The Madina Court is scheduled to look into a third case of guardians preventing women from getting married, what is known in the Islamic Shariah as “Adhl.” The hearing of the case was adjourned until October 10 because the father did not appear for a scheduled court session. The woman, who is in her thirties and is working as an assistant dentist, filed a lawsuit against her father for rejecting suitors who came to ask for her hand in marriage. The woman said her dilemma started at the age of 7, when she began living in a house with her stepmother and her father was unfair in his treatment of her and her brothers. The problem continued until she married her cousin, but they separated after 18 months, during which she was blessed with a daughter, who is now 7. The woman later lived in her mother's house for seven years and in that time she enrolled in a private health institute. When she reached the final year of her studies, a young man proposed to her but her father rejected him. “I insisted on marrying him because there was no good reason to reject him,” the woman said. “My dilemma started when my father came to visit me at my mother's house, ordered me to accompany him to his house and threatened to keep me from completing my final year in school. He also told me not to dream of working after I graduated from the institute.” She claimed that her father forced her to go with him, but one of the neighbors heard her screams for help and called the police. When patrols arrived, she and her father went to the police station where he claimed that she was misbehaving. She said she defended herself and told the officer in charge that her father was trying to cast her in a bad light so the officer referred the case to the court, which ordered her to go with her father. During her stay with him, so many people proposed to her but her father refused to meet them. Last month, the Madina Court looked into the case of a Saudi female doctor whose father was said to have prevented her from marrying a man who proposed to her because he does not belong to their tribe, kept her at home and prevented her from working. She also said her brothers attacked her and that she was rushed to the hospital with bruises on different parts of her body. The Madina Court has also looked into the case of six sisters in their thirties who filed a similar lawsuit against their father.
