Abeer Khashab: When Motherhood Becomes a Courtroom Battle

Like countless Lebanese mothers constrained by patriarchal personal status laws, Abeer Khashab suddenly found herself caught in a harsh legal battle, one that threatened to strip her of her two children.

On August 4, 2020, the day of the Beirut Port explosion, Abeer was in Lebanon with her children after returning from Qatar. Her former husband, Hassan Najm, was outside the country at the time, serving as Lebanon’s ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire.

In the midst of a national catastrophe, Abeer’s personal ordeal began. What followed was a fight over motherhood and protection, unfolding alongside the father’s prolonged absence from Lebanon and the absence of any alternative family environment capable of caring for the two children inside the country.

Abeer Khashab’s struggle, detailed in the “2osasHayat” podcast, exposes a deep structural failure in Lebanon’s personal status system, where women’s rights are often weighed against power and influence rather than justice and protection. It also reveals how laws shaped to serve men can become instruments of exclusion and exhaustion, and how mothers pay an added price for demanding what should be unquestionable:
the right to motherhood, and the right to justice.

In-Absentia Divorce and the Mother’s Erasure

Without her knowledge, Abeer Khashab was divorced in absentia. Around the same time, the locks to her home were changed, effectively barring her from returning.

She was never formally notified. She was not granted the opportunity to defend herself. Instead, she was forced into a new reality: a sudden separation, the loss of housing stability, and the beginning of a legal process that would gradually push her out of her children’s lives.

Later, the Jaafari Court, presided over by Judge Bashir Mortada, issued a ruling transferring custody of the twins, Ali and Yasmin, to their father, and granting him the right to take them abroad. The court’s reasoning relied on what it described as the father’s “high social standing.” The decision was issued despite the father’s years-long absence from Lebanon and the fact that none of his family members lived in the country, raising serious questions about the criteria guiding the ruling and the priorities it reflected.

To bypass the custody age threshold, Yasmin’s age was calculated using the Islamic Hijri calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar. Rights advocates described the move as a legal loophole used to undermine the mother’s custody rights, with little regard for the child’s psychological stability. The court went further: Abeer was not granted visitation rights, and she was even threatened with imprisonment if she refused to hand over the children, placing her under direct threat of punishment rather than protection.

Juvenile Court: When the Child’s Best Interest Takes Center Stage

In response, Abeer Khashab turned to the Juvenile Court, presided over by Judge Fatima Majed. There, the case was approached through a different lens. The court issued protective decisions: keeping the children with their mother, banning their travel, and placing them under psychological care.

These rulings were grounded in the principle of “the best interests of the child,” as enshrined in Juvenile Protection Law No. 422/2002. The court considered that the ongoing legal dispute, and the threat of forcibly separating the children from their mother, posed a psychological and social risk to both children.

But this path quickly ignited a direct legal clash between religious and civil courts, as jurisdictions overlapped and rulings contradicted one another. The children’s future remained suspended between two judicial authorities, with no clear mechanism to resolve the conflict.

The struggle dragged on for years, turning time itself into an additional tool of pressure against the mother, until Yasmin reached the age of choice, at which point custody became the mother’s right both legally and religiously.

Child Support: A Court Ruling Without Enforcement

Alongside the custody battle, Abeer Khashab faced another fight: child support. Although a court ruling was issued, one that should have guaranteed fair financial support, her former husband repeatedly evaded enforcement by changing lawyers and transferring his assets and money to relatives.

Abeer ultimately turned to the media and staged sit-ins outside the Ministry of Justice, pushing for legal notices to be delivered officially. After he retired and returned to Lebanon, he was briefly detained to compel payment. But he later benefited from a law preventing the imprisonment of individuals over the age of 65.

Meanwhile, the seizure of his pension was limited to the basic portion paid in Lebanese pounds, amounts that fell far short of covering the children’s most essential needs.

Mandatory Guardianship

The obstacles did not end there.

As war and security tensions intensified, the Jaafari Court continued to deny the mother permission to travel with the children or to issue passports for them, even though protective decisions had already been issued by the Juvenile Court.

The refusal was based on the principle of “mandatory guardianship,” which grants the father exclusive authority over major decisions in a child’s life, even in cases of neglect or prolonged absence. In practice, this left the children’s safety exposed to real and escalating risks.

From a Personal Case to a Public Cause

As the injustice deepened, Abeer chose to keep her case in the public eye, insisting that it was not hers alone, but emblematic of what many women endure.

The Jaafari Court became the scene of sit-ins and feminist mobilization demanding the annulment of the rulings issued against her, raising the custody age, and reforming personal status laws.

The case also revealed contradictions within the religious establishment itself, while raising broader concerns about the absence of accountability and effective oversight within religious courts, especially amid reports of internal inspection findings that ultimately led to complaints being shelved.

Beyond the courtroom, Abeer Khashab also paid a personal price for speaking out. She went from being a mother fighting for her rights to a woman facing mounting pressure for breaking the silence and challenging religious and judicial authorities protected by social and political power, opening a wider debate over the limits of free expression when criticism targets religious courts.