CAIRO (Al Said Zayed, Alarabiya.net)
Divorce rates are skyrocketing in Egypt, with one divorce being granted every six minutes, while a new study shows that female Arab celebrities are leading the pack when it comes to splitting from their spouses.
Lebanese singer Grace Deeb broke the record for the fastest divorce of the year when she got married and divorced within one week. "It was a rash decision and a wrong choice," she later said.
The celebrity study showed that 84% of female Arab stars have some sort of family problems: 50% have been divorced at least once; 6% broke off an engagement, 15% are approaching spinsterhood; and 14% went through failed romances between the first and second marriages. Only 14% enjoy a stable family life.
The study was based on 100 celebrities from different parts of the Arab world, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas reported on Sunday.
Egyptian actress Hanan Turk confirmed long-standing rumors that she had divorced her husband. Turk said the couple fought over the husband's insistence to keep a dog in the house. The animal reportedly kept sitting on Turk's prayer mat.
Egyptian singer Angham filed for khol'a, a law through which a woman is granted immediate divorce if she renounces her financial rights. Angham claims that her husband Fahd, a Kuwaiti musician, is jealous of her and grudges her success. Angham married Fahd against her father's will, and a long rupture followed between them.
Official statistics in Egypt show that courts grant a divorce every six minutes, handle 88,000 divorce cases each year, and issue 240 divorce rulings everyday.
According to the latest census figures, young couples and newly weds account for the lion's share of divorces with 34 percent of divorces occurring in the first year of marriage and 21.5 percent in the second, data from Egypt's Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics showed.
But Lebanese singer Mai Hariri got a divorce after a stable marriage that lasted for years. The divorce took place two months after her daughter Sara was born, and a legal dispute ensued between the two over the girl's custody.
Mai accused her ex-husband engineer Osama Shaaban of kidnapping the girl, whereas he accused her of prioritizing her singing career over her daughter.
Syrian singer Ruwaida ended a marriage that has caused her lots of problems with her family. Her ex-husband retaliated by publicly charging her with cheating on him, an accusation she has denied that in the media.
Syrian singer Asala also ended her marriage with businessman Ayman Al-Dahabi, who was also her manager. When Asala remarried as soon as her edda (waiting period between two marriages in Islam) was over, Dahabi launched a severe media campaign against her. Asala's new husband is Egyptian director Tareq Al-Erian.
While Lebanese singer Nawal Al-Zoghbi and her husband Elli Deeb refuse to comment on divorce rumors, Egyptian actress Hala Shiha confirmed her divorce and Emirati singer Ruwaida Al-Mahrouqi's is still suffering the ramifications of divorce and struggling in court for the custody of her son. |
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Unrealistic expectations Psychiatrist and family counselor Dr. Fayrouz Omar said the quick divorces result from misconceptions about marriage among youth: "Young men and women think marriage is a romantic paradise and want their life partner to be perfect."
A second reason, Omar told AlArabiya.net, is absence of emotional intelligence: "Young couples do not know how to manage relationships and do not have enough patience to cope with the partner and establish a dialogue."
People, Omar argues, are becoming more pessimistic and lose hope quickly in making the marriage work: "Marriage needs much effort to succeed."
"Realism is the magic word," she said.
Egypt's Grand Mufti Dr. Ali Gomaa attributes the soaring rate of divorce to the diminishing role of religion. Gomaa told AlArabiya.net that when religion no longer becomes the reference, even simple differences in points of view could trigger a divorce.
(Translated from Arabic by Sonia Farid). |
