Turkey’s top religious body okays divorce via text message
Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs has issued several controversial opinions, most recently one stating that men may divorce their wives via a telephone call, fax, text message or email.
Turkey’s top religious body, the Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, has recently attracted a lot of attention for the numerous fatwas it has been publishing online.
For example, on Nov. 29, Turkey’s top religious body declared the digital currency Bitcoin “inappropriate at this moment in time.” On Dec. 1, it issued a fatwa on hair dye for men, and on Dec. 13, purchasing national lottery tickets was forbidden. On Dec. 14, it issued a fatwa about “immoral music.”
Yet no recent fatwa was as controversial as the one on divorce that the Diyanet issued on Dec. 7, stating that couples may get divorced via telephone call, fax, letter, text message or email.
According to the classic — and widely practiced — interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence, a man divorces a woman by pronouncing “talaq,” the Arabic word for divorce. It is much harder for a woman to obtain a divorce. The newest religious opinion by Turkey’s Diyanet states, “Divorcing your spouse by saying ‘talaq’ via phone call, letter, SMS, internet and fax are as valid as saying it to their face," and "If a woman is divorced through written methods such as a text message or letter, she should ensure that the message was sent by her husband.”
