Forbidden marriages in the Arab world

I thought I had seen everything in this life, but just when I was about to believe it, suddenly I saw another piece of news from Saudi Arabia, my new obsession.

Fooling around and trying to find some information about Muslim religion I found something that really makes me think that impossible things are still happening in this world, an unbelievable behavior. Saudi citizens are forbidden to marry foreigners.

As many people know the prime religion in Saudi is Islam. In fact the 100% of the Saudi citizens are Muslim and in Saudi every time a male wants to get married there´s a long way to run.

 

As far as I know, the process starts like this:

If the Saudi groom has already known the girl of his dreams, he and the family of the girl in question make some arrangements in order to set the different details of the wedding.  But the arrangements are not as the ones we are accustomed to. If you are interested in a girl you have to pass through a great deal of procedures so as to ensure that he´s the perfect candidate for the future bride. Some of these arrangements include medical examinations, to make sure both the groom and the bride are in perfect health condition to assure their children will be healthy as well as the marriage. Of course it also has hidden implications; They really want to know if both of them (specially for the groom) have any sexual transmission diseases.

If the bride or her parents are agree to accept the candidate as the future husband, they start setting the amount of money the groom must pay in order to marry the bride and here is when the problem begins.

The amount of money a male must pay to have marriage (mehr) is in my point of view enormous. It could vary from 500.000 Riyals (USD $134.000 approximately) until exorbitant quantities being huge sums of money the common trend since there´s absolute no limit for the amount the bride is to ask. This is without including the wedding expenses, which must be paid by the groom as well. This increasing tendency of making the mehr more and more unreachable is just the result of the economic bonanza Saudi Arabia has been experiencing since 1944 when the oil production in the kingdom rose.

However, there´re still young men who want to get married but without enough financial recourses to do it. In those cases, most of them must rely on their parents help or they must spend pretty long years saving money to reach their personal satisfaction which is the marriage.

All this explanation about the marriage customs is only to understand why the tendency of Saudis marrying foreign women is getting bigger and bigger.

It seems that the high values of money they have to pay are causing that men think twice and find other alternatives. A big number of young Saudis are going abroad so as to receive education in different levels (languages, masters, bachelor degrees and so on) making their view broaden, nevertheless, for the majority of them the marriage is still their main goal.  

In this abroad experiences some of them fall in love and finally they take the decision to marry a foreign woman (Muslim allowed to marry Christians and jewish), and some others get married temporarily with the only purpose to have sexual pleasure. Leaving their new families behind once their reach what they want.

وَلاَ تَنكِحُواْ الْمُشْرِكَاتِ حَتَّى يُؤْمِنَّ وَلأَمَةٌ مُّؤْمِنَةٌ خَيْرٌ مِّن مُّشْرِكَةٍ وَلَوْ أَعْجَبَتْكُمْ وَلاَ تُنكِحُواْ الْمُشِرِكِينَ حَتَّى يُؤْمِنُواْ وَلَعَبْدٌ مُّؤْمِنٌ خَيْرٌ مِّن مُّشْرِكٍ وَلَوْ أَعْجَبَكُمْ أُوْلَـئِكَ يَدْعُونَ إِلَى النَّارِ وَاللّهُ يَدْعُوَ إِلَى الْجَنَّةِ وَالْمَغْفِرَةِ بِإِذْنِهِ وَيُبَيِّنُ آيَاتِهِ لِلنَّاسِ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَتَذَكَّرُونَ {221 

“And do not marry the idolatresses until they believe, and certainly a believing maid is better than an idolatress woman, even though she should please you; and do not give (believing women) in marriage to idolaters until they believe, and certainly a believing servant is better than an idolater, even though he should please you; these invite to the fire, and Allah invites to the garden and to forgiveness by His will, and makes clear His communications to men, that they may be mindful”.

As a result of this frequent behavior, the government of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has established a law which doesn´t looked upon well among its citizens. They have decided to ban marriages abroad with foreign women. This with the façade of protecting their nationals from getting deadly diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis, they have also dared to declare that children of those marriages are affected by different illnesses like autism and paralysis.

They are also trying to advocate the family values as according to them the westerner woman are immoral, promiscuous and disrespectful.

It would appear that the main reason, the hidden reason of it, is that the age at marriage for both men and women is generally rising, and more Arab women are staying single longer or not marrying at all. That is to say, maybe there´s a single men shortage.
I think is a matter of concern that a nation is perceiving the rest of the world as a threat to their religious values and consequently, they are taking decisions such as the one I have just exposed. It appears that they have a really biased prespective about what the rest of the world could bring to their culture and that fear is been reflected on this senseless legislations stepping over their citizens rights.

This incredible regulation has its exceptions, to do so, a permit from the government is needed and the marriage must be approved, otherwise the husband is due to face an expensive punishment or his family can be condemned to life in the exile forever.

Certainly, the bad news has created a lot of controversy, because many Saudi men have found themselves in a very delicate situation not been able to marry whoever they want and waiting for an approval. It would seem that love has boundaries and  has become in something forbidden outside the Arab world.