RE-MARRIAGE PRACTICE AMONGST MUSLIM WOMEN: A SOCIAL STUDY BASED ON QUAZI COURT OF BERUWALA

Widows encounter plenty of negative socio-economic consequences due to the increasing divorce among Sri Lankan Muslims. Especially divorce is prevalent among Muslims in the study area, and it is common for women to face various socio-economic and psychological challenges after divorce. As an alternative to these issues encountered, Islam has introduced and encouraged remarriage. In that respect, the study aims to assess the concept of remarriage of Muslim women who have divorced and identify the factors that hinder remarriage. Primary and secondary data collection methods were used in this study. In the first stage of data collection, the report of the divisional Quazi Court was obtained and the details of the divorced women were obtained through the documentary analysis. As the second step of data collection, a closed questionnaire was distributed among the divorced women and an unstructured interview was conducted with them. Interviews and telephone conversations were conducted with those 152 divorced women who were selected on the basis of convenient sampling methods and as well as by newly elected clergy, intellectuals, school administrators, and parents of divorced women. Moreover, other publications such as research articles, texts, journals, and web articles were read. It appears that there is a low number of remarriages in practice in the research area Beruwala and the women in the study area are found to be uninvolved in remarriage. In this case, it was detected that, the influence of the research sample's psychological, social and familial factors. In this regard, awareness needs to be raised as remarriage is an excellent solution to the various economic and social challenges faced by divorced women.