Divorce by Cell Phone?
Well, it’s going to be banned in Malaysia.
At least, according to this article on Australia IT, it’s going to be banned. Malaysia is a very Islamic country and, in their religious tradition, a man can divorce his wife by saying “I divorce you” to her three times in a public place. Well, apparently, an Islamic Sharia court ruled that sending a text message via a cell phone counted! Obviously, a number of groups were quite upset by this and that’s what prompted the legislation.
But, it interests me because someone thought to do this in the first place. It seems obvious to me that the intent behind the tradition is to announce to the community that the couple are divorced, but that would be circumvented by using the cell phone. It just goes to show that people will use technology in very unexpected ways for a lot of different reasons.
So, here’s some speculation for you… How does technology effect your world? Would something like divorce via text-messaging be allowed? Would people in your fictional world be offended? I think it’s an interesting aspect of culture that’s worth exploring.
