PAKISTAN MEDIA GRIPPED BY MAN MARRYING TWICE IN ONE DAY: BBC

reports; Poly in the Media suggests a possible slippage between polygamy and polyamory:

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.

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Labels: Islam, Pakistan, polyamory, polygamy

posted by Eve at 6:59 PM VOTE

Hijras Officially Recognized in Pakistan; And a Thought About India's "E" Gender Designation: SepiaMutiny

blogs:

Amidst all the high-level news about terrorism, the internal war in Swat Valley, and various military/foreign-policy questions, other topics in the news sometimes get overlooked.

To wit, Basim Usmani has an informative column up at Comment is Free on a recent ruling by Pakistan’s recently re-constituted Supreme Court, regarding Hijras:

Pakistan’s supreme court recently ruled that all hijras, the Urdu catch-all term for its transvestite, transgender and eunuch community, will be registered by the government as part of a survey that aims to integrate them further into society. The ruling followed a petition by Islamic jurist Dr Mohammad Aslam Khaki, who said the purpose was to “save them from a life of shame”.Khaki’s petition was prompted by a police raid on a hijra colony in Taxila, an ancient city filled with some of the oldest Buddhist ruins in Pakistan. Two of the three judges on the bench that ruled in favour if the hijra petition, chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry, were under house arrest for
the better part of the past three years. This, coupled with the clobbering the police gave the lawyers during their demonstrations against the suspension of the judiciary in 2007, makes it easy to regard the hijra ruling as being directed against the police. (link)

...It’s intriguing to me that until just a couple of weeks ago, homosexuality was a crime under Section 377 in India; meanwhile transgendered individuals had, for at least a short while before that old law was overturned, a level of official recognition that few other countries could match. The disparity is of course understandable — Hijras are an endemic part of South Asian culture, while the concept of homosexuality is only recently gaining visibility. Still: does anyone know whether transgender or intergender individuals in any western countries have the equivalent of an “E” (or better, “T”) designation?

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Labels: culture, hijra, homosexuality, India, Pakistan, transgender issues

posted by Imapp Staff at 5:18 PM VOTE