meher that comes to light, there are hundreds of thousands that never do and in dar-ul-islams are a part of normal life.
David, while one may feel sympathetic towards the woman, a higher principle is a stake: whether religious agreements without a legal contract are enforcable. I agree with the judge's decision.
No, the higher principle is whether there *was* a legal contract, and if not, why not? The fact that a husband made a contract that happened to conform with the requirements of sharia should not be a reason to invalidate the contract. Traditionally, statutes of frauds required that any contract with marriage as a consideration had to be in writing to be enforceable (but that was an affirmative defense that could be waived if the person defending the action failed to assert it). I'd like to know if such a defense was the basis of the court's decision. If so, then fine. If not, the wife got a pretty raw deal (which is pretty typical of our matrimonial law). ("Ha, ha, you only married me on the explicit condition that, if we divorced, I'd pay you $25,000. If such an agreement were made by unbelievers, it would have been enforced, but since we're Moslems and the agreement was religiously motivated, you're SOL when I renege on my agreement.")
Here is a "Ask the Imam" Q&A on Divorce Sunni Style. The entire article is informative, but I like this hadith:
The man said "I divorce you" three times in one conversation to his wife rather than once, for which their first response was "Do you want me to kill him?". Just a bunch of peace-loving theologians, sittin' round the fire, having one of their deeply religious discussions.