The law of marriage and divorce in Muslim countries.

Marriage is one of the time-honoured customs of human society which appears to have developed out of primeval habits of human mating and assumed the shape of custom, regulated later on by law. The norms of this custom and the details of its institutional set-up have varied from one society to another, according to their level of civilization. Having passed through its multifarious phases of evolution, marriage has grown into a social institution whose significance has been acknowledged almost universally. Celibacy has been condemned in China and Japan, among the Semites and many other peoples