The prohibition of reinstating a divorced wife in the Druze family

Abstract

The peculiarity of the Druze law of divorce does not lie in the mechanism of dissolution, which is not materially different from that of the Muslim sharī'a, but in its effects: a dissolved marriage cannot be restored; the repudiation of the wife by itself creates an absolute bar to a remarriage between the parties. Article 11 of the Lebanese Druze Law of Personal Status of 1948 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Lebanese Druze Law’), which was adopted by the Israeli Druze Community in 1961, provides, in conformity with Druze religious law, that a man must not remarry his divorced wife. Unlike Islamic law, Druze law does not distinguish between revocable (raj'ī) divorce, which does not immediately sever the marital bond but permits reinstating the wife during the waiting-period ('idda) by express utterance or significant conduct, and irrevocable (bā'in) divorce, which takes immediate effect; reinstatement in the latter case requires the conclusion of a new marriage with all that this implies (dower, etc.). A Druze divorce is absolute under any circumstances; the wife cannot be reinstated by way of taḥlīl, i.e. an intermediate marriage to another man and divorce from him so as to become again permitted to her first husband; this course is adopted in Islamic law after the third repudiation. Although the Lebanese Druze Law does not say so expressly, it seems that the legislator intended to block the reinstatement of the wife and restoration of the marriage by every possible means. In fact, religious law goes so far as to forbid divorced spouses to meet under the same roof even if separated by many partitions. The ban on taking back a divorced wife dates from the early days of the Druze religion.