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'Pleasure marriages' (MUTA) regain popularity in Iraq

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 Posted 25.06.2007 17:31:32
Waxing Gibbous

Waxing Gibbous
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Pleasure marriages' regain popularity in Iraq

By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY

BAGHDAD - In the days when it could land him in jail, Rahim Al-Zaidi would whisper details of his muta'a only to his closest confidants and the occasional cousin. Never his wife.

Rahim Al-Zaidi, who is married with five children, is awaiting permission for his third 'pleasure marriage.'

By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY



Al-Zaidi hopes to soon finalize his third muta'a, or "pleasure marriage," with a green-eyed neighbor. This time, he talks about it openly and with obvious relish. Even so, he says, he probably still won't tell his wife.



The 1,400-year-old practice of muta'a - "ecstasy" in Arabic - is as old as Islam itself. [EDIT]



Pleasure marriages were outlawed under Saddam Hussein but have begun to flourish again. The contracts, lasting anywhere from one hour to 10 years, generally stipulate that the man will pay the woman in exchange for sexual intimacy. Now some Iraqi clerics and women's rights activists are complaining that the contracts have become less a mechanism for taking care of widows than an outlet for male sexual desires.



The renaissance of the pleasure marriage coincides with a revival of other Shiite traditions long suppressed by the former regime. Interest in Shiite customs has accelerated since Shiite parties swept Jan. 30 elections to become the biggest bloc in the new National Assembly.



"Under Saddam, we were very scared," says Al-Zaidi, 39, a lawyer from Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. "They would punish people. Now, all my friends are doing it."



A turbaned Shiite cleric who issues wedding permits from a street-side counter in Sadr City says he encourages permanent marriages but gives the OK for pleasure marriages when there are "special reasons." The cleric, Sayid Kareem As-Sayid Abdullah Al-Mousawi, says he grants licenses for muta'a in cases where the woman is widowed or divorced, or for single women who have approval from their fathers.



Shiites, Sunnis split



"Clerics who blessed them were hounded by security during the previous regime," he says. "I can assure you, these (muta'a) marriages are flourishing in (Shiite cities) Najaf, Karbala and Kadhamiya in an amazing way. There are a lot of hotels (patronized) by Shiites who approve of such marriages."



Shiites and Sunnis both permit men to take more than one permanent wife, but the rival branches of Islam are deeply split over pleasure marriages.



Most Shiite scholars today consider it halal, or religiously legal. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest religious authority in Shiite Islam, sets conditions and obligations for muta'a on his Web site. ("A woman with whom temporary marriage is contracted is not entitled to share the conjugal bed of her husband and does not inherit from him ...")



Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and other Shiite lawmakers have said they want Iraq's new constitution to use the sharia, or Islamic law, as its basis. That could give muta'a formal legal protection. Sunni Arabs and Kurds, who are mainly Sunni, oppose the idea. But the practice is growing among Sunnis and Shiites alike.



Sunni scholars fear that giving official sanction to pleasure marriages - many of which are only verbal agreements between the couple - are little more than legalized prostitution that could lead to a collapse of moral values, especially among young people.



"We have reports about one-hour pleasure marriages that are flourishing among students," says Sheik Ali Al-Mashhadani, a Sunni imam at the Ibn Taimiya mosque in Baghdad. "I'm advising parents to watch their sons very carefully, particularly those who are in the colleges and universities."



Short-term marriages were considered idolatry by Saddam's ruling Baath Party in the 1970s and '80s, says Kamal Hamdul, president of the Iraqi Bar Association. Muta'a were punishable by fines or prison, he says. Couples took the practice underground, meeting in out-of-the-way apartments and hotels - and rarely telling even family members.



Pleasure marriages began to resurface after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. One reason is that Shiites, 60% of Iraq's population, have a greater ability to shape social mores than they did under Saddam, a Sunni Arab whose top aides were also Sunnis.



Payments to women vary



A woman agreeing to a pleasure marriage that involves a one-time encounter might be able to count on about $100. For a muta'a that runs longer, she might be paid $200 a month, though the amounts vary widely and can depend on whether she has children.



Zeinab Ahmed, 31, lost her husband in a car accident five years ago. She says she has considered entering into a muta'a contract with a man, but the stigma attached has kept her from doing so.



"All my friends who have done this have told me they got married in this way just to meet their sexual desires," Ahmed says, "but later on they started to love that man, and he does not accept to get married permanently. ... Most of the men, at the end of the contract, they feel contempt towards the woman."



Contracts for pleasure marriage strongly favor men.



Married women can't enter a muta'a, although a married man can. Men can void the contract at any time; women don't have that option unless it's negotiated at the outset. The couple agrees not to have children. A woman who unintentionally gets pregnant can have an abortion but must then pay a fine to a cleric.



Women's rights activists are concerned. Salama Al-Khafaji, a Shiite lawmaker who supports the concept of sharia law but advocates for women's rights, calls the re-emergence of muta'a an "unhealthy phenomenon."



With the right intentions, she says, muta'a can serve the noble purpose of helping divorced and widowed women. But too many men are using temporary marriages to exploit women for sex, she says. Her solution is to reinforce the importance of permanent marriages with work programs for newlywed couples and education campaigns.



"A woman who practices muta'a does not usually feel comfortable about it," Al-Khafaji says. "People these days are creating excuses to practice these acts."



Al-Mousawi, the Shiite cleric, says the practice of pleasure marriages is open to abuse and misinterpretation. He says he is particularly troubled by kiss-and-tell men. "After they've finished with the woman, they've told their friends about her beauty and given a description of her body, which is something absolutely unacceptable in Islam," he says.



Al-Zaidi, the Sadr City lawyer, says his motivations are spiritual. In 2002, he says he persuaded a Sunni widow to enter into a one-year muta'a with him, even though at first she refused.



To him, pleasure marriages are legitimate in God's eyes. They bring responsibility and formality to what would otherwise be squalid and sinful, he says. "There is a noble goal in this kind of marriage," says Al-Zaidi, still married to his first wife and has five children. "It's to eradicate moral corruption."



In the past, some muta'a contracts have been struck when permanent, legal marriages were not possible.



Ayad Muhammed Ali fell in love eight years ago with a woman who walked into his Baghdad tailor shop. She was a widow with two young sons whose husband, a member of an underground group outlawed by Saddam, had been executed by Saddam's men. The woman also was richer than Ali, so her family would never have consented to a legal marriage.



The lovers agreed to a yearlong muta'a in 1993 and have renewed their contract every year since, he says. In the decade after their muta'a, the couple never dared meet in the open. In April 2003, the month U.S. forces swept into the capital, they began meeting in public places for the first time, he says.



"I was always so afraid someone would find out and I'd go to prison," says Ali, 29. "Now, I'm not afraid. My only fear is her family."



Contributing: Mona Mahmoud







Find this article at:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/w...leasure-marriage_x.htm



http://proahlulbayt1.blogspot.com/
Post #207991
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 Posted 25.06.2007 17:38:02
Waxing Gibbous

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As salaamu 'alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh,


Shia Website Al-Islam.org Says A Woman Who Enters Into Mutah is "Rented"



The Shia website, Al-Islam.org, says:



"On this point there are specified hadith as well as the general hadith which state that a woman who enters into mut'a is 'rented'."


(source:Al-Islam.org,http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/3.htm)


In another place, Al-Islam.org continues:



"In other words, she has been 'rented' for the purpose of sexual intercourse"


(source:Al-Islam.org,http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/4.htm)


If one reads Shia Hadith, it becomes very clear that the woman is treated as "rented" property. In fact, the Shia books of Fiqh contain a section entitled "The Loaning of Vaginas." A "gangsta" rapper once said that he would "rent booty by the hour"; one can understand such vulgar speech from a hoodlum, but it is very perplexing when the Shia Ulema and scholars of Hadith use similar terminology whereby they claim that men "rent" women, and that too by the hour!


The Shia website, Al-Islam.org, says the following about Mutah:



"If the role of the time period is to contain a stipulated number of sexual acts, whenever the number is finished, the woman is free of any further obligation to the man."


(source:Al-Islam.org,http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/3.htm)


Mutah is very similar to prostitution: after the woman does a certain number of sexual acts on the man, then she is free from him after that. Is this not the attitude of the Kufaar who have the vulgar philosophy of "wham, bam, thank you ma'am"? Subhan-Allah, can this really be the religion of guidance which allows such a thing?


According to Shia Fiqh, a man "rents" a woman for a specified number of hours or days during which he can have sex with her. But if on certain days she doesn't have sex with him, then the price he pays for her goes down. The exception is her menstruation days since it is impermissible to have sexual relations on those days. The Shia website, Al-Islam.org, says:



"A man came to the Imam Ja'far and said: 'I concluded a contract of mut'a with a woman for one month for a given amount, But the woman only came to me for part of the month, and part she stayed away.' The Imam replied: 'An amount should be held back from her dower equivalent to the amount she stayed from you, except for the days of her menstruation, for those belong to her.'"


(source:Al-Islam.org,http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/3.htm)


The price the man pays the woman (i.e. the dower) goes down if she doesn't have enough sex with him; it would not be a stretch to say that the Shia scholars are nothing but pimps who closely regulate the institution of prostitution under the guise of religion.


In the Shia Mutah, the man can regulate when he wants to see the woman; it is very common, for example, for the man to stipulate that he only wants to see her at night-time. In other words, he simply wants to have sex with her and does not want to have anything else to do with her for the rest of the day. The Shia website, Al-Islam.org, says:



"It is permissible for the contract to stipulate as a condition a particular time for meetings between the husband and wife, such as daytime or night-time. As already mentioned, it is also permissible for a given number of sexual acts for a given period to be stipulated, as for example, during one day or over the whole period of the marriage."


(source:Al-Islam.org,http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/4.htm)


It is altogether amazing how Shi'ism facilitates the defiling of women and makes it easy for men to do that. In a normal marriage, man and wife must jointly make the decision to perform coitus interruptus (i.e. prevent pregnancy). However, in the Shia Mutah, the right is given to the man completely. We read that there is:



"...a consensus of the ulama' on this point. They say the consensus derives from a hadith reported from the Imam Ja'far: 'That [semen] belongs to the man: he may expend it as he wishes.'" [9]


(source:Al-Islam.org,http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/4.htm)


And what about the egg (i.e. ovum) which belongs to the woman? Why is it that she has no right in preventing the pregnancy when the ovum belongs to her? In Shia Fiqh, it is Haram for the woman to prevent the pregnancy without the permission from the man, and yet the man has the right to do so without the permission of the woman. This is quite the double standard.


The Shia Ulema make it clear that Mutah is done for sex, and that this is the basic aim. We read:



"In contrast to permanent marriage, the basic aim of mut'a is enjoyment, not the production of offspring." [10]


(source:Al-Islam.org,http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/4.htm)


In a marriage, the basic aim is to create a family bonded by love and affection for all time. On the other hand, the Shia Mutah is just for enjoyment, whereby a man can enjoy renting out women, without any responsibilities on the man. If the woman becomes pregnant during Mutah, then the husband has the option of seizing custody of the child:



"If the woman becomes pregnant such that the pregnancy derives from the period of mut'a, the child belongs to the husband, even if he performed coitus interruptus."


(source:Al-Islam.org,http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/4.htm)


So the man has the right to seize the custody of the child, but in Shia Fiqh, the man can have his cake and eat it too. If he simply wants to deny the child, then he can also do that. In other words, the man has the right to either seize the custody of the child or simply abandon the child, based upon his own whim. We read:



"However, if the man should deny the child, then it does not belong to him; the 'sworn allegation' required in permanent marriage is not necessary...sworn allegation is unnecessary in mut'a...his word alone will be accepted and there is no need for him to make a sworn allegation (i.e. that the child is not his)...in the case of denying parentage, by a consensus of the ulama' it is unnecessary for the man to make the sworn allegation."


(source:Al-Islam.org, http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/4.htm


In other words, a man can have sex with a woman by "renting" her, but absolve himself of all responsibilities; if the woman should get pregnant as a result of the Mutah, he can simply deny it and the Shia court would not even require the man to take an oath to God about the matter! In fact, the Shia Fiqh is very specific on this point, namely that the man is excused from swearing to God about such a matter. The consequence is that the poor woman would be forced to take care of the child as a single mother without support from the father.


Even the Kufaar living in the West have better morals than this, for they force a man to pay child support if he engages in fornication that results in a pregnancy. On the other hand, the woman who does Mutah has no such rights; to explain this, we read what Al-Islam.org says:



"Al-Shahid al Thani, al-Shaykh al-Ansari and al-Shaykh Muhammad al-Hasan claim consensus on this question. They point out that the 'bed of mut'a' does not hold the same high position as the bed of a permanent wife, since a wife by mut'a is a 'rented woman'. [13] On this point two hadith have been recorded. [14]"


(source:Al-Islam.org,http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/4.htm)


The man can demand sex whenever he pleases and this is stipulated in the Mutah contract, which is binding on the woman after that. This is a right granted only to the man, and the woman has no right in that. We read:



"Moreover, the woman cannot demand a right to sexual intercourse in temporary marriage, a demand which is essential in the establishment of forswearing in permanent marriage. The only thing the woman may demand is the dower, to which she is entitled as a 'rented' woman. [18]"


(source:Al-Islam.org,http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/muta/4.htm)


After reading this it really shocks me that any girl would remain Shia. May Allah save us from such a religion which exploits and defiles women for "pleasure" and "enjoyment".






Laa Fatah illa 'Ali Laa Sayf illa Dhulfiqaar

Ali nu yaad karo
Jisi 'Ali nahin milte Khuda nahin milta

Ya Ameerul mumineen wa Imaamul mutaqeen Imaamul Awliyah Sher e Allah Mawlana e kainaat Mushkil kushaa Sayyidina Mawlana Haider al Karrar 'Ali al Murtadha 'alaykas salaam Madad
Post #207994
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 Posted 25.06.2007 18:16:26
Full Moon

Full Moon
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salaam

The shiah bring doom onto none but themselves.

One may distinguish between what is Islamic and what is unislamic by the resultants of the action. Hence, one may distinguish between truth and falsehood.

One of the major benefits of Islamic marriage is the cessation of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, Chlamydia, the HIV virus etc. In a community where everyone heeds to Islamic law the spread of such diseases is impossible, hence, the divine nature of this law is highlighted - as it benefits mankind.

However, mutah allows such diseases to spread; in Iran AIDS is on the increase. This just highlights that mutah is haraam as it deviates from the benefits of halal marriage.



One may conclude that mutah deviates Both ethically (as brother mansur discussed - family life etc) and physically (STDS)  from an Islamic marriage. Therefore, the shiahs sexual habits are not dissimilar to a non-Muslims. Mutah and Islamic marriage are completely the opposite, because Islamic marriage seeks prevent that which mutah spreads in the guise of islam.



Allah Hafiz




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Post #208006
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 Posted 25.06.2007 19:04:23
Waxing Gibbous

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just one question to learned brother mansur, why do we give 'mehar' in permanent marriage??


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Post #208019
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 Posted 25.06.2007 21:58:35
Waxing Gibbous

Waxing Gibbous
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As salaamu 'alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh,

Brother OE, i am not learned but i'll try and answer. Mahr is given as a gift or present for the marriage taking place. That's it.





Laa Fatah illa 'Ali Laa Sayf illa Dhulfiqaar

Ali nu yaad karo
Jisi 'Ali nahin milte Khuda nahin milta

Ya Ameerul mumineen wa Imaamul mutaqeen Imaamul Awliyah Sher e Allah Mawlana e kainaat Mushkil kushaa Sayyidina Mawlana Haider al Karrar 'Ali al Murtadha 'alaykas salaam Madad
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