THE USAGE OF CUSTOM IN THE CONTEMPORARY LEGAL SYSTEM OF SAUDI ARABIA: DIVORCE ON TRIAL

Abstract

Islamic law plays a crucial role in the survival of Saudi Arabia and establishes the parameters of what is permissible; within this framework, a great variety of individually unique and culturally specific relationships can exist. The practices of divorce and woman-initiated divorce are controversial issues amongst Muslim scholars in general, Saudi Arabia specifically. To a great extent, Saudi Arabia’s cultural, social, and political features have been shaped by the Wahhābī understanding that adopts a literal interpretative technic when handling issues regarding marital problems. Social and cultural environment in which Saudi judges are born and grow up sometimes visibly sometimes invisibly influence these judges’ thoughts and perceptions. The main questions that the paper aims to answer: how do the Saudi scholars succeed in generating a workable religious system from the accumulation of Ḥanbalī works? Which legal principles the judges applied and how they utilized the concept of ‘urf for the court decisions? The descriptive conclusion aims to clarify Wahhābī approaches to custom (mainly referred to as ‘urf and ‘āda) and compare them to the decisions of contemporary Saudi judges. Whether the decisions in the contemporary legal system completely depend on the classical Ḥanbalī religious sources or draw indirectly on customary norms is central to this research. With the intent of perceptibly unfolding the interaction between ‘urf and legal practice related to divorce issues, the article examines the usage of custom or ‘urf in the shar‘ī system of Saudi Arabia and the approaches of Saudi judges towards custom in the divorce implementation.