Islam has the solution

A friend of mine came to me recently to drown his sorrows following an acrimonious divorce in which his ex-wife of 2 years walked away with a hefty six-figure settlement, not a penny of which she helped to accumulate.

It was a messy marriage from the outset and the couple spent much of their marital life living separately. So when the courts ruled that his ex-wide was entitled to a very large chunk of his hard earned cash, he realised just how unfair the current system on how marital assets should be divided when couples divorce, was.

Recently, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams caused furore when he commented that Shariah law could be introduced in the UK. Yet here is a perfect example of what he may have had in mind when he made the comments. I gave him a hard time in this blog but my friend’s misfortune led me to visit and further analyse De Williams’s comments.

Shariah law says that whatever assets a man or a woman takes into a marriage remain their own property in the event of a divorce. Any assets accumulated during the marriage remain the property of the party that earned them and the other party has no claim on them. But the husband is required to pay the wife’s living expenses for one year after the divorce and the cost of bringing up any children.

Had this policy been applied to my friends divorce case, his ex-wife will not have been able to walk away with a huge chunk of his personal wealth following a sham marriage. The Shariah law on divorce settlement is both fair and reasonable. In a an increasingly opportunist society in which high profile couples as well as ordinary folk are going through lengthy divorce cases in order to agree a fair way to divide the wealth, women would think twice before rushing into a relationship.

The age of gold diggers will be well and truly over in the same way as a hardworking, and successful woman can relax safe in the knowledge that what she makes will remain hers and hers only, unless she chooses to share them in the same way she promised to share life with the man she married.

Maybe we need to revisit the issue of Shariah law again Dr. Williams!