This was the title of an article in gulf news last weekend. So I didn't create it if you are wondering. Well let me go to the story without further ado. My friend's son wanted to register his marriage in one of the courts here. The person at the customer service desk asked him about his religion and his sect, and the bride's religion and sect. And since they were from different sects, the customer service person asked him to renounce his sect, or he cannot marry the girl. The man wrote on a piece of paper that he must renounce it, and asked him to go to another counter. The girl at the other counter was astonished from the harshness of the sentence, didn’t know what to do as it was the first time she hears of such thing; so she tells the groom that he needn’t do this, instead he can write that he will not swear at the other sect, and that will do it. She writes the sentence and he signed it (all of this on the same piece of paper of course), again they go back to the first counter. He in turn didn’t like what was said, so off he sends them to meet the manager of the court, whose face turns red, and takes the paper, rips it (or something of the sort) and ask the groom to come back another time.
Of course the other humiliating thing here is that the bride was also exposed, as her father who is from a different sect, had divorced the mother few hundred years ago ( exaggeration!) and at that time the court ruled out that the kids will be in the mother’s custody. So the guy at the counter says that this is not on, and that we should go back to that judge (who could be dead now) and ask him why he did that, and demands that the father comes to the court to give the daughter away to be married. The girl innocently told him that neither she nor the mother know where he is, so he said “of course, your mother must have divorced him because of his sect??!!” now this is another story in itself and worth writing another blog about it dont you think?
I cannot recall the rest of the story, the reason I am telling you about what happened is to show you how historical events have affected the marriage of this couple. The boy who had been brought up in a foreign country and who is totally oblivious to the fact of what sect to believe in and doesn’t actually care as it doesn’t really matter for him or his bride. What would the world say about us? why do we hang on to the triviality of what happened in ancient times and forget the rest of what that era had actually given us, from medical to scientific to poetry to artistic discoveries, why are we stuck to just one side of the story about our history, why would we stick to this side and grew an industry that only focuses on the parts that actually insults people and their thoughts? Why would religion be a question that needs to be declared to anybody? Isn’t religion a personal thing? I would follow what the westerners say all the time “between friends we should not discuss religion or politics”. There are millions of other pressing issues, and once we remove religion from the equation, I feel everything else will be solved; it’s the domino effect that I am looking for. Of course this behaviour is not only prevalent in marriage, it has similar effects on jobs, friendships, writing, publishing, opening business, going overseas to study, promotions if one is already in a job etc etc.
You see how historical events had affected people's lives?
p.s. the boy decided to do a civil marriage at his embassy to cut this crap and get on with life as it should be.
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