"Pleasure Marriage"

[monk222]

♠
'We even talked about sex. The mutual friend who introduced us had told me that for six months Ali had been carrying on a semisecret affair with a widow. The Shia sanctioned a practice known as zawaj mutea, or pleasure marriage. It was based on a verse from the Qur'an and had all the trappings of a conventional Islamic marriage. There was a contract, payment up front, consent of both parties, approval of the woman's family, and clerical blessing (the woman couldn't be a prostitute). The difference was that zawaj mutea was temporary: It could last anywhere from one hour to twenty years, and it was indefinitely renewable. I had heard there were rooms in Kadhimiya rented out for just this purpose, and imams with albums full of pictures of good men and women for their flock to choose among.... [Of course, there were proscriptions preserving virginity] But if you clicked on www.sistani.org and looked up the grand ayatollah's teachings on the subjects of oral and anal sex, you realized that thousands of young Shia were well advanced in the arts of love before they ever married in the traditional manner. "We Shia don't want to have forbidden sex, so we have zawaj mutea. It's like having mercy, so that he or she wouldn't suffer inside, to make it easier for them." '

-- The Assassins' Gate by George Packer

One supposes that this is something nice and decent for 'the middle classes' while the lesser, hobbled souls are left with common, unblessed prostitution. Though, there is always the virtue of masturbation.

However, this pleasure marriage is apparently a sensitive point for the Shia, as suggested by Mr. Packer's Sunni bodyguard, Emad:

' "Ask a Shiite if you can have his sister for a month," he said. "He'll go crazy." It was better to be a bad Muslim and admit it than to pretend to be good. "All Iraqis are going to hell," Emad told me on our last day together. "I know I am. So why not sin?" '

xXx

Comments

[queensugar.livejournal.com]

Actually, I saw a documentary about drug-addicted hookers in Iran. Turns out quite a number of them entire into the temporary marriages, often with men who are quite a bit senior and not necessarily rich. The documentary profiled one man who is relatively poor (he sells birds on the street) who enters into temporary marriages as a way to help the women (he had to call one off when one of his hooker-marriages ended up stealing from him). It was all very interesting.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Drug-addicted hookers... why does that sound so sexxxy to me?

*just clowning*