The Middle East’s fight for civil marriage

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http://bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/03/10/the-middle-east-fight-for-civil-marriage/lTkk16DyemRYsw4uC0b2TL/story.html

Where clerics control personal life, one Lebanese wedding becomes a flashpoint.

By Thanassis Cambanis | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT MARCH 10, 2013


A 1996 wedding in Giza, Egypt.

BEIRUT — Kholoud Sukkarieh and Nidal Darwish weren’t interested in making legal history when they got engaged last year. She’s a Sunni Muslim and he is Shia, and like many interfaith couples in this part of the world who don’t want to convert, they planned to get married outside their home country. Then, at a photography workshop, Sukkarieh met a lawyer with a cause and an intriguing proposal: Would she and her fiancé be interested in using their wedding to do something radical?

Last November, they tied the knot before a willing notary, becoming the first couple in the history of Lebanon to marry in a nonreligious ceremony. In January they embarked on what promises to be a long, fraught challenge to the legal status quo, using an obscure provision of old colonial law to demand that the Lebanese government officially recognize their marriage.

What sounds like a simple thing in the West—a civil marriage with a judge or a notary presiding, and no religious contract—is a near-impossibility in the Middle East. Their marriage, and the controversy it has triggered here, shines a light on a crucial but unappreciated way in which this region differs from much of the rest of the world. Lebanon, like almost all the Arab states, most Islamic countries, and Israel, simply doesn’t have civil laws for matters of personal status.

The effects of this difference percolate deeply through society. In the West and Asia, marriage and family law have evolved to reflect broader changes in society, even when religious authorities don’t agree. Civil codes have adapted to the rise of divorce, developed custody standards that are fairer to women, and are now starting to recognize the rights of same-sex couples and their children.

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