I strongly believe there is something wrong with Saudi Arabian Islamic law. I just came across a very strange and disturbing annulment which shocks my common sense.

A Saudi marriage was forcibly annulled, in absentia, when a judge granted the annulment request from some of the wife's family because she married a man beneath her tribal status.

According to Saudi law, a woman must have permission of her family to marry. In 2003, Fatima received her father's consent to marry her husband, Masour, but her half-brother and other relatives persuaded the father to give them power of attorney to file for an annulment. Unknown to the couple, the case slowly proceeded through the courts and in February 2006, police served the divorce papers showing an annulment, granted nine months earlier.

Under Saudi law, the couple could no longer live together. Fatima went to her mother's home with her two children, aged two and four months. After three months, the couple took up residence in a distant city to live in anonymity. Police found and jailed the family. Fatima decided to stay in jail with her infant son and after nine months moved to an orphanage facility.

The husband's appeal to the court was denied in 2007 and now Fatima has appealed to King Abdullah asking for reversal of the court ruling. I am appalled that a marriage can be annulled for these reasons. It sounds to me that Saudi family law has run amuck. Breaking up a marriage is not compatible with the preservation of family life as advocated by Islamic tradition.

It's doubtful that authorities will intervene in what is considered a private family matter. If the King does not reverse this case, Fatima has threatened to take her own life. Womens' rights are trampled in Saudi Arabia. We in the west do not get it. What do you think?

Click here for more.