DAR AL ISLAM: URFI & MUTAAH

Temporary Muslim marriages raise alarms
By Daniel Williams, Bloomberg News

Firaz, a 24-year-old Shiite Muslim, felt suspended between lust and too little money to afford matrimony.

Enter the "pleasure" marriage, a way-station in tough times on the path to the real thing.

"I had sexual desires and was looking for a girl," says Firaz, who consulted a religious scholar before making his first tryst. "Pleasure marriage is a way I could feel good about it."

This particular pleasure -- in Arabic, mutaah -- is a version of common-law matrimony, a practice that has become familiar in the Middle East.

Relatively high unemployment and low pay make it hard for many twentysomethings to finance the requirements of formal marriage -- opulent wedding, gifts of gold for the bride, furniture, an apartment -- so they're delaying official unions.

Benefits without costs

Mutaah, or temporary wedlock, provides the intimate benefits of marriage without the costs -- and, because it is religiously sanctioned in Shiite Islam, without guilt. Firaz says he has had several such affiliations, for as long as a month and as short as a week. He keeps his last name private to protect women he has been with.

...

Sunni Islam, the majority Arab sect, frowns upon the practice. Numerous religious scholars have forbidden it. Still, in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia -- all predominately Sunni -- as well as among Sunnis in Lebanon, a culture of common-law matrimony known legally as urfi has spread, according to press and government reports.

Urfi, like mutaah, is essentially a contract between a man and a woman who simply agree to be married. It is usually written and should be witnessed by a government functionary or Muslim cleric.

In March, Al-Azhar University, an Islamic institution that frequently advises Muslims on social conduct, created a panel to study ways to inhibit the spread of urfi marriages, which had "reached alarming proportions," the government-run newspaper Al-Ahram reported. The panel's first suggestion? Parents should help their children finance weddings.

The possibility that young people are using urfi, carried out in secret, as a cover for promiscuity has raised official and religious concerns.

Last July, Egypt's parliament began considering a bill to force urfi couples to register their marriage contracts with the government. Ibstam Habib, the measure's sponsor, estimates there are 700,000 urfi marriages registered in Egypt, mostly among college students.

"The husband usually keeps the document and may tear it up at the first sign of trouble," he says.

That trouble may be an unwanted pregnancy. Habib estimates Egyptian courts are considering 14,000 contested paternity cases.

One well-publicized scandal in 2004 involved an interior designer, Hind Al-Hinnawi, who claimed she had a child by actor Ahmed Al-Fishawi while under an urfi contract. She said he had a copy of the agreement. He denied it.

Child support ordered

A judge ordered a DNA test on the child and alleged father -- an unheard-of decision in Egypt. The child was declared his, and last year Al-Fishawi was ordered to support it.

The case was unusual because the woman spoke out. Finding a woman willing to discuss pleasure isn't easy.

"It's not that I'm ashamed," says a Beirut hotel receptionist who declines to give even her first name. "It's just that I don't want to put up with what other people say."

She says she had one mutaah relationship with a man she wanted eventually to wed. After two months, they decided they didn't get along. "It was better to find out then than to go through a divorce," she says.





Pertinent Links:

1) Temporary Muslim marriages raise alarms