In its second week of May edition, Sayidaty, a Saudi-owned womens magazine, reported: After womens beauty, femininity and their performance of all marital duties used to be the way to attract men, and after men used to give their wives presentsÂ…, women lately have become the ones bribing their husbands with money or expensive gifts to make them perform their marital duties. This is no longer a secret behind the bedroom walls and has reached the judiciary after many wives complained and asked either for divorce or for forcing their husbands to play their role.

We started off with Wadad who was tried in a financial case after her husband asked for 1,000 Riyals for every intimate meeting between them, which forced her to borrow money from her brother to trade in stocks and secure the 1,000 Riyals [approx. $267] for her husband. She said: I was only sentenced to prison after I lost what I borrowed in the stock market. I became indebted to my brother who filed a lawsuit to get his money back. The case landed me in prison and I thus lost both my husband and my brother. In a law firm in Riyadh, we met with a lady that was struggling to contain her tears.

She said: Ever since the beginning of my marital life, I have been suffering from the coldness and indifference of my husband. He never cared about my feelings and my problems and left it up to me to assume the full responsibility of the house without him ever doing anything. This forced me to quit my studies and stay at home. Due to his limited income, I had to start working. However, he used to steal my salary from the bank without giving it back to me. When I confronted him then he became more indifferent and cruel and then left me and refused to give me my marital rights. I thus decided to get a personal loan to trade with.

[She continued:] However, this was useless since he insisted on leaving me and marrying another. He even stopped visiting me. I am therefore resorting to a lawyer in the hope of finding a solution to my problem. As for Noura Al-Shayeq, she justified the lawsuit filed against her husband of two years by saying that at the beginning she was like all young women are, thrilled to have gotten married. She continued: I lived happily in my home but six months after our wedding, my husbands devious intentions where exposed.

[She continued:] He started to take over my teachers salary under the pretext he wanted to have a trade and needed me to help him because he was unable to secure the needs of the household. He thus asked me to borrow money from the bank with my salary as a guarantee. Noura pointed out she rejected her husbands demands because she knew he would be able to spend [his money] on the household, hadnt it been for his nightlife with a bad crowd. She added: When I refused, he beat me. So I went to my parents house and only returned after he pledged he wouldnt hit me again. A few months later he asked me again to borrow money from the bank.

[She continued:] I accepted to do it. However, [once we got the money], he went back to his old habits of being absent from the house and going to dubious places. He wasted all the money of the loan and when I confronted him, he deprived me of my marital rights for days. He was using that as a pressure tool and I couldnt continue like that. My friend told me to resort to court. As for Tahani Salem, a 36-year old businesswoman who works in stocks and investments and owns a prominent company, she assured that she was used to meeting her husbands demands in order for him to perform his marital duties. She said he lately asked her to get him a new carÂ…

Inside a law office in the city of Jeddah, 40-year old Um Abdul Aziz [Abdul Azizs mother] who is a doctor said she came to get legal advice and learn what the religious laws say about the husband depriving his wife of her legitimate rights. She said: I got married ten years after my first husband died and I was very happyÂ… However, a while later and after my mother passed away, my husband started asking me for my share of her inheritance so that he manages it and invests it. He threatened me that in case I refused, he would abandon me and deprive me of my legitimate rights.

Hassan Dahesh, an attorney in Islamic law, said that what these husbands were doing was a blunt violation of the teachings of Islam that said women should be honored and treated well. He added that only the weak-spirited and half-men resorted to such methods. He assured that a husband didnt have the right to abandon his wife unless with her consentÂ… For men to abandon their wives to bargain with them is completely rejected in religion and the law. The wife who is not getting her marital rights has the right to ask for divorce. If she is forced to pay money to her husband for him to perform his marital rights, the judge will order that her money be given back to herÂ…, he said.

Sociologist Wadha Al-Sakr, the head of social services in the Prince Salman hospital, said that bribing husbands in exchange for marital intimacy had spread in society. She added it was necessary to look into this phenomenon and find solutions, especially if it is a case of poor wives who do not have the money to pay the bribe. She said that wives accepted that because they were afraid their husbands were going to get married to an other or because they feared they would engage in devious acts to satisfy their needs. She indicated that many wives were resorting to courts to ask for divorce, especially since some of them felt used by their unemployed husbandsÂ… - Saudi Arabia