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A New Text in Islamic Law
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Government statistics indicate that a divorce occurs every six minutes in Egypt, said Ahmed Eid Ahmed, a counselor in Cairo's family court.
Even before the advent of text messages, divorce was too easy in Egypt, said Hoda Badran, chairwoman of the Cairo-based Alliance for Arab Women.
Quick divorces, especially among poor families, often allow husbands to bully less-educated wives out of divorce settlements, leaving the women without enough to support themselves and the children, Badran said.
"Ninety-nine percent of the children out on the streets are there because of divorce" and polygamy, Badran said. "What's the actual cost, the economic cost, of the unlimited divorce?"
For the 25-year-old engineer, text messages have made the costs impossibly high.
Her husband wants her back, the woman said, but the religious scholars she consulted tell her she is divorced in the eyes of God and would be returning to him out of wedlock.
But if she refuses to return, and the courts rule the text-message declarations invalid and her marriage intact, she risks losing her claim to her young son.
With the text messages, she said, "the doors of hell have opened on my life."
Special correspondent Nora Younis in Cairo and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.
