Marriage Contracts and Forced/Un-consented Marriages
The marriage contract is concluded between the guardian (wali) of the bride and bridegroom, not between bridegroom and bride. Guardian (wali) of the bride can only be a free Muslim. The wali of the bride is normally a male relative of the bride, preferable her father. If the bride is an virgin, which is supposed for the first marriage, the wali can force the bride into the marriage even against her proclaimed will, if the wali is the father or the paternal grandfather of the bride. Such a wali is called wali mujbir, which means wali with the right of coercion. Walis other than the father or the paternal grandfather of the bride need the consent of the bride. If the bride is a virgin, silent consent is sufficient. According to the Hanafi school of shari'a law every wali, who is a blood relative, can force an underage virgin in marriage without her consent. But such a forced marriage by an wali other than her father or the paternal grandfather can be demanded to be declared void (faskh) by the qadi, when the she is coming on age.
Read more about this topic: Marriage In Islam
Famous quotes containing the words marriage, contracts, forced and/or marriages:
“Adultery is the vice of equivocation.
It is not marriage but a mockery of it, a merging that mixes love and dread together like jackstraws. There is no understanding of contentment in adultery.... You belong to each other in what together you’ve made of a third identity that almost immediately cancels your own. There is a law in art that proves it. Two colors are proven complimentary only when forming that most desolate of all colors—neutral gray.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Bankers, nepotists, contracts and talkies: on four fingers one may count the leeches which have sucked a young and vigorous industry into paresis.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“I wasn’t born to be a fighter. I was born with a gentle nature, a flexible character and an organism as equilibrated as it is judged hysterical. I shouldn’t have been forced to fight constantly and ferociously. The causes I have fought for have invariably been causes that should have been gained by a delicate suggestion. Since they never were, I made myself into a fighter.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“If marriages were made by putting all the men’s names into one sack and the women’s names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England.... If you can tell me of any trustworthy method of selecting a wife, I shall be happy to make use of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)