era with her two children Wednesday, April 13, after an Amman court of Islamic law revoked the guardianship of her children’s Muslim uncle, following a long legal battle.
The Amman Al-Abdali Sharia Court also ordered uncle Abdullah al-Muhtadi to repay "misspent funds withdrawn from his minor niece and nephew’s orphan trust accounts," to the widow, Siham Qandah, Christian news agency Compass Direct reported.
Al-Muhtadi apparently proved unable to provide the court late Tuesday, April 12, with documented evidence of his claimed expenditure of 750 Jordanian dinars ($1,100) to buy the children a refrigerator. Accordingly, Judge Zghl removed him from his court-designated guardianship, and ordered him "to pay back this amount to his wards’ trust fund," Compass Direct said.
RIGHT TO APPEAL
The former guardian has the right to appeal the judgment within 30 days, but it seems unlikely he will be able to change the legal outcome of the case. “I still can’t believe it!” Qandah told Compass Direct. “I am so happy, I am just speechless. I can’t even describe my emotions.”
Now 16 and 15, Qandah’s daughter Rawan and son Fadi lost their father 11 years ago, when he died as a soldier in the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Serbian province of Kosovo. When their mother claimed their army orphan benefits, a local court produced an unsigned “conversion” certificate, saying her Christian husband had secretly converted to Islam three years before his death.
As the certificate could not be contested under Islamic law, Qandah was forced to find a Muslim to handle financial matters for the children. Despite their baptism as Christians, both were automatically declared Muslims under the dictums of Islamic law. Al-Muhtadi, the widow’s estranged brother who had converted to Islam as a teenager, agreed to serve as their legal Muslim guardian.
POCKETING MONEY
But over the next few years, he began pocketing some of the children’s monthly benefits, and later withdrew nearly half of their UN-allocated trust funds by obtaining signed approvals from highly placed Islamic court judges, Compass Direct reported.
In 1998, he filed suit to take custody of the children away from their Christian mother in order to raise them as Muslims. After a four-year court wrangle, Jordan’s Supreme Islamic Court ruled in his favor, ordering Qandah to give her children over to al-Muhtadi’s custody.
Over the past three years, Qandah has been forced into hiding several times to avoid possible arrest and separation from her children, who had been blacklisted from leaving Jordan during the custody wrangle, human rights workers said.
QANDAH’S DILEMMA
But after Qandah’s dilemma attracted international press coverage, King Abdullah II and other members of the Jordanian royal family began to monitor judicial handling of the case, pledging that the children would not be taken away from their mother.
Qandah and her children live in northern Jordan in the city of Husn, where they attend the Husn Baptist Church. Under Jordanian law, once the children turn 18, they are allowed to choose whether their official identity will be Muslim or Christian, Compass Direct said.
The case has been closely watched by the Christian community, amid concern about growing Muslim influence in the region. While Jordan king Abdullah II and the government say they encourage Christian tourism to biblical sites, Church leaders have told BosNewsLife they face an uphill battle to remain strong amid an increasing Muslim population in the kingdom of close to five million people.
Christians make up roughly 6 percent of Jordanians, according to Catholic estimates.
(With Compass Direct, Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife Research and reports from Jordan)
