Abdo Khal

Okaz

 

THE local media recently circulated a story of a young woman who had to pay SR500,000 to her uncle to allow her to get married. The uncle is her male guardian, whose approval is a Shariah requisite for her marriage.



The uncle rejected all young men who proposed to marry his niece. When she reached 30, she asked her uncle why he was refusing to allow her to get married. He bluntly told her that she should relinquish the inheritance left to her by her deceased father worth half a million riyals if she wanted to obtain his approval for marriage.



We should not consider this story only as a news item, but a complaint to the minister of justice or the head of the general court in the woman’s area. The concerned authorities must step in quickly to obtain justice for the young woman. The legal and human rights organizations must also intervene to save her from the greediness and oppression of her uncle.



Silence over the crime of this uncle will encourage other greedy male guardians to continue committing crimes of adl (preventing women under their custody from getting married). Any woman who wants to get out of the fetters of adl would have to pay a price for her freedom.



The issue of adl is a sleeping case, which is very slowly being awakened only by the media. There are no serious efforts being made by the concerned authorities to uproot adl cases from our social life.



Spinsterhood is also a dormant issue that may suddenly explode in our face and take us by surprise because we have not laid down plans to manage this serious social problem.



According to unofficial statistics, there are now 1.5 million spinsters in the Kingdom. The number may increase to 4 million in the next five years.



There are a number of studies that confirm that adl has increased the size of spinsterhood in the Kingdom. Though we are well aware of the causes of the crime of adl, we are not making the issue a top priority, which is jeopardizing our social and ethical fabric.



It seemed that the Human Rights Commission (HRC) had once come closer to the problem. It once attached an awareness video clip to its annual report. The clip warned against committing adl against women. When it launched its awareness campaign, the HRC was well aware of the large number of court cases filed by women against their male guardians for preventing them from getting married. I think we should surpass the stage of spreading awareness against adl to actually fighting this endemic disease, which has been spreading among us for long years.



Diagnosing the disease is the first step toward its treatment. Having known the causes of adl very well, we should now move toward taking legal measures to prevent it. Laws should be drafted to incriminate any male guardian who obstructs the marriage of the woman under his custody.



If they are not deterred by law, the greedy male guardians will never give up their malicious practices. Can we look forward to a day when our life will be free of this injustice against women? I hope so.