As if one kind of marriage is not enough, each year people come up with new names for temporary marriages and they give them names like “mesiar” and “mesfar”. “Mesiar” is a marriage with no responsibilities, where the husband visits his wife at her family’s house and does not bear any responsibilities toward her.
“Mesfar” marriage is used by women mostly to be able to travel abroad with a “mahram,” as they are required to have the approval of a legal guardian for traveling. Then someone devised a new kind of marriage to make life easier for female students who have to study abroad.
Now the latest entry is called “wanasa” marriage, and it is devised for men, mostly old men who need company. The scholar who introduced the concept of “wanasa” marriage is a teacher of Islamic Studies at Imam Muhammad Bin Saudi University.
So here we go, our men and women have all the choice in the world. They can pick and choose which kind of partner they want as if in a supermarket. There is a choice for all occasions. How flexible we have become!
But on a more serious note, it seems that we are ignoring our problems and instead of finding solutions for them we are beating around the bush, as the saying goes. So instead of finding a solution to the eternal problem of legal guardian and the traveling permission, we devise a traveling companion, and instead of working out a solution for female students’ requirements, we ask them to lie, and marry just for the sake of pursuing their studies.
But the “wanasa” marriage is something else, apart from the humorous aspect of its name, which means “fun company.” No wonder readers of the news item online made jokes about their miserable marriages. Quite simply the idea behind such marriage is: Old people who live alone need company. In some cases, old men go for the option of the traditional marriage, which is fair if they choose wives of a certain age, but then we hear about cases where a 70-year-old is proposing to marry a 12-year-old. This is still happening in our society. The latest news is about a man in Hail who is over 60 and is finalizing the formalities to marry a 10-year-old girl. Alarabiya website, which carried the news item, mentioned that a lot of people have raised objections to the marriage, though it has the approval of the girl’s father.
Obviously, the town’s people have complained to authorities and asked them to intervene to stop this crime, citing an example when the authorities stopped a similar marriage in which the bride and the groom were underage, being 12 years old.
Last month a Saudi marriage official who appeared in LBC channel, said that girls can be married off by their fathers even when they are toddlers, but the consummation of marriage has to wait until she becomes 9 years old. Naturally the comment drew a huge amount of criticism, and rightly so. But the negative effect of what the official said won’t go that easily; it simply says that there are some people who think this way, they consider a daughter a property that can be given as a gift whenever her father wishes. In the official’s case, some religious scholars have also denounced those comments, saying that the courts should stop processing such contracts, making sure that there is no huge disparities between the ages of a man and his bride. A member of Islamic Jurisdiction Society said that he also stressed that fathers have to ask the girl if she approves of the marriage, saying it is essential for the legality of the contract. We hope that such scholars will be given more access to the public. They should be the ones giving lectures and talks about Islamic views and issues. We understand that some parts of our society is steeped in tribal laws that refuse to be changed but enlightened scholars should visit those areas and address those problems. We just hope to hear less of those semi-scholars who like to shock the public, or those who are busy devising new ways to enable men to exercise their infinite power over their women relatives.
