Muhanad Talib, a Sunni Muslim, married his Shiite bride because she was a “suitable woman” for him. It also didn’t hurt that their vows made them eligible for a US$2,000 payout from the government.
Talib and his wife are among more than 1,700 newlywed couples who have accepted cash from a government program that encourages Sunnis and Shiites to tie the knot.
The government has held 15 mass weddings for inter-sect couples from all over Iraq, with the most recent taking place last month at a club in Baghdad once used by the army of the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
While the government doesn’t track marriages bridging the two sects, experts say mixed couples are on the rebound after a dramatic decline during the days of heavy violence. The rise, or rather, the return of mixed marriages appears to be one more sign that Iraqi society is gradually recovering from the war and that things are more peaceful than they have been in years.
As security has improved, Iraqis are returning to their homes in mixed neighborhoods and spending more time at offices, universities and other places where they meet their future spouses, Shiite cleric Sayyid Ahmed Hirz al-Yasiri said in Baghdad’s Shiite stronghold of Sadr City.
“There was a time when families were reluctant to consent to such marriages because of concerns created by certain conservative people from both sects,” he said. “That is over now and things are getting back to normal, like they were before the fall of Baghdad.
Talib smiled at his Shiite bride in the living room of a house the couple shares with relatives in Dora, a primarily Sunni area in south Baghdad.
“I chose her and want to live the best part of my life with her,” he said.
Marriage in general is coming back into strong favor. Figures from Iraq’s Higher Judicial Council show that 274,014 couples were married in 2007, when sectarian violence was raging. That jumped to 357,593 last year when violence waned. In the first three months of this year, 62,626 marriages were recorded across Iraq, excluding the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north.
Sheik Hamid al-Adhami, a Sunni cleric and marriage official, said he’s marrying four to five couples a month, two or three of whom are mixed-sect.
To apply for the money, mixed couples write to Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi’s office with legal proof of their union.
They are handed the cash at a mass wedding celebration.
Raad Karim, a Sunni professor who just got married to a Shiite, received the money last month on a white stage adorned with purple fabric and flowers.
“Iraq witnessed the marriage between Sunnis and Shiites for hundreds of years,” Karim said. “We have to resume our Iraqi traditions even though terrorists are trying to erase them.”
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