Lebanon's mixed marriages

Not at home

Sep 3rd 2009 | BEIRUT
From The Economist print edition

Couples from different religions still cannot marry in their own country

WHEN a stellar Lebanese couple—a television talk-show anchorman and a rising female politician—recently got married, they had to tie the knot in a registry office in Cyprus. That is because Malik Maktabi, of TV fame, is a Shia Muslim, whereas Nayla Tueni, a member of parliament, is a Christian. Her father, an influential owner-editor murdered four years ago, was Greek Orthodox, her paternal grandmother a famous Druze poet. Perhaps oddly for a country with 18 officially recognised religious groups and fewer than 4m people, Lebanon has no provision for civil marriage.

It is the religious authorities that oversee marriage, divorce and inheritance. Couples from different religions, atheists and those who do not belong to one of the officially recognised religions— for instance, Buddhists, Hindus, Bahais and members of unregistered Protestant groups—cannot marry in their home country. Even for couples fortunate or pragmatic enough to share a religion, marriage overseen by the religious authorities has drawbacks. The Maronite church, Lebanon’s main Catholic one, forbids divorce. If a Sunni man dies, a Sunni widow may inherit only half of his estate.

But though civil weddings are not permitted at home, the government does recognise those that take place abroad. Enterprising travel agents are keen to help people use this loophole by arranging all-in wedding package holidays: “Just say ‘I do’ and we’ll do the rest.” For $1,900, couples can hop over to Cyprus (half an hour by air), where a civil registrar, witnesses and photographer are at hand. The travel agent deals with all the tricky paperwork. The happy pair can sign on the dotted line and be back in Beirut on the same day. One travel agent says he has sold more than a thousand wedding packages since he began offering the service three years ago.

Not everyone is happy, though. Civil-rights lobbyists have long argued that marital status should be determined independently of the religious authorities. Pollsters have found a majority in favour of allowing civil marriage in Lebanon. On Valentine’s Day this year campaigners protested against the law by staging jovial mock wedding ceremonies in a Beirut bar.

Change, if it comes, may be slow. The last serious effort to allow civil unions was in 1998. But campaigners notched up a small victory earlier this year when the interior minister, Ziad Baroud, ruled that Lebanese citizens would have the option of removing their religious-group classification from their national identity cards.

Talkbacks

The problems are even worse that those noted either in the article or in Krall's excellent comment below. Lebanon's entire political system is "confessional", meaning that political offices are reserved for recognized religious communities. Although secular political parties exist in Lebanon, they are restricted from achieving any kind of power, and in fact have become increasingly less relevant since the civil war. Because one's declared religion is also effectively one's political orientation, this not only enforces sectarianism but also ensures that those living outside the margins of official faith are permanently disenfranchised.

And the big winner is Cyprus, who has positioned itself as the regional Las Vegas, marrying couples from Israel and Lebanon, two countries that do not allow for civil marriage...

And yet if this were an article about next door Israel they'd be clamoring this is some sort of racist war crime. Well in either case be happy that Lebanese couples still, and for the time being get to live free of Sharia. With Hezbollah now controlling a third of the government, soon there won't BE any other religions to intermarry with.

Curious point - we in Israel have the exact same problem, and also fly to Cyprus to solve it. It seems we share more than either side would like to admit.

An outlaw on intermarriage is not just a petty personal affair between two people, but a very serious national issue which threatens all citizens. Intermarriage is a core prerequisite for people of different cultural groups to live amongst each other peacefully. Those who are resisting the merging between people are in fact obstructing a harmonious multicultural society to flourish. If intermarriage is not taking place at a substantial rate, it could be a sign of a broader culture clash.

Now here goes the grenade- not only must acceptance take place concerning marriages between Muslim men and Christian women, but also between Christian men and Muslim women. Until this takes place at a substantial rate, I wouldn’t even count on such groups living peacefully in the same neighborhoods. You may even be better off in separate countries. Harmony in a multicultural society can only take place without serious tensions in society, otherwise all it ever leads to is war and ethnic/religious cleansing.

As a Turkish citizen, I owe my optimism for Turkish-Kurdish relations to the significant decrease over the years in the tribal expectation of marrying within one’s own ethnic group. The Lebanese are a progressive people; I have optimism for their future as well.

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