AMMAN, Jordan, May 27, 2002 (Compass) — An Arab Christian mother widowed seven years ago has been ordered by Jordan's highest court of appeals to surrender custody of her two minor children to be raised as Muslims.
Under a final Court of Cassation appeal rejected against Siham Suleiman Moussa Qandah on February 28, her 13-year-old daughter Rawan and 12-year-old son Fadi could be taken at any time from their home in Husn, 50 miles north of Amman.
Written notification of the ruling arrived two days ago at the court where the case originated, empowering local authorities to immediately transfer Rawan and Fadi to the guardianship of a Muslim sheikh (mosque prayer leader) who is Qandah's blood relative. The two have only seen their Muslim uncle once, years ago, and have never met his wife and children.
Husband's Conversion signed with an "X"
The "compelling evidence" presented by a local Muslim court to the Irbid Civil Court of First Instance which first heard the case was a document dated three years before Qandah's husband died, declaring that he had secretly converted to Islam. Under Islamic law, the minor children of a father who converts to Islam automatically become Muslims as well.
Dated July 29, 1991, the document was signed by two Muslim witnesses. But except for a simple scrawled "X," it does not carry the signature of Qandah's husband, Hussam Rasmi Issa Jibreen. Qandah told Compass that Jibreen never once indicated to her or any of their relatives that he had made such a decision, and that he even returned from army duty abroad to attend the baptism of his second child.
Received a Christian Funeral
"His funeral was in the church, and he was buried in Husn's Christian graveyard," she said. "How is it possible that he was deceiving us for three years?" A soldier in the Jordanian army, Jibreen died in November of 1994, just weeks before he was due to return from serving in the U.N. Peacekeeping Forces in Kosovo.
The Irbid court acknowledged in its ruling that "no one was aware of his conversion to Islam" in Husn, and that he was given a Christian burial and death certificate by St. George's Orthodox Church.
But when his widow went some weeks later to apply through Jordanian's civil courts for legal transfer of her husband's army benefits for herself and the children, the local sharia court stopped the process, stating that Jibreen was a Muslim, not a Christian. His conversion made his children Muslims as well, the Islamic court declared, so his children could only receive his inheritance through a court-designated Muslim guardian.
Shocked, Qandah turned to her family for advice. The youngest in an Arab Christian family of seven brothers and three sisters, Qandah attends the Husn Baptist Church where two of her brothers are also members. But they have one brother who became a Muslim as a teenager, in order to meet the legal requirements to marry a certain Muslim girl.
"He was following his heart," recalled his sister. "But when the girl's father rejected his proposal, then it was too late, and he couldn't change back." Like most Muslim nations, Jordan allows its Christian citizens to convert legally to Islam, but Muslims cannot change their religious identity, which is considered an act of apostasy.
Betrayed by her Brother
Under the common interpretation of Islamic law, anyone who recites the Muslim creed has automatically converted to Islam, even if the words are repeated in jest, and once said they cannot be revoked. So Qandah was advised that under Jordanian law, it was hopeless to contest her husband's "conversion" certificate filed in the Islamic court.
But rather than accept a court-appointed Muslim guardian for her children, Qandah decided to ask her brother who had converted to Islam to become their legal guardian. Long estranged from his family after joining the Muslim community, her brother had taken the name Abdullah al-Muhtadi (the converted one). By then married with several children, he had become a bearded Muslim sheikh (mosque prayer leader).
"He is our blood brother, and we thought this would satisfy the legal requirements for a Muslim guardian," Qandah said. But a few months after her brother agreed to be appointed by the court, in April of 1995, she began to regret her decision.
Although Al-Muhtadi received the regular monthly stipends to which Qandah and her children were entitled, he only forwarded the money to her sporadically over the next two years.
Then, he began to object that the children were studying at Husn's Roman Catholic School, where he learned they were registered as Christians and attending Christian religious instruction, rather than the Islamic classes required for Muslim students. Demanding that they be transferred to a local Muslim school and take Muslim instruction, Al-Muhtadi opened a case in May of 1998, requesting full custody of the children.
Throughout the three-year civil court battle which followed, Qandah said her Muslim defense lawyer assured her that she was sure to win permanent custody of her children.
Ecclesiastical court refused to comment
Under Jordan's dual judicial system, the jurisdiction of religious courts (sharia for Muslims and Ecclesiastical for Christians) is distinct from the civil courts. But inexplicably, the Orthodox Ecclesiastical Court refused to comment on Qandah's predicament, issuing a decision on May 5, 2001 to negate its previous decisions on the case and refer all jurisdictions in the matter to the sharia court.
Six weeks later, the Irbid Civil Court of First Instance ruled that custody of Qandah's children be handed over to their Muslim uncle.
Dated on June 21, 2001, the judgment faulted Qandah for enrolling her children in Christian religion classes at school and taking them to church services with her. In so doing, the decision said, she was "trying to change their religion" and "insisting that her children are Christian," whereas by law they were Muslims.
"The defendant's actions are legal enough reason to devolve her custody, for fear that the youngsters may embrace other than the Islamic religion," the ruling stated.
Seven months later, the Irbid Court of Appeals cited Article 155 of Jordan's Personal Status Law as a basis for upholding the lower court's decision, noting a woman guardian was required to be "of age, mature, sane, and reliable." Although it was a mother's legal right to raise her children, the January 22 decision noted, Qandah had proved herself "unfit to be a custodian of her children" by "distancing them from Islamic rituals and doctrine."
Mother deemed "untrustworthy" by the civil court
"Her registering them in a Christian school and her insistence to teach them Christian education and accompanying them to church is contrary to what trustworthiness and reliability means," the court stated.
In the final judicial appeal heard February 28, the Court of Cassation in Amman rubberstamped the two previous rulings, ordering Qandah to surrender Rawan and Fadi to their Muslim guardian. After reviewing the entire case file last week, one Amman lawyer declared it had been "very badly mishandled" by the defense counsel, who simply repeated his original arguments in the subsequent appeal hearings.
"But the case is finished," he said. Despite some "gaps in the legal process" which could have been addressed earlier, he said, "No legal action is possible now."
When Qandah learned on March 6 that she had lost the final appeal, she tried to flee with her children the next day across the border to neighboring Syria, only to discover that the children's' names were blacklisted on immigration computers, forbidding them to leave the country.
In the weeks following, Qandah has appealed to Jordan's top judicial experts and religious leaders, both Muslim and Christian, seeking a solution to her dilemma. Her choices, she was told, were two: "Either become a Muslim yourself, or leave the country."
Fighting back weary tears, the 36-year-old mother told Compass she could no more deny her Christian faith than abandon her children. "Both are unthinkable," she said.
Source: Barbara G. Baker, Compass
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