Saudi Arabia bans forced marriages

4/12/2005 4:00:00 PM GMT

Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority banned the practice of forcing women to marry against their will, the official SPA news agency reported on Tuesday.

Grand mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said that forced marriage is against Islam, and that those responsible for it should be jailed.

According to Saudi media, half of marriages in the country end in divorce.

The high number of forced marriages in the kingdom is believed to be the main reason behind the growing divorce rate.

“Forcing a woman to marry someone she does not want and preventing her from wedding that whom she chooses... is not permissible" under Islamic law, said Sheikh Abdul Aziz, who leads the Council of Senior Ulema (Scholars), the kingdom's top religious authority.

"Anyone who insists on forcing a woman ... to marry against her will is disobeying God and His prophet (Mohammed)," he said.

He added that any father who forces his daughter into marriage "should be punished by imprisonment and should not be released until he drops his demand, which contravenes the provisions of Sharia," or Islamic law.

Violators should be kept behind bars until they "refrain from aggressing women," al-Sheikh said.