Why Are Lavish Divorce Parties on the Rise in the Arab World?

In the past, divorced women were marginalized and most of them were supposed to be barren or deemed unfit to remarry.

Nowadays, they can walk with their heads high up without having to worry about society after divorce, and they can easily marry again, if they want to. Not only that, but they can also celebrate their divorce telling people around them that the "problem" was finally solved.

Parties to celebrate divorces have become a trend in many Arab countries, and the best example may be Saudi Arabia.

This experience has eradicated the shame following divorced women to become finally accepted in society.

 

Frequent Enough

Weddings in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan and other Arab countries, have long been an “over-the-top affair” with thousands of dollars spent to celebrate a marriage.

However, some couples are now “splurging” a completely different sort of wedding ceremony: a divorce party.

With cynical invitations and ridiculous cakes, lavish parties of divorce have invaded social media after couples split up.

In recent years, the phenomenon has become so popular and widespread and frequent enough “to instigate a trend.”

At the time when many Arab countries have rung alarm bells amid a frightening rise in divorce rates, divorce ceremonies have led to widespread controversy. Among those, some believe that these celebrations are a great way to reduce the “psychological burden” of a bad marriage experience, and others consider this phenomenon as neglecting the major social institution, the family, paving the way to divorce culture.

According to TRT Arabic, the idea of the divorce parties, “goes back mainly to the Japanese Hiroki Terai, who was the organizer of these parties,” since then, this kind of celebrations has spread to many Western countries, to finally reach the Arab world.

Contrary to the West, Arab societies give great importance to the family considering it as the foundational stone of the community.

As a result, divorce is seen as a sad threshold, of course, except for when divorce is the best solution for complicated cases.

This is why many shunned the idea of celebrating divorces, believing that no joy could come from the separation of a married couple and their children, while others rejected the notion as it is just a way to attract people’s attention.

 

'Just Divorced'

Tara Eisenhard, a divorce coach and the author of the book The D-Word: Divorce Through a Child’s Eyes, and the blog Relative Evolutions, considers divorce as a pure beginning. She posted on her official Facebook account that: “A marriage shouldn't survive at the expense of its participants, and divorce is about evolution, not dissolution.”

Tara also believes that celebrating “the end of one thing and the beginning of something else means ‘recognizing’ or ‘honoring’ the end of a relationship and celebrating the possibility and potential of a new beginning.”

However, TRT Arabic’s report raised the opinions of other specialists that disagree with Tara’s belief, considering that celebrating the end of the relationship with a party has stemmed from the injustice endured for the duration of the marriage which would certainly affect women more than men, as quoted by TRT Arabic.

In other words, this behavior may be due to a temporary feeling of revenge, but it does not help in processing negative feelings.

On the other hand, some other analysts explain the phenomenon as a mere “passing fashion,” that will disappear gradually.

Amani al-Ghoraibi, a master’s student at King Abdulaziz University, told Arab News about her aunt’s divorce celebration as she was there. Amani said that her aunt was finally relieved after all the legal procedures were done. According to her, the aunt was happy because the case was concluded and not because “she got rid of her husband.” The divorced aunt “rented a cabin at a resort and invited the entire family to stay for a couple of days. There was a feast of goat roast (thabeeha) and the family brought her a cake,” according to Arab News.

 

A Cause For Concern

Possibly encouraged by divorce ceremonies, around 500 cases of divorce per day in Arab societies and that aggravated the fears of many Arab societies witnessing an alarming rise in divorce rates, TRT Arabic reported.

The latest statistics for the year 2021, Saudi Arabia registered 7 divorce cases every hour, an average of 162 cases per day, while “Tunisia recorded 940 divorce cases per month, an average of 4 cases every 3 hours. Divorce cases in Algeria amounted to 64,000 cases annually, an average of one case every 12 minutes.” The same was for Jordan where the number of divorce cases has reached 14,000 cases every year.

Saudi Arabia came first among the most popular Arab countries where divorce celebrations have spread, in wedding-like ceremonies on many social media platforms.

Commenting on this phenomenon, the member of the International Fiqh Council and a professor of Sharia politics and governance at King Abdulaziz University, Hassan Safar said that “divorce parties are an ‘unfriendly social practice,’ and it is not worthy in Islam, law and order.”

In the same context, Saudi psychological counselors confirmed that the divorce ceremonies that have spread in the Kingdom are just a “wrong expression of the desire to take revenge,” according to TRT Arabic.

Egypt, Iraq, the Emirates, and many other Arab countries are witnessing the spread of the same phenomenon, among different opinions.