4K divorce questions sent to Dar al-Iftaa every month

CAIRO – 18 October 2018: At least 4,200 questions exclusive to divorce are sent to Dar al-Iftaa every month, the Grand Mufti said Thursday, a figure that corresponds to an increasing rate of spousal separation in the country.

Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam said at a panel discussion on the role of fatwas in resolving domestic problems and reducing divorce rates that “official statistics indicate that divorce rates increase on daily basis, especially in the past five years. This makes us all truly responsible.”

He added that some people “lurk” in the society to push it into chaos and instability and “disrupt the very concept of family,” calling this a “red line.”

A total of 198,269 registered divorces occurred in 2017, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). However, only 1.7 percent of Egyptian women and 0.9 percent of men are divorced.

Although the divorce rate has increased in Egypt in the past years, it does not amount to be one of the highest in the world.

The increase, however, has alarmed officials, including President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.
The president called for for invalidating oral divorce in January 2017, where a man can say to his wife “anti taleq” (you are divorced), and she becomes one. They later do the paperwork to make the divorce official.

A few days after Sisi’s proposal, Al-Azhar issued a statement perpetuating oral divorce as a general rule, providing religious and historical evidence. Both Al-Azhar and Dar al-Iftaa, however, have intensified their efforts to counter divorce, issue fatwas that facilitate reunion and, in some cases, to invalidate oral divorce.