The practice, usually a temporary alliance in which the wife waives some conventional marriage rights such as cohabitation and financial support, has been legally permitted in the conservative Muslim kingdom for decades. More than a dozen interviews with matchmakers and misyar couples, including grooms juggling other conventional marriages, offer a window into a phenomenon still shrouded in secrecy and shame, despite its proliferation.
The testimonies highlight how misyar is seen as a hybrid between marriage and singlehood, benefiting polygamists without the stress of maintaining a second household. Despite its potential for abuse, it also appeals to some women keen to shun patriarchal expectations of traditional marriages, as well as unmarried couples seeking religious cover for sexual relationships, forbidden by Islam outside wedlock. He did not say what she gained from the secret alliance.
He began searching after sending his wife and five-year-old son back to Cairo at the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year, mainly due to rising living costs and an expat levy introduced by Saudi Arabia in recent years. It is touted by some women as a fleeting escape from spinsterhood or a chance for a fresh beginning for divorcees and widows, who otherwise struggle to remarry. A close associate of a divorced Syrian woman in Riyadh said she was in a secret misyar relationship because she feared her ex-husband, a Saudi, would legally seek custody of her two children if he discovered that she had remarried.
But many question the validity of a furtive practice at odds with the main tenets of Islamic marriage, which requires a public declaration. A prominent Riyadh cleric attributed its proliferation to men unwilling to shoulder the full responsibilities of polygamous marriage, which is permitted in Islam as long as all wives are treated equally. Some women are forced to pursue court cases against Saudi men refusing to accept children born into misyar relationships.
I advised her to take him to court and fight for her rights. It is impossible to estimate the number of such marriages, many of which are undocumented.
