Egyptian woman gets divorced because she did not answer her husband SMS telephone message
An Egyptian woman is seeking clarification from a court on whether her husband's declaration of divorce by text message is legally valid, a state-run newpsaper reported on Thursday.
After missing a call from her husband on her mobile phone, Iqbal Abul Nasr received a text message from him saying "I divorce you because you didn't answer your husband," Al-Akhbar said.
In line with sharia (Islamic law) men do not need to go to court to file for divorce. A unilateral declaration of divorce by a man, repeated three times, formally ends a marriage.
It was the third time Abul Nasr, an engineer from Cairo, received a divorce text message from her husband, prompting her to seek a legal decision from the a family court on the status of her marriage.
If the court declares the couple divorced, it would be the first reported case of divorce by SMS in Egypt.
The subject of divorce by SMS has been highly debated across the Muslim world and some Islamic countries like Malaysia have banned the practice.
According to Egypt's state-run statistics bureau, a couple files for divorce every six minutes in Egypt.