I can't believe there is not a single comment for this post, whereas there are over 100 still fighting the gender Boor war in another post.

It is indeed a happy day when emotional and sexual gratification is considered for inclusion in ANY marriage contract, regardless of religious affiliation.

Now that you've reformed Islamic marriages the next step would be to reform Muslim men. Then I'll be really impressed. As for you contract or whatever piece of legalese you produce, it don't amount to shit!

And soon they must outlaw all other forms of religious marriage. so as to avoid offending Muslims. As long as we have Sharia compliant marriage you can outlaw all the Church weddings, the Chupas and Ketubas. It will be awesome when family law in Britain must be Sharia and only Sharia compliant.

I can't wait.

I don't understand the dismissive tone of the other commenters. This kind of marriage contract is a giant leap forward in the history of Muslim marriages. (Does it say anything, by the way, about how many wives a man can have? And is this, again by the way, an issue for feminists -- perhaps not if women could also have four husbands?)

Muslim people come from a very different cultural background and are at a different moment in the history of their religion. It's good to encourage them on the path of equality, towards the realization that all of Allah's children deserve the same rights and opportunities. This didn't come easy in our culture either.

lets get real we're stuck with Islam and its flaws. That being said its time for non-muslims to move forward too. Maybe this is a step forward. On the other hand why are not these women protected under the current criminal law irregardless of marriage. In really civilized countries a common law or co-habitation relationship of a certain length of time is acceptable as a marriage certificate when it comes to disposition and rights in a divorce. Better the govt spend its efforts publicizing what rights Muslim women already have under British common law!

http://islamicpolitik.com/2008/08/the-problem-with-islam.html

Aww, so sweet! Not only have the authors of this contact inherently decided that Muslim men cannot be trusted, they’ve also decided that Islam isn’t good enough for them. The “default” marriage contract - the nikah - seemingly needs additional provisos and conditions added to it; those provided by Islam aren’t enough.

Amusingly, this is being described as “equality”, but even with these new changes, the woman isn’t expected to provide financial support to her family; that’s the man’s problem.

The usual slew of MPs and feminists have crawled out to say how they support these wonderful revisions to Islam. However, the best part is that this contract wasn’t the product of a drunken night, but took four years to compile. After four years, they have produced something that tarnishes the Muslim man, and doesn’t for even one second address the underlying problems in some marriages. I mean, seriously, who is going to be “nice” just because some contract says so? Does that work for non-Muslims?! All that stuff about “loving, honouring, richer, poorer” still leads to a lot of battered women and broken homes. This doesn’t solve anything, it just makes us look pathetic.

We do have good and bad marriages amongst Muslims, but basing a marriage on Islam, i.e. actually practicing what was proclaimed by the prophet Muhammad (saw) is the ONLY solution for a successful productive Muslim marriage.

So there it is: these people have decided that our Islam has been too Qur’anic, and our methodology based too much upon the sunnah of the prophet Muhammad (saw). They want to add in a little of their own spices to make it taste better. Yummy.