The most common use of marriage contracts is to determine the amount of Moakhar Al-Saddaq , the sum of money to which a wife is entitled in case of a divorce. Some women also stipulate in their contracts whether or not they wish to retain or waive the right to divorce. Thus, making Muslim marriage contracts unenforceable egregiously disadvantages women who may lose financial guarantees documented within the contracts. Moreover, trained in teh separation of church and state, U.S. judges have serious constitutional restrictions that prevent them from delving into matters of religion. This is further exacerbated by the the utter lack of knowledge of Islam that characterizes the American judicial system.
Many judges simply have no idea what Muslim marriage contracts entail.
They are not familiar with terms indeispensible to understanding the nature of Muslim mariiage contracts. There have been instances when U.S. judges have, for example, confused Mahr ,a sum of money or gold presented to the bride as a gift at the time of marriage, for a bridal price. Such a notion of bridal price, Dr. Al-Hibri argued, is in total contradiction to the very spirit of of Islam and can adversely affect the outcome of masny cases. Even worse, this ignorance of Islam makews judges vulberable to some highly questionable sources of knowledge.