Jail for men who divorce wives by text

Islamic authorities will prosecute Malaysian men who try to divorce their wives by sending mobile phone text messages or email without going to court, an official said today.

The warning marks the latest move by the government to discourage the use of electronic messages to initiate divorce proceedings in the predominantly Muslim south-east Asian country.

Islamic law generally accepts that a husband has divorced his wife if he announces his intention to do so to her and the decision is ratified by a cleric. The process for a wife to divorce her husband is more difficult.

Noh Omar, parliamentary secretary for the Prime Minister’s Department, said the government has ordered religious affairs officials to take legal action against men who declare their divorces by phone text messages, faxes or emails and subsequently try to obtain divorce certificates without having undergone proceedings in an Islamic court.

“They must be prosecuted, in order to ensure that husbands do not try to divorce their wives out of court without abiding by proper procedures,” Noh said.

Offenders face up to six months in prison and a maximum fine of 1,000 ringgit (€247) if found guilty, Noh said.

Nearly two-thirds of Malaysia’s 24 million people are Muslims, who are subject to a system of moderate Islamic laws as well as secular laws.

A Malaysian religious court’s ruling in July that a mobile phone text message was a valid notice of intent to divorce infuriated women’s groups, which insisted the procedure was demeaning. Some Islamic scholars and government ministers said it tarnished the religion’s image.

Officials subsequently said they would amend Malaysia’s Islamic laws to make the rules on the first notification of divorce more strict and explicitly exclude the use of text messages and other new technology.