Islamic police in Nigeria play matchmaker to widows and divorcees

In the city of Kano, Nigeria, members of the Islamic sharia police have decided to take the love lives of their citizens into their own hands

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In the city of Kano, Nigeria, members of the Islamic sharia police force have decided to take the love lives of their citizens into their own hands. Officials have created a program in which they will match widows and divorcees to men that are available for marriage. The Digital Journal reports that the objective of this program is to curb the violence and much of the unrest in the Muslim community. The program is voluntary and Health NGOs offer free HIV screening to the spouse-seekers.

The Islamic sharia police, known as the Hisbah, in the predominantly Muslim northern Nigerian city of Kano is running a program to match widows and divorcees with available men.

According to AFP, the program is being run with the hope that it will help to curb violence and unrest in northern Nigeria by providing stable homes, social and financial security for women and children without husbands and fathers, respectively. The city of Kano has seen deadly violence in recent times orchestrated by the militant Islamic group Boko Haram.

AFP reports that Altine Abdullahi, head of Voice of Widows, Divorcees and Orphans of Nigeria (VOWAN) in Kano, said the divorce rate among Muslim men is unacceptably high. She said men who marry through the program will not be allowed to divorce their wives without permission from the Hisbah. She said: “People change wives the way they change their wardrobes and we feel the best way to stop this and give security to our members is arrange marriages through the Hisbah. She said the high rate of divorce “leaves (women) to fend for themselves and the children without any support from the fathers. The children end up as menaces to society, which is why most teenage criminals here are from broken homes.”

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