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But often they do not want to wait for years to be with the person they love. To solve this conundrum, many young people enter into Urfi marriages, a kind of non-official marriage that allows people to have intimate relations without going through the ordeal of a real wedding.
These kinds of marriages have grown increasingly popular, becoming a concern for those who feel they erode cultural values and the significance of true marriages. It appears that Urfi marriage has is growing throughout the country. Because the conservative Yemeni society forbids sex before marriage, hundreds of people consider Urfi marriage a way around that barrier. Urfi marriages have no official contract and are often kept secret. Although a document is signed in front of witnesses, the marriage can be broken when the man divorces the woman. Women do not have the same option.
In an Urfi marriage, which must take place in front of a Muslim cleric, couples repeat the words, “We got married,” and pledge commitment before Allah. Usually a paper, stating that the two are married, is written and two witnesses sign it. Dr. Mohammed Naif, a sociologists and educator, believes that the reasons for the spread of Urfi marriage among the youth of today are poverty and the high prices that parents ask for marriages.
Young people also turn to Urfi marriage as an easy way to get married without the approval of parents, or even their knowledge. Because Yemen is a Muslim society, people do not want to turn to adultery, said Naif, so they consider Urfi marriage as a preferable alternative to adultery. “The young people find it difficult to get married today, and do not want to break religious teachings, so they choose to get married Urfi style, for it is safer than having adultery. For reasons like this, Islam urges parents to make marriages cheaper in price, in order for phenomenons like this not to occur,” said Naif.
The Urfi marriage can be particularly problematic for the wife. If the husband leaves her without granting her a divorce, she has no legal right to seek a divorce. If the wife remarries, she can be accused of polyandry, which is punishable to death in Islam. She could therefore be forced to remain single for the rest of her life, unless she is granted a divorce by her Urfi husband.
Bara’a Ali al-Salmi, a 15-year-old high school student at Shuhada Sabeen high school in Sana’a, one of the biggest governmental schools in the capital, said that she knows of more than 12 Urfi marriage cases, and friends personally tell her that they have indulged in such marriages. She mentions that on one occasion, a sixth grader was caught indulging in unethical actions with another male student. In her defense, she told the principal that she was married in the Urfi custom.
School officials immediately called her parents, who came to school and could not believe what their eyes were seeing and their ears hearing. “The boys trick the girls into these relationships, and because the women are not clever enough to understand the reality of what is happening, they agree on this kind of marriage. Upon falling in the trap on Urfi marriage, they find out the disastrous problem they got themselves into, but by then it is already too late,” said al-Salmi.
The school refused to comment when asked about the marriages that occur in the school. According to religious leader Sheikh Mohammed Ismael Amrani, Urfi marriage is completely unlawful. To support his contention, he says that the Prophet Mohammed said that women should not engage in a marriage without the knowledge of her Wali (guardians). Amrani mentioned this because most Urfi marriages that happen in Yemen are done without the direct knowledge of the parents.
The women who enter into such partnerships consider themselves to be their own guardian, which is unlawful, according to Sheikh Amrani. “If everyone had the right to marry whomsoever she wanted, without the knowledge of the guardian, then this could lead to a greater crisis that will destroy the religious traditions of the Yemeni people. Thereafter, Islam will not have an affect on their lives or customs,” said Amrani.
“Urfi is spreading in public schools and in universities, and people who follow this trend use the fatwa of other Muslim scholars who went wrong and do not have concrete proof to prove what they claim and preach.” Regionally, Urfi marriages are even more popular in other Arab countries than they are in Yemen.
Since Urfi marriages are undocumented, no official statistics are available in Yemen or elsewhere, yet many social commentators believe that the number of such marriages has increased significantly in Egypt over the past ten years, and that many of them do not comply with Islamic doctrine, resulting in thousands of legal disputes over paternity and divorce, according to Egypt’s al-Ahram weekly. But in 1998, according to one estimate, there were nearly 10,000 cases of con-tested paternity in Egyptian courts due to Urfi marriages.
It is also not uncommon for men who enter into Urfi marriages to later deny these marriages, leaving their wives in legal limbo and socially stigmatized. Under the new personal status law passed in Egypt on January 29, 2000, however, divorces from Urfi marriages are now recognized. While the new Egyptian law recognizes the woman’s right to seek divorce from an Urfi marriage, the law denies her alimony and child support.
According to Madiha al-Safty, Professor of Sociology at the American University in Cairo, the Urfi marriage has always existed, but for different reasons. “In the past, it was common among the widows of soldiers who had huge pensions and they did not want to lose it by officially re-marrying. Now, however, it is mostly among university students and young couples who cannot afford the high cost of marriage.”
Copyright 2002 - 2006 Yemen Observer
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