Extravagant weddings with music and dance were banned by Afghanistan’s Taliban as un-Islamic and now the government plans to again rein in lavish marriage celebrations, but this time to stop grooms from going broke.
Since US-backed Afghan forces ousted the strict Islamist Taliban in 2001, Afghans have revived the tradition of holding big weddings, costing thousands of dollars, in a country where the average annual income is less than US$400.
Afghan weddings are celebrated by hundreds of guests in luxurious wedding halls with the groom and his family expected to foot the bill and agree to every request of the bride and her family.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“Wedding ceremonies among people are like a competition, no one wants to come last, people like to show off their wealth by feeding hundreds of guests in costly wedding halls,” Afghani Justice Minister Habibullah Ghaleb said. “Families are the victim of such a wrong tradition and have to accept these heavy burdens.”
Details of the planned ban on expensive weddings were still being worked out, Justice Ministry spokesman Farid Ahmad Najibi said, and he acknowledged it could be difficult to enforce because lavish weddings were so ingrained in Afghan culture.
State institutions were shattered during decades of conflict, with regional, ethnic and tribal differences also making it difficult to enforce laws. Violence is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted, making security a priority even while authorities try to rebuild the aid-reliant economy.
Rafi Kazimi, 24, and his family spent about US$10,000 when he married Farima, 20, in October. The couple had 600 guests at their wedding in Kabul. Taxi driver Kazimi and his family are now repaying at least US$6,000 in bank loans.
But Kazimi recently lost his job and his family — his wife, mother, father, grandmother, two sisters, three brothers and one of their wives — are surviving on his older brother’s salary of US$410 a month, US$300 of which is used to repay the loans.
“It was too much,” Kazimi said of the money spent on his marriage to his first cousin. “I was so worried about how to find this money. Her parents didn’t care if I had the money or not, they just said we must have a big wedding.”
While Kazimi thought a ban on expensive weddings was a good idea, he doubted if it would be accepted. Along with the wedding celebrations, a groom and his family are also expected to pay for ornate outfits for the bride and groom.
The government’s bid to regulate weddings follows similar moves by some tribal elders and provincial officials.
Late last month, elders from several villages in northern Jawzjan Province banned expensive weddings and dowries in a bid to encourage young people to marry instead of postponing their nuptials because they could not afford it.
Under the rules, the cost of a wedding must be in line with the economic status of the groom and if someone violates the ban then they will not be invited to any other weddings in the village.
“Marriage is everyone’s right and it must not be presented as a huge burden for the bride and groom,” said Azaad Khwa, an elder from Jawzjan. “Making the groom’s family pay for everything and feed hundreds is a big sin.”
Many elaborate wedding halls have sprung up around Kabul over the past nine years, compared with just a few that operated while the Taliban were in power from 1996 to 2001.
Guests attending weddings at City Star Hall in Kabul’s Wazir Abad neighborhood drive through a lit-up moon to the entrance and a large silver star adorns the roof. It opened three months ago at a cost of US$5 million, manager Zabi Mujeeb said.
It has four wedding halls and hosts about 70 weddings a month, with an average of 800 to 1,000 guests, Mujeeb said. Prices per guest range from US$12 to US$23 for the food. Music, a cake, decorations and a photographer are all extra.
“The people living in the city, they don’t like to have a lot of guests,” Mujeeb said. “But the people living in provinces, they like to have a lot of guests.”
In the largest of City Star Hall’s venues, staff were putting the finishing touches on decorations for the wedding of a couple from nearby Parwan Province. There will be 1,600 guests at a cost of US$16,000.
The opulence makes one’s head spin. The bride and groom were to walk over a bridge above a fountain in front of mountain landscape mural. They descend onto an illuminated walkway under arches of fake flowers to a stage where they will be seated on silver-colored thrones.
“The grooms find the money,” Mujeeb said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained