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