MARRIAGE LAW TANGLE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 73, 18 December 1937, Page 15

MARRIAGE LAW TANGLE

Egypt may have got rid of the Capitulations; which created something like a baker's dozen of different civil tribunals for the various foreign colonies in the land. But her people are still subject to some fifteen different religious tribunals, which regulate the personal status of each native religious community. These often come into serioys conflict, and a recent incident illustrates the difficulties which confront the authorities in regulating the relations under which these communities are to live together. A Copt (native Christian), happily married to a wife of the same religion, fell in love with a Moslem woman. In order to be able to marry her as well, he embraced Islam, jvhich permits its adlierents up to four wives. Hearing of what he had done, his

first wife applied to the Coptio Patriarch ate for a divorce. which she obfained. The man then went to the Moslem Religious Courts and got an order calling upon his Coptie wife to return to her husband's home. When 'the police, who are bound to execute the orders. of the Mehkemeh Sharia, appeared to serve this order on her she produced the order of divorco and a certificate from the Coptic Patriarchate showing that she had remarried a Copt. The civil and legal autborities are now faced with dhe problem of whether a Coptic woman, whose husband has embraced Islam, is automatically. brought thereby under the Moslem reiigious law as would happen in such circumstances to children of such a marriage or whether the Coptic wife retains her rigbts under the Coptio personal status code.