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.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in