As the 2012 presidential election grows closer, voter demographics will grab ever more airtime. In a finely balanced electorate, switching parties is less common, making internal growth of party bases more important. Getting the vote out is one aspect of this; population change another. ...

All of which explains why pundits' interest in demography has been steadily rising. Ruy Teixeira, for instance, claims that the growth of the college-educated, secular and Hispanic proportion of the population will soon provide the Democrats with an inbuilt electoral majority. Chris Bowers of the Nation styles this the “End of Bubba Dominance.” On the other side of the ledger, American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks highlights the role of fertility: “Liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result.” “In Seattle,” adds Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation, “there are nearly 45 percent more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City, there are nearly 19 percent more kids than dogs.”

In order to adjudicate between these competing predictions, I teamed up with Vegard Skirbekk and Anne Goujon, two leading Austrian-based experts in the art of projecting the size of subgroups in populations. The results, published in the journal Population Studies, show that Democrats are only marginally younger than Republicans and Republican women bear the same number of children as their Democratic sisters. Immigration, however, is an important factor. If ethnic party identification remains as it is, Latino population growth will benefit the Democrats, shifting the balance between the two parties by two and a half points in the Democrats’ favor over the next 30 years. ...

Those who doubt whether demography can shape politics should consider world Jewry. The combination of religious polarization and demographic upheaval is especially stark among Jews. They began to secularize in large numbers in the 19th century, and Orthodoxy emerged to combat this trend. The temperature of Jewish fundamentalism increased sharply after the horrors of World War II, and an ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community emerged, segregating itself from other Jews. Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, and the largely secular Zionist leadership assumed that the black-hatted, sidelocked Haredim were a relic of history. They gave the ultra-Orthodox an exemption from the draft, subsidies to study at yeshiva, and other religious privileges to make sure their anti-Zionism didn't dissuade the Great Powers from establishing a home for the Jews in Palestine. In 1948, there were only 400 Israeli Jews with military exemptions, many of which were not used. By 2007, that number had soared to 55,000. Meanwhile, the fringe of ultra-Orthodox pupils in Israel's Jewish primary schools in 1960 has ballooned: they now comprise a third of the Jewish first grade class. They are gaining power: in Jerusalem, Haredim rioted in late December, demanding the right to segregate women on buses, and have already elected the city's first Haredi mayor. Outside Israel, work by Joshua Comenetz and Yaakov Wise reveals that the ultra-Orthodox may form a majority of observant American and British Jews by 2050.

The Jewish example shows that population change can reverse secularism and shift the center of gravity of an entire society in a conservative religious direction. Notice that change has come about because values have polarized people and increasingly determine family size.

In a more modest way, the same is true elsewhere.

Labels: Christianity, culture, demographics, Europe, immigration, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, religion

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Throughout the Middle East, Africa and parts of South Asia, marriage between family members has been widely practised for thousands of years, largely as a means of securing relationships between tribes and preserving family wealth, but also as a practical necessity given that genders are often kept separate.

“I wouldn’t say that my parents pressured me, but I felt that society expected it,” said Noor, who married her first cousin when she was 19. They had a son together but the marriage ended after a year and a half.

“We broke up because of the family dynamics, all the interference. It’s not just the couple that’s involved, it’s the whole family,” she said, declining to give her family name.

“This society has invisible constraints. They’re never mentioned, but you have to follow them.”

At least half of all Gulf Arab marriages are between cousins, with at least 35 per cent of Qatari marriages between first cousins, according to current research by the Centre for Arab Genomic Studies based in Dubai. In Saudi Arabia, the number ranges from 25 to 42 per cent while in the United Arab Emirates, it is between 21 and 28 per cent.

Science versus culture

At a recent public debate on intermarriage in Doha, much of the discussion focused on the tensions between cultural practices and the science cautioning against consanguineous marriage – defined as marriage between second cousins or closer. ...

Though not prohibited by Islam, Christianity or Judaism, some cite the hadith, or saying of the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), as an injunction against the practice: “Marry those who are unrelated to you, so your children do not become weak.”

Others in support of it point out that the Prophet (pbuh) married his own daughter to a first cousin. ...

“For Gulf Arab nationals, if you don’t marry your first cousin, you still are highly likely marry within your clan or tribe. And if you’re marrying within your clan or tribe, it’s almost certain that you’re marrying a relative, which also carries a certain degree of risk,” said Alan Bittles, a geneticist at the Centre for Comparative Genomics at Australia’s Murdoch University.

“People rely on the family, the clan, for their well-being. (Gulf Arab societies) are tribal societies, and it becomes very political. Particularly if there is a weak central government, clan and tribal affiliations become much more important,” Bittles said.

Labels: Africa, cousin marriage, Islam, Marriage, Middle East, Qatar, religion, Saudi Arabia, South Asia, United Arab Emirates

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A 19-year-old Pakistani woman has appealed to the country’s Supreme Court for help, saying that she has been kidnapped, pressured into marriage, and is being forced to convert to Islam.

Rinkel Kumari, who is a Hindu, begged the court not to return her to an Islamic school where she has been detained.

Labels: forced marriage, Hinduism, Islam, Pakistan, religion

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People need to take greater care in getting divorced in North Carolina than they do to get married, according to the state Court of Appeals.

In a 2-1 ruling issued Tuesday, the court ruled that a marriage can be considered valid in the state even if the couple doesn't have a license and the ceremony is handled by someone other than a minister or justice of the peace. ...

The case arose from the end of Juma Mussa's 12-year marriage to Nikki Palmer-Mussa. He wanted their marriage annulled, ending his alimony payments, on the grounds of bigamy.

Before marrying Mussa in 1997, Nikki Palmer had married Khalil Braswell in Maryland under Islamic law. They had no license and were married by a construction worker who was Braswell's friend.

She said the marriage was never consummated, and she soon ended it under Islamic law by returning the dowry and declaring herself divorced.

The appeals court ruled that, even though her ceremony to Braswell "failed to meet statutory requirements," Palmer-Mussa still needed to get a judge to grant her a divorce or annul the marriage.

Because she was already married, the court voided her marriage to Mussa, which has produced three children.

Labels: common-law, divorce, Islam, Marriage, North Carolina

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A leading international rights group on Thursday urged authorities in Yemen to set 18 as the minimum age for marriage to improve girls' opportunities for education and protect their human rights.

Human Rights Watch said widespread child marriage in the Arab world's poorest country jeopardizes Yemeni girls' health and keeps them second-class citizens.

A report by the New York-based group said Yemeni government and U.N. data showed that in some rural areas of Yemen, girls as young as eight were married off. Some have told HRW they were subjected to marital rape and domestic abuse.

HRW researcher Nadya Khalife said a ban on child marriage should be a priority for reform despite Yemen's ongoing turmoil that has relegated such issues to "the bottom of the political priority list."

The 54-page report was based on field research conducted in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, between August and September 2010, and interviews with more than 30 girls and women who were married off as children, as well as on interviews with members of non-governmental organizations and officials at the ministries of health and education.

According to the report, approximately 14 percent of girls in Yemen are married before the age 15, and 52 percent are married before they are 18 years old.

Labels: child marriage, children, girls, Islam, Yemen

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Molly Blooms, a Victorian-accented Irish bar in Sunnyside, Queens, recently raffled off a free same-sex wedding reception, with a three-hour open bar, a D.J., a photographer and a horse-drawn gilded carriage to deliver the winning couple to the festivities. The bar’s owner thought the idea would be good for business and for the largely working-class and immigrant neighborhood.

But some in the community disagreed.

Neighbors said they would boycott the bar. Bloggers posted reports of past health violations there. Larry Yang, the Korean-American owner of a hardware store next door, said he resented such a public promotion of same-sex marriage. He said many among the large number of Korean-American Christians in Queens felt similarly but feared that if they spoke out they would be demonized by a liberal majority.

“If that horse-drawn carriage rides by my store, I will make sure my kids do not see it,” Mr. Yang, 45, said. “I am worried about what kind of message gay marriage is sending.” ...

The owner of Molly Blooms, Ciaran Staunton — a heterosexual married father of two and a Roman Catholic — said he was determined to be part of what he called “the last great civil rights battle.”

He said most in the neighborhood had welcomed the idea of a free same-sex wedding reception.

“There are always going to be some naysayers who don’t like it,” said Mr. Staunton, 48, who came to New York from County Mayo, Ireland, nearly 20 years ago.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, Islam, New York, Orthodox Christianity, race, religion

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SAGONJEVO, Serbia (AP) — Not in her wildest dreams did Edmonda ever imagine she'd marry a guy like Zoran, have his baby and live in his country.

She's an Albanian Muslim, he's an Orthodox Christian Serb — and their people have been mired in a web of ethnic and religious hatred over Kosovo's bloody war for independence.

But Edmonda Kardaku did wed Zoran Tomic, joining hundreds of compatriots, mostly Muslims or Roman Catholics, who have broken deep taboos by marrying men from rural Serbia, where women have been fleeing to the cities or abroad and causing an alarming population decline. ...

Their love story stands in contrast to another couple in the same village, where the Serb is much older than his Albanian wife.

Zoran said the man does not allow the woman to communicate with the rest of the villagers, not even with Edmonda.

"He's old, so probably he fears he's going to lose her," Tomic said.

The flurry of Serbian-Albanian marriages started in 2008 when a group of elderly men from southern Serbia formed a group called "the Old Raska bachelors," after their region which includes the village of Sagonjevo.

Both Serbia and Albania — like most of the Balkan nations — are faced with a massive exodus of young people from rural areas in search of a better life, turning many small settlements into ghost villages. The ethnic wars in the Balkans in the 1990s accelerated the problem.

In Serbia, it's mostly women who are fleeing poverty and stagnation. But in Albania, it's the men who are relocating, says Momir Kovacevic, an Old Raska activist, explaining why this interethnic marriage arrangement works. ...

The average age in Serbia is 41 years and about 20 percent of people in this country of 7 million are over 65. In 370 villages not a single child was born in the past decade. With one of Europe's lowest birthrates, the population has been declining by an average of 55,000 people a year.

Labels: Catholic Church, demographics, Eastern Europe, Islam, Marriage, Orthodox Christianity, religion

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I was 11 years old when I figured out why grandfather had two bedrooms. He alternated, sleeping one night with my grandmother and the other night with his second wife. ...

Even if Ouma had wanted to do something about her situation she was not seen as my grandfather's wife in any way that mattered -- their marriage was not recognised by South African law.

That was a long time ago. This year the Muslim Marriages Bill will be put before Parliament. If it is passed, men will need to seek court approval before being allowed to take subsequent wives and these marriages will be legal not only according to sharia law, but also in South African law.

Not all women who share their husband have had the difficult experience my grandmother had. ...

According to Shaikh, the Qur'an, in Surah 4 Verse 3 reads that a man may marry up to four wives if he can "deal justly" with them. But later, in Surah 4 Verse 129, the writings admit that while a man may desire to be fair and just between women, in practice it's not so easy.

This is where the Bill will assist women. "The Bill says yes, a man can take up to four wives, but it sets out a procedure," says Osman.

"The husband must make an application to court and must show that he has the resources to maintain another family in terms of time and money. The existing wives can also put information before the court."

The Bill will also allow second wives, if their marriages are approved, to have access to maintenance or inheritance, something that would have helped 52-year-old Amina*. "I was married to my husband for two years when he started speaking another woman's name in his sleep. He was having an affair with her and eventually he married her and I found out by word of mouth."

Labels: Islam, polygamy, religion, South Africa

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A revolution is sweeping North Africa and the Middle East. No, not the one you've been hearing about in the media -- all the protests against dictatorship and oppression, in Egypt and Tunisia, and most violently, in Libya. The revolution I'm referring to certainly affects all those countries, profoundly, but its effects promise to outlast any change of regime, or even any new constitutions. Barely noticed by the West, many Muslim societies are experiencing a demographic transformation that is going to make them look far more European: more stable, more open to women's rights and above all, more secular. That change underlies all the current political upsurges. ...

But here's the problem. In just the last thirty years or so, those very Middle Eastern countries that used to teem with children and adolescents have gone through a startling demographic transformation. Since the mid-1970s, Algeria's fertility rate has collapsed from over 7 to 1.75, Tunisia's from 6 to 2.03, Morocco's from 6.5 to 2.21, Libya's from 7.5 to 2.96. Today, Algeria's rate is roughly equivalent to that of Denmark or Norway; Tunisia's is comparable to France. Counter-intuitively, that remark about "the closer to Rome" also holds good on the southern, Muslim, side of the Mediterranean. ...

Such a wrenching change cannot fail to have political implications. In a country with a Third World fertility rate, it is very unlikely that women will seek or be granted education: their designated career path as mothers is starkly clear. Meanwhile, adolescents and young men proliferate, and provide ample cannon fodder for armies or militias, to whom life is cheap. (Yemen's fertility rate is still over 5.0, Somalia's is 6.4). But then imagine a newer, more European society, in which men and women are intensely concerned about their nuclear families, and have invested their love and attention into just one or two offspring. As citizens become more educated, they are not prepared to accept the demagoguery and systematic corruption that has long passed for government in those regions. They see themselves as responsible members of a civil society, with aspirations that demand to be met: they feel they deserve full democratic participation. Of course the recent turmoil began in Tunisia, with its very low fertility rate and its intimate ties to France.

Sudden demographic change also seems to be closely linked to secularization, a point of potentially great significance in the Middle East. Smaller family sizes can result from a decline in religious ideologies, but falling fertility can itself drive such a decline, as has happened in modern Christian Europe.

Labels: demographics, Europe, Islam, Middle East, religion, Tunisia, women

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Helene Lauffer knew Muslim children - orphaned, displaced, neglected - needed homes in the United States. She knew American Muslim families wanted to take them in.

But Lauffer, associate executive director of Spence-Chapin, one of the oldest adoption agencies in the country, couldn't bring them together.

The problem was a gap between Western and Islamic law. Traditional, closed adoption violates Islamic jurisprudence, which stresses the importance of lineage. Instead, Islam has a guardianship system called kafalah that resembles foster care, yet has no exact counterpart in Western law.

The differences have left young Muslims with little chance of finding a permanent Muslim home in America. So Lauffer sought out a group of Muslim women scholars and activists, hoping they could at least start a discussion among U.S. Muslims about how adoption and Islamic law could become compatible. ...

The prohibition against adoption would appear contrary to the Quran's heavy emphasis on helping orphans. The Prophet Muhammad's father died before his son was born, so the boy's grandfather and uncle served as his guardians, setting an example for all Muslims to follow.

However, Islamic scholars say the restrictions were actually meant to protect children, by ending abuses in pre-Islamic Arabic tribal society. ...

Open adoption, which keeps contact between the adoptee and his biological family, is seen as one potential answer. In New South Wales, Australia, child welfare officials created an outreach program to Muslims emphasizing that Australian adoptions are open and adopted children can retain their birth names. The New South Wales program is the only well-known adoption campaign targeting a Muslim minority population in a Western country.

Labels: adoption, Islam, religion, siblings

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Television channels have provided live coverage of Azhar Haidri's decision to marry both women over a 24-hour period.

At first he refused to marry the woman selected by his family since childhood because he loved someone else.

Pakistani law allows polygamy because it interprets Islam to allow a man to have up to four wives.

Islam is the main religion in the country.

Men who take multiple wives usually do so after a period of several years - and must get approval from their first wife prior to a second marriage.

Correspondents say that while it is not unusual for men in Pakistan to have several wives, it is rare for two weddings to take place almost simultaneously under the full glare of the media. ...

Both women appear to have given their consent to the compromise and say they plan to live as sisters and friends.

"I am happy that we both love the same man," Ms Aslam told AP.

Labels: Islam, Pakistan, polyamory, polygamy

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WHEN police stopped a woman driving with a full face-covering Islamic veil, little did they know what they would uncover. It turned out that her husband, a halal butcher, practised polygamy, which is illegal in France—or, rather, he was living with four women, one of whom he was married to. Brice Hortefeux, the interior minister, wildly overreacted, demanding that he be stripped of his French nationality. The affair has exposed both the reality of polygamy and the difficulty of doing anything about it.

France considers polygamy “a grave infringement of the principle of equality between men and women”. The practice was forbidden in 1993, when immigration laws were tightened to stop husbands bringing extra wives into the country. Yet there are an estimated 200,000 people, including children, living in 16,000-20,000 polygamous families in France. Most are of African origin, particularly from Muslim parts of the Maghreb and Sahel, where polygamy is accepted.

Over the years, notes Sonia Imloul in a study for the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank, the authorities have turned a blind eye to what she calls life “like a prison for the wives”, many of them forced into marriage. Polygamy is widely blamed for social ills ranging from school absenteeism to street violence. Politicians say it is exploited to maximise welfare and housing benefits. Such fraud is hard to detect, since polygamists “marry” various wives under Islam, all of them claiming single-parent payments, while officially being married to just one.

Labels: France, Islam, polygamy, religion

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Almost two decades ago, Tashima Crudup left her grandmother's home and entered the city's foster care system, where she learned firsthand what makes a good mother. ...

In July, Crudup — a practicing Muslim — contacted Contemporary Family Services, a private company authorized by the state to place foster children with families. She cleared an initial screening process and completed 50 hours of training classes for prospective parents. But after a home visit, her application was denied.

The main reason: She doesn't allow pork in her house.

Shocked, Crudup contacted the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which filed a complaint Wednesday with the Baltimore City Community Relations Commission, claiming religious discrimination.

"I have a hard time believing [the company] denies every vegetarian or Orthodox Jewish person a foster care license," said Ajmel Quereshi, an attorney with the ACLU. "But I do believe Mrs. Crudup was picked out here … and it has led us to believe an anti-Muslim bias is playing a role in the decision."

Labels: foster parenting, Islam, Maryland, parenting, religion, religious liberty

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...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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Many people say the institution of marriage has taken a back seat to a lifestyle of "anything goes."

Some Dallas community leaders and faith-based groups have joined a national campaign to combat that trend in black families and communities through the eighth annual Black Marriage Day celebrations March 26-28.

Most Dallas-area activities are free and open to people who are married, courting or engaged. The events aim to promote and strengthen marriage by touting its benefits in seminars, film festivals, vow renewals and celebrations.

Sponsors include Anthem Strong Families, Muhammad Mosque No. 48, some churches and the Wedded Bliss Foundation of Washington, D.C.

During a ceremony from 5:30 to 7 p.m. March 26 in Dallas City Hall's Flag Room, both a newlywed and a longer-married couple will be announced and inducted into a Marriage Hall of Fame. Past inductees will be featured in an exhibition that will tour around Dallas. A documentary film also will be shown. ...

Wedded Bliss Foundation founder Nisa Muhammad agreed, saying in promotional materials that "much of what we hear about marriage in the black community is a blues song. ... We want to replace that blues song with a love song of joy."

Labels: Christianity, culture, divorce, Islam, Marriage, race, religion, Texas

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Saudi Arabia has a serious child-marriage problem.

It's emblematic of the nation's struggle between modernity and traditional Islam. But the lives of thousands of little girls are being destroyed as the Saudi government ponderously debates a solution.

Child marriage has been acceptable, even encouraged, in many Islamic states since the religion was born. After all, among the Prophet Muhammad's dozen wives was Aisha, who is believed to have been 6 or 7 years old when the two were married. But in Saudi Arabia, at least, the practice slammed headlong into modern values last spring, when a Saudi court refused to nullify the marriage of an 8-year-old girl from Unaiza to a man in his late 50s. ...

Saudi Arabia is hardly the only state facing this problem. Last year, Turkey made it legal for 12-year-olds to marry, if their parents agree. The Turkish Statistical Institute estimates that one-third of the state's brides are under 18. In Yemen and Bangladesh, even among some sects in Burma, child marriage is commonplace. The victims, in those places and elsewhere: Little girls who are forced into wasted, often miserable, lives.

Labels: child marriage, children, Islam, religion, Saudi Arabia, Turkey

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More than 1,000 followers of a multi-religious sect in northern India have pledged to marry female sex workers who want to escape exploitation.

Young Hindu, Muslim and Sikh men have been queuing up at the Dera Sacha Sauda (Abode of the Real Deal) in the town of Sirsa as "wedding volunteers".

They say they are doing so to stop the women from being exploited in brothels.

They also claim that their move is part of a campaign to stop the spread of the HIV/Aids virus.

The Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS) is one of many religious sects operating in northern India.

Most take root by offering community services, social welfare and spiritual leadership but over time, as their followings grow, they often seek political influence.

Correspondents say that in religious terms, the DSS is hard to classify. Many experts argue that it is not, as some have said, an offshoot of Sikhism.

More than 1,200 DSS members have signed pledges to marry the sex workers following a call from DSS chief Ram Rahim Singh a little over a month ago.

Mr Singh commands a huge following of predominantly lower caste Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs across the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Labels: Hinduism, India, Islam, Marriage, poverty, prostitution, religion, Sikhism

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GROZNY, Russia (Reuters) - Adam, 52, keeps his three wives in different towns to stop them squabbling, but the white-bearded Chechen adds he might soon take a fourth.

"Chechnya is Muslim, so this is our right as men. They (the wives) spend time together, but do not always see eye to eye," said the soft-spoken pensioner, who only gave his first name.

Hardline Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov is vying with insurgents for authority in a land ravaged by two secessionist wars with Moscow. Each side is claiming Islam as its flag of legitimacy, each reviles the other as criminal and blasphemous.

Wary of the dangers of separatism in a vast country, Moscow watches uneasily as central power yields to Islamic tenets. It must chose what it might see as the lesser of two evils.

Though polygamy is illegal in Russia, the southern Muslim region of Chechnya encourages the practice, arguing it is allowed by sharia law and the Koran, Islam's holiest book.

By Russian law, Adam is only married to his first wife of 28 years, Zoya, the plump, blue-eyed mother of his three children, with whom he shares a home on the outskirts of the regional capital Grozny.

His "marriages" to the other two -- squirreled away in villages nearby -- were carried out in elaborate celebrations and are recognized by Chechen authorities.

Labels: Islam, polygamy, religion, Russia, Sufism

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Mohammad, a 40-year old Lebanese Shiite who lives in Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs, was holding forth on the virtues of resistance, loyalty, and sex. "You could create the most loyal army by providing political power, social services and fulfilling the desires of your men -- namely, sexual ones," he declared.

"And Hezbollah has been very successful in this regard," Mohammad continued. It is hard to disagree. Hezbollah liberated South Lebanon from Israeli occupation, expanded the Shiite community's political power within the country, and has provided social services, such as health care and education, to its constituency since the 1980s. Today, it is also working to fulfill the sexual needs of its supporters, though a practice known as mutaa marriage.

Mutaa is a form of "temporary marriage" only acceptable within Shiite communities, one that allows couples to have religiously sanctioned sex for a limited period of time, without any commitments, and without the obligatory involvement of religious figures. In conservative Muslim societies known for their strict sense of propriety, mutaa offers an escape clause. The contract is very simple. The woman says: "I marry myself to you for [a specific period of time] and for [a specified dowry]" and the man says: "I accept." The period can range between one hour and a year, and is subject to renewal. A Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man, but a Muslim man can temporarily marry a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish woman, as long as she is a divorcée or a widow. However, those interviewed for this article confirmed that Hezbollah-the "Party of God"-has allowed the practice to spread to virgins or girls who have never married before, as long as the permission of her guardian (father or paternal grandfather) is obtained.

Temporary marriage has long been practiced by Shiites around the world. However, it has recently become more commonplace in Lebanon, notably within Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut's southern suburbs and in southern Lebanon after the 2006 war with Israel[.]

Labels: culture, Islam, Lebanon, Marriage, sex, temporary marriage

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