Triple talaq, the divorce oath bringing Kurdish marriages to a crashing end

SANANDAJ, Iran – Nangin Ahmedi was happily married to her husband for fifteen years. She is full of praise for the man she shared her life with up until three years ago; he was kind to her, respectful to her relatives, and hospitable to guests at their home in Mariwan, Iranian Kurdistan.

"I was 20 when I married a man for love…We had a very happy life. We had no problems at all…during our married life, I thought the whole world was mine, that I was the luckiest woman," Nangin told Rudaw English on Saturday. 

She never imagined the ties of their matrimony could be severed clean with three simple words, uttered three times.

With triple talaq, a practice informed by a much questioned interpretation of Islamic law, a husband can end a marriage simply by saying “I divorce you” three times, without establishing any fault on the part of their wives. Women do not have that same power.

Use of this instant, verbal divorce has been banned in several countries with large Muslim populations, including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Bangladesh. India, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, criminalized the practice in July 2019.

Iranian personal statutes and family law are generally based on Jaafari [the dominant branch of Shiite Islam] jurisprudence, members of Iran’s religious minority groups – including Sunni Islam, practiced by the majority of Iran’s Kurds – have the right to regulate and administer family matters like marriage, divorce and child custody, according to their respective religious laws.

Some Islamic scholars believe divorce should solely fall to the jurisdiction of family courts,  and it is not possible to end a marriage without court agreement. Others argue divorce is only made valid by a fatwa, an Islamic ruling from a cleric. The issue is further complicated when it comes to triple talaq, a prevalent practice among Kurdish men, especially those who follow the Shafiei school of Sunni Islam.

Rudaw English spoke to a number of Iranian Kurdish men who said they use talaq as an empty threat, without thinking about the heavy and often permanent repercussions its use can have on the women on its receiving end.  For Nangin, triple talaq came for something as mundane as a bad cup of tea.

“My husband asked my father to drink a cup of tea, but he refused, saying he didn’t like it. My husband said, 'I will say triple talaq to my wife if you don’t drink it'. My father was enraged, and didn’t drink it. At this point, our marriage was ended,” she said.

To Nangin’s father, the rupture to his daughter’s marriage was irreparable.

"My father was a religious man. He never agreed for me to return to my husband,” she said. "Although my husband begged him and regretted it, my father never agreed for me to return to him.” 

Nangin’s three children have lived with their father’s family ever since.

“I am now separated from my children because a single phrase was spoken.”

Raana Hassan, 70, had not even been born when the threat of triple talaq began to loom over her mother.

“When my mother was three months pregnant with me, her younger brother Ahmed passed away. So my mother would often visit my parents,” Raana told Rudaw English.

“My father had sworn a few times that he would say triple talaq if she continued to visit her parents. My mother went back to her parents one day, and the marriage ended," she said.

Raana and her mother went on to live together “in misery”, she said – until her mother remarried. 

"When I was 10, my mother remarried and left me alone,” she said. “The day she left me was the worst day of life. Nothing could be more painful than your mother leaving you at this early age." 

At age 17, Raana was married off to a man by her grandmother.

"The hellish life triple talaq has created for me has haunted me ever since I was born," Raana said. 

"It's not just my mother, but many other women who have fallen victim of this disgusting phenomenon," she said. "When I hear triple talaq has been used against a woman, I remember the pain my mother and I experienced."

For Gulala Watandost, a lawyer and women’s rights activist in Mariwan, triple talaq is nothing less than an abuse of women’s rights.

"Triple talaq is a tool men use to exploit women and violate their rights. Women are the prime victims of this phenomenon that tarnishes their dignity," she told Rudaw English.

For Hassan Amini, a religious expert and Islamic law judge in Sanandaj, triple talaq – which he says is prevalent in both Iranian Kurdistan and Kurdistan Region – is a distortion of Islamically acceptable methods of divorce. 

"Divorce has three stages. For example, when talaq is said three times by the husband on three separate occasions, then the marriage can be ended. But to say it three times in one go is a practice socially constructed by Kurds."

“Nowhere in the Quran or sunnah does it say that a man can divorce his wife using triple talaq. Islamic scholars agree that a marriage does not end with a verbal declaration of divorce. But the triple talaq is a man's tool against women in the Kurdish society. It is very ugly, and women are the prime victims," Amini said.

Where men have come to regret divorce by triple talaq, they may try to remarry the wives they broke bonds with by resorting to another questioned practice; mara ba jash, where a divorced woman temporarily marries another man, then divorces him so that she can remarry her first husband. More often than not, it is carried out through an agreement between the first and second husband, with the new husband a willing actor in the couple’s reunion.

"I once acted as the lawyer of a 40-year-old woman, separated from her husband by triple talaq,” Watandost said. “When I got to the court, the woman was very angry at a cleric. When I asked what the matter was, she told me, ‘I‘m going to kill myself, my husband wants me to marry and then divorce this cleric so that he can remarry me through mara ba jash.’ The woman didn’t agree to it, and never remarried her husband." 

For Amini, mara ba jash is Islamically impermissible, and an affront to the women roped into its use. 

"According to mara ba jash, the woman will have to engage in a sexual relations with a man after temporarily marrying, before she is allowed to remarry her husband. This is disgusting, and an evasion of Islamic law," he said.

Clerics that reject the validity of triple talaq in Islam can take a more concrete stance against the practice by issuing a fatwa that renders it haram, lawyer Watandost said.

With pressure from civil activities and women rights-related groups, triple talaq “must be erased once and for all from Kurdish society," she added.

Translation by Zhelwan Z. Wali