Iranian youths can attend courtship classes and earn a diploma before tying the knot as part of a new government scheme to cut the divorce rate.
The National Youth Organization has unveiled an online course to educate the Islamic republic’s overwhelmingly young population on how to find Mr or Mrs Right, pop the question, and live happily ever after.
Interactive and lasting three months, the course designed by academics and clerics requires pupils seeking the diploma to sit for weekly tests.
PHOTO: AFP
Iranian hardliners condemn dating and relationships out of wedlock and like to see men and women married off ideally in their early 20s in a country where traditionalists frown upon singles in their 30s.
Official estimates, however, show the average age of marriage has risen to 29, mainly because of economic hardship and a change in priorities and values, especially for women who outnumber men at college.
Since rising to power five years ago, conservatives in the parliament and government have made a mantra of “facilitating marriage for young people” in Iran, where about 60 percent of the 70-million population is under 30.
The concept of a “marriage diploma” has unleashed a torrent of jokes on the Web, but officials say Iranians need awareness without revealing much about the content of the course.
“Marriage needs hundreds of hours of education,” Mehrdad Bazrpash, a deputy to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and head of the National Youth Organization, said on Saturday as he inaugurated the program in Tehran.
Ahmad Borjali, a psychologist and adviser to the initiative, said the divorce rate has gone up steadily since 2006, rising by 15.7 percent last year over the previous year, against a 2.1 percent increase in marriages.
One in every four marriages ends in divorce in Tehran alone, he said, citing research by social workers as blaming “sexual” and “communication troubles” among main reasons for the problem nationwide.
“Divorce is taboo and against values, but educational work does not cost much,” he said in a speech. “Face-to-face education is much more important and this can be a start given the size of the country.”
Despite its lofty goals the new initiative has been met with skepticism.
“Awareness is fine but the question is what kind of a family they are seeking to promote,” prominent sociologist Shahla Ezazi said.
“Our society is confused between tradition and modernity, there are both traditional arranged marriages and modern love marriages. But most propaganda is focused on reinforcing men’s leadership and women’s obedience,” she said.
Publicity material for the course showed a very conservative approach by authorities, shunning unmarried romantic relationships and encouraging traditional match-making.
“It is wiser to have different relationships ... I will hang out with a few and then choose one,” a boy with a Westernized appearance is depicted as saying in a booklet.
It was contrasted by a bearded, pious-looking young man who says “short-term illegitimate relationships harm dignity, but God has left the halal [religiously correct] path open.”
Ezazi said the authorities favor traditional, arranged marriages and “consider giving men and women equal rights a terrible feminist thing.”
“But people do not live as advised by the government and changes do not happen based on its orders,” she said.
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