The Frankfurt Koran Divorce Case

I knew it was only a matter of time before the right-wing noise machine in the US would pick up the story of the judge in Frankfurt who cited passages of the Koran in denying a Muslim woman a fast-track divorce. Sure enough, the story is now being used as a cudgel to attack Islam and Muslims, even as additional scorn is heaped on Germany and Europe. Judge to Muslim: Beat your Wife is the headline on one news site, which attacks Islam:

The divorce court judge ruled that the Muslim had the legal right to pound upon his wife, abuse her as he pleased, because the Koran permits just that. So the judge referred to that publication as a “holy book.” That’s how prostituted the revered term “holy” has become.

Quran Uber Alles screams the headline in the right-wing hate site Front Page.  Karl Rove’s propaganda organ Fox News Network has frequent updates on the story, using it as another example of European appeasement of Jihad.

The judge in the case was wrong to cite the Koran, but it is important to to cut through the media frenzy and look at the facts in the case.  The German law firm Moser & Partners has done us all a service by reporting on its Web site the German legal issues at play here: \

1. There is NO ruling, no decision, no verdict in the case regarding the divorce.

2. The judge granted the wife a no-contact order against her Moroccan husband and had him kicked out of the apartment. In a second ruling, the judge prolonged that order for another 6 months.
Never did the judge in this proceeding tolerate the husband’s domestic violence or invoke the Koran to justify it.

3. In Germany, you need to be separated for 1 year before you can file for divorce. As the couple in question separated in May 2006, the wife (and of course also the husband) could have filed for divorce in May 2007.
The wife wanted to file early, invoking a special provision of German divorce law that allows an early divorce if it can be shown that it is unbearable for one party to remain married for the remaining part of the separation year.

4. For this early divorce, the wife requested legal aid, i.e. the government paying her court and attorney fees.
In this legal aid proceeding (NOT the divorce proceeding) the judge also did not issue a ruling yet. She however wrote to the wife’s lawyer that she was likely to deny the request for legal aid and have the woman wait until May 2007 (another 2 months – during which she would still have the protection from the no-contact order) to have her divorce granted.

5. The judge informed the wife’s atttorney that one factor that she would consider in the wife’s request for an early divorce was the law of Morocco, where both spouses got married in 2001 according to Islamic law. She also mentioned that the Koran does allow men to physically harm their women under certain circumstances.

6. The wife’s attorney requested the judge to be substituted. That wish was granted by the Frankfurt Family Court and a different judge is sitting on the case now.

The judge DID NOT enter a ruling based on the Koran, nor did she say that domestic violence was okay: she enforced a no-contact order to husband. But when did the facts ever matter to the right-wing hate machine?

For more on the case, I recommend Omar’s blog TooMuchCookies where he looks into the specific passages of the Koran under review here and exposes the German media hypocrisy.