Sunni Take Dim View of Shia Mass Weddings

Abdul Latif Sahak

IWPR-trained reporter

Monday, 20 April, 2009

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Hussein considers himself a lucky man. The 28-year-old from Mazar-e-Sharif’s Shia community got married three months ago, a rare achievement in a country where economics and romance do not mix well.



Normally, his 100 US dollar a month income as a street vendor would never have been enough to cover the astronomical price of an Afghan wedding, which can cost the groom up to 20,000 dollars.



But Mazar’s Shia have imported a custom from neighbouring Iran that has helped hundreds of young men like Hussein tie the knot: collective weddings, where up to 150 couples simultaneously register as man and wife, hosting a huge party where every pair can invite a few dozen relatives. The price tag is a fraction of a traditional wedding.



“I was engaged for three years,” said Hussein, beaming as he stood on a busy Mazar street in traditional Afghan tunic and baggy pants. “I would never have been able to afford to get married if I had not participated in one of these mass weddings. I would have had to take on a giant debt, and my whole life would have been spent in poverty. I am really happy that there are organisations that help us young people.”



Over the last year, there have been two collective weddings in Balkh province, in which a total of 150 couples were united. The practice began in Iran more than 20 years ago among university students who couldn’t afford to get wed. Afghans who lived in Iran as refugees brought the idea back with them.



In Mazar, the weddings have been organised by the office of Ayatollah Sistani, a Shia scholar who lives in the city of Najaf in Iraq. The local representative of the office, Maulawi Ghulam Haider Hashimi, told IWPR that the reason for the large-scale ceremonies was to help needy Afghans.



“Most young people cannot afford to pay for a traditional wedding,” he said. “If they get married individually, each of them will pay thousands of dollars. This way, each couple can get married for just 900 dollars.”



Last year’s twin extravaganzas cost a total of 200,000 dollars, he said, and the 300 couples hosted 6,000 guests.



The organisers attempt to build as much tradition into the weddings as possible. The couples are dressed in white, and each one holds an Afghan flag. Last year’s ceremonies were also filmed for television. Once the speeches by government officials are completed, the newlyweds get into cars adorned with artificial flowers, and go for a ride around the city. The day ends with a huge party, with food and music.



The practice has so far been confined to the Shia community, but Balkh governor Atta Mohammad Noor has appointed a commission to help needy Sunni couples as well.



However, he has had few takers. Afghanistan’s majority Sunni often have little patience with customs imported from Iran, seeing them as an attack on Afghan culture.



“There are thousands of young Afghan men who are engaged but cannot afford to get married,” said Fariba Majid, who heads Balkh’s department of women’s affairs. “But they have no desire to take part in mass weddings.”



Sunni youth are unfamiliar with the concept, she added, and consider it an Iranian phenomenon. The more impersonal nature of the mass ceremonies is also a blow to their pride and honor, according to Majid.



“Still, we will try and organise such weddings,” she said.



There are those who are adamantly opposed to the custom, seeing it as more than a borrowed tradition. Humaira Akakhil, a parliamentarian from Balkh, told IWPR that the collective weddings represented nothing less than an attack upon Afghan culture.



“Neighbouring countries want to take revenge on Afghans, calling it assistance,” she said. “Through their political supporters inside our country they want to destroy Afghanistan’s 5,000-year-old culture and history.”



According to Akakhil, the decision to allow such weddings was a political move by the government and NGOs in advance of the presidential elections, scheduled for August.



“In previous elections, these politicians and their parties used guns to impose their candidates on the government,” she said. “This time, they will use cultural weapons, like [mass weddings].”



Muyeen Marastial, a member of parliament from Kundoz, told IWPR that the weddings represented cultural and political interference from Iran.



“If these organisations want to help needy people, why don’t they help those who are so poor they are forced to sell their children?” he said. “Iran wants to spread its own culture in Afghanistan, and it misuses the poverty of the Afghan people.”



Marastial added that Iran was exploiting the media to further its goals, one of which, he claimed, is the destruction of Afghanistan’s national terminology.



For the past two years, Afghans in many different provinces have had clashes, sometimes violent, over whether the word for university should be the traditional pohuntun, which is Pashto in origin, or the Persian word daneshgaa.



“Iran wants to create frictions amongst the Afghans so that it can exploit the situation politically,” added Marastial.



Afghan officials at Balkh’s department of information and culture expressed concern that Afghan culture was under siege.



“Though such weddings can be viewed as a cultural exchange, they are not Afghan,” department chief Saleh Mohammad Khaliq told IWPR. “It raises questions.”



Some of the problems with the mass weddings, according to Khaliq, were the limited participation of the couple’s relatives, the absence of such traditions as Shab-e-Khina (henna night), and Takht Jami.



Shab-e-Khina is a party, usually for women only, where the bride and groom have their hands painted with henna. Takht Jami is a gathering held about a week after the wedding, which brings the guests together and officially ends the weddings festivities.



“Not having these things undermines Afghan culture,” said Khaliq.



Despite repeated efforts made by IWPR, officials at the Iranian consulate in Mazar declined to be interviewed.



Farhad Farjad, a writer and social affairs commentator in Balkh, termed mass weddings “a service to Iran and an annihilation of Afghan culture”.



“There are other ways to eliminate the high costs of weddings,” he said. “These groups abuse the poverty of Afghan youth, they place them in front of television cameras, which is in itself an insult and humiliation. They are trying to achieve their political goals.”



According to Farjad, the government and the Ulema (Council of religious Scholars) can ensure that weddings do not completely bankrupt young people.



“When the governor of Balkh governor can stop the young people from having singers at their weddings, and from serving expensive food, why can’t he stop the high price of weddings?” he said.



In 2007, Governor Atta ordered that residents of Balkh instituted a series of restrictions on weddings, designed to cut down costs. Specifically, he ordered that only one ceremony should be held at a hotel, as opposed to the three or four that many young men have to pay for. He also prohibited the use of singers, and said that expensive food should not be served.



Sayed Zekerya, a member of the Balkh Council of Ulema, said that mass marriages, while they have no roots in Islam or Afghan culture, are not exactly un-Islamic, either.



“If the aim is to assist the poor with a wedding ceremony, Islam is not against that,” he said. “But if there are political goals behind this thing, the organisers of such marriages are considered sinful and they will be punished on the Day of Judgement."



Maulavi Hashimi from Ayatollah Sistani’s office in Mazar, who organised the two mass weddings last year, rejects these ceremonies have political goals.



“The only goal behind the mass weddings is to help the poor and needy people and spread the culture among the people,” he said.



Abdul Latif Sahak is an IWPR trainee in Mazar-e-Sharif.