When My Sect Betrayed Me: Are We Truly Honored?

By: Furqan Nsayyif

To grow up in a “conservative” Shia environment means to constantly hear slogans about “how the Jaafari school of thought honors its women” and “how women’s rights are protected under Jaafari marriage law.” We grew up surrounded by this rhetoric, without any real legal awareness, especially regarding personal status law.

In a community that takes pride in saying that some Hanafi women prefer marrying under Jaafari law because it “guarantees women’s rights,” and that proudly recalls the story of Saddam Hussein arranging his daughter Hala’s marriage according to Jaafari rites “to protect her rights,” the irony is painful.

For more than one parliamentary term, proposals have been repeatedly submitted to pass the Jaafari Code and to amend Article 57, which governs child custody. Each time, civil society organizations were the loudest voices opposing it, and women activists stood at the forefront of the protests. Yet the majority of women in the Shia community remained unaware of how dangerous this legal code truly is. Sectarian belonging outweighed awareness of rights, turning legal advocacy into an act of political disloyalty, a strategy that Islamist parties have long mastered.

Our ignorance of our rights was not accidental. It reflected a culture, both social and state-driven, that never cared to teach us our duties or entitlements. Even married women often knew of no “rights” beyond the mahr (dowry), paid and deferred. Many love stories and engagements ended over this issue.

Families believe the dowry is the greatest guarantee for their daughters, some even inflating the amount to deter divorce. Yet in the end, most women emerge from divorce defeated, forced to give up financial or parental rights in exchange for freedom.

I used to be puzzled by the stories I heard about women suffering in other Arab countries, especially Lebanon. I wondered: we marry under Jaafari law and don’t face that kind of injustice, so why do they?

But after the Beirut port explosion on August 4 and the case of Lilian Shaaito, the young mother denied access to her son, I began to see what really happens in Islamic courts, especially Shia ones. That’s when I understood the danger of the Jaafari Code, and since then, I have rejected any attempt to legitimize it.

Unwritten Conditions

The deeper problem is that many family demands and customs stem from legal ignorance. Parents rarely think to include clear conditions in marriage contracts. Even when they verbally insist that their daughter retain her right to education, work, or visiting her family, these are just promises exchanged during engagement, usually between men, as if a man’s word were enough.

When husbands later break these promises, disputes are not taken to court but to the tribe. Even in life-defining matters such as custody or alimony, women’s fates in some conservative regions are left to tribal authority, which enforces its word as law.

I used to hear about Western celebrity marriage contracts, how they specify every condition in detail, and people in my community mocked them. Today, what was once ridiculed has become something Shia women aspire to: inserting conditions into their contracts and being proud of it. But the difference is enormous. Those celebrities never needed permission to be treated as adult women; we, on the other hand, must negotiate for the basic right to study, to work, or even to leave the house.

The Code of My Sect Broke Me

When I read the Jaafari Code, I felt disgusted.

I am an adult woman, not yet married, fully capable of choosing or rejecting a partner. Yet in this text, I found myself reduced to an object, a sexual tool created for a man’s pleasure. Every paragraph made me feel that I was born only to be a “righteous, obedient wife,” and that I would need to list every single condition just to live as half a human being.

What kind of conditions are these? That he “allow” me to study? To work? To go out? Not to marry another woman? And that all of these be “within what pleases God”? Even sexual relations are given priority over building a family. The code not only tramples the constitution, it turns me into a second-class being.

This so-called “granting of rights,” celebrated by its male supporters and clerics, grants me nothing but pain. I understand what it means to have rights, and I can see the suffering of women who have never even had the chance to voice an opinion. Women whose lives are confined to domestic and caregiving roles, their rights stripped away publicly, before everyone’s eyes. They have no voice and no choice.

And when supporters of the code tell girls to “choose wisely,” I can only feel bitter irony. How can we be told to choose a good husband when we were never allowed to choose what we wear, what we eat, what we study, or where we work? How can we “choose” when we’ve never had freedom over the smallest details of our lives? Then they tell us, “Add your conditions to the marriage contract.” What conditions? The worst a man risks is “religious sin” if he breaks his promise. But what about the situations they refuse to discuss?

What if I’m forced into marriage without my consent? What if I’m stripped of custody of my children? What if I’m divorced because I’ve aged or can no longer fulfill my “marital duties”? What if an accident leaves me disabled?

This system doesn’t see women as full human beings, it sees them as dependents. It demands that they be patient through hardship, bear their husbands’ moods and financial struggles, yet guarantees them no dignity, no freedom of choice, no humane life in return.

Hypocrisy and Shock

I feel deeply betrayed by the religious system that has echoed since my childhood: “Islam honored women.”

I grew up believing it, just like many of my friends who now face the same disillusionment. Is this really Islam? Or have we been raised on distorted interpretations inherited from patriarchal society, not on the actual words of the Qur’an?

Since the passing of the Jaafari Code, I have lived an unending internal conflict. I wake up startled, as if emerging from a battle. I write to release the weight inside me, but TV programs and clerics celebrating this as a “sectarian victory” only deepen my sense of loss. Life has never broken me as much as my own sect has.

The painful truth is that the issue is not just marriage and divorce, it’s every aspect of our lives. Everything now depends on a father’s, grandfather’s, or husband’s approval: our education, our work, even our political future.

How can we speak of justice and equality tomorrow, when they have legalized our subjugation today?

By: Furqan Nsayyif