...AT THE TIME of the prophet Muhammad, in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, temporary marriage was already common in Arabia, and many Islamic scholars believe he recommended it in circumstances such as pilgrimage, travel, and war. Most Shiites go a step further, maintaining that the practice is endorsed by the Koran. The second caliph, Umar, banned temporary marriage, but Shiites reject his authority because they believe he usurped Muhammad's rightful heir, his son-in-law Ali.

The Pahlavi shahs, who ruled Iran until 1979, sought to delegitimize temporary unions as backward, but after the revolution, the Islamic authorities moved to reclaim the tradition. In 1990, President Hashemi Rafsanjani offered a widely noted sermon on the practice, emphasizing that sexual relations aren't shameful. He encouraged young couples to contract marriages "for a month or two"—and to do it entirely on their own if they felt shy about going to a mullah to register the union.

Two decades later, Iran's Shiite clerics continue to endorse temporary marriage as a sexual escape valve. (Sunni variations on the theme are also on the rise throughout the Middle East.) In an interview at his home in Qom, the conservative ayatollah Sayyid Reza Borghei Mudaris offered a list of who might benefit from temporary marriage: a financially strapped widow; a young widow—"She answers her needs because if she doesn't, she will have psychological problems"; a man who cannot afford a permanent marriage; and a married man with domestic problems who needs "a kind of medicine." ...

Iranian feminists ardently oppose sigheh. In the summer of 2008, they were infuriated by President Ahmadinejad's attempts to push through a new "family protection" law that would have made it easier for men to contract temporary marriages. Many of those activists took to the streets after his contested reelection the following June. "One of the main attributes of marriage is publicity and the celebration of it," said Ziba Mir-Hosseini, a legal anthropologist who wrote a study of Islamic family law. "Women who enter this kind of marriage never talk about it. That's why I call it a socially defective marriage." While the ayatollahs see temporary marriage as good for both sexes, feminists point out its lopsided nature: It is largely the prerogative of wealthy married men, and the majority of women in sighehs are divorced, widowed, or poor. Only a man has the right to renew a sigheh when it expires—for another mehr—or to terminate it early. While women may have only one husband at a time, men may have four wives and are permitted unlimited temporary wives. Rezvan Moghadam, the director of a women's health nonprofit, put it bluntly: "Men do it for fun. Women do it for money; they don't enjoy it at all."

Yet women do derive some benefits from sigheh. Children born of sighehs are considered legitimate, and entitled to a share of their father's inheritance. In a permanent marriage, the family usually negotiates a dowry on the bride's behalf; a woman entering a temporary marriage sets her own terms. A temporary wife has no right to maintenance or inheritance, but she also has fewer obligations than her permanent counterpart—her duty to obey her husband encompasses only sex.

Labels: Iran, Islam, Marriage, religion, temporary marriage

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