Verbal divorce among Islamic issues Grand Imam plans to renew focus on

CAIRO - 20 February 2017: The question of whether a Muslim man can divorce his wife simply by telling her so is facing intense debate in Egypt, with the president himself calling on the country’s highest Islamic authority to insist all divorce proceedings be documented in writing.

Under Islamic law, it is possible for a man to divorce his wife by telling her three times, “I divorce you.”

Several Al-Azhar scholars threw their support behind the Grand Imam of al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb’s repeated calls to focus on issues with a direct relevance to the Islamic world. One such issue is that of verbal divorce, which has sparked heated debates over the last few weeks.

The Grand Imam, the highest official of religious law in Egypt, said less time should be wasted on minor issues, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm reports.

He also called on other scholars to renew their approaches towards different political matters. 

The debate comes as scholars at Al-Azhar University have supported Tayeb’s repeated calls to focus on issues directly related to the Islamic world. Other issues under debate include democracy.

Abdelfattah El-Awary, dean of Al-Azhar University’s faculty of fundamentals of religion, told Al-Masry Al-Youm, “Tayeb's calls to reconsider the visions proposed to the masses on issues that concern the Islamic world, like democracy, can never stop.”

“Generally speaking, people have the right to choose the way in which they prefer to pick their representatives and presidents,” he continued.

Ahmed Karima, secretary of the parliamentary religious committee, said that people who criticize the statements rejecting all reforms to verbal divorce in support of more contemporary forms of thought “have to keep in mind that we would consider this while drafting the new law that must also conform to the Shari’a,” he told Al-Masry Al-Youm on Sunday.