In a country where women are not allowed to drive, let alone vote, Saudi Arabia's top religious leader took one small step toward gender equality last week when he banned the practice of forcing women to marry against their will. Calling such coercion "un-Islamic" and "a major injustice," the kingdom's Grand Mufti, Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, proclaimed that fathers and male guardians who try to force their daughters into wedlock should be thrown in jail until the men change their minds. He made it clear that forced marriages originated as a pre-Islamic custom and are antithetical to Shari'a law, which stipulates...
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