Weddings by the galore!
Photo courtesy of the New York Times
RAS AL KHAYMAH, United Arab Emirates — The wedding lights sparkled, a brass band played the national anthem and the banquet was fit for a king. But as Rashid al-Kabali and his friends put on their ceremonial wedding cloaks for the event this month, the grooms were stoically aware of the battle they were waging for Emirati identity.
Mr. Kabali was among 47 grooms marrying that evening in an all-male mass wedding ceremony in the parking lot of a convention center. (The brides would celebrate in separate ceremonies a few days later.)
It was a curious scene, but one with deep social implications. In this nation of five million, of whom only about 10 percent are native citizens, the battle for cultural survival begins with "I do."
"This is about preserving our ways and our culture," Mr. Kabali said, as he scanned the grooms seated in a row. "We must marry within our society as our ancestors did, or we will lose our way." Here Comes the Bride (but Not From Afar, Emirates Hope) by Hassan M. Fattah
Mark Alexander
6 comments:
"We must marry within our society as our ancestors did, or we will lose our way."
Could the West take a lesson from that statement?
Always:
Indeed it could! The West thinks it can re-invent the wheel though; so it won't heed the advice.
Westerners think they can marry whomsoever they like, and further, they think that marriage is not important. When they have kids, it can be in wedlock, or increasingly outside it.
Moreover, Western women think that having a career is FAR more important than doing their wifely duties and bearing children.
With thinking like this, the West is DOOMED!
Liberated women have contributed in no small measure to the West's woes. After all, we can't have our cake AND eat it!
Mark,
Westerners think they can marry whomsoever they like, and further, they think that marriage is not important. When they have kids, it can be in wedlock, or increasingly outside it.
And once the children come along, many families ignore religious training. Another mistake!
"And once the children come along, many families ignore religious training. Another mistake!" - Always
Yes, but (sorry about the buts, but-:) given the chaos and downright chicanery so prevelent in the world at large, where to begin to chose is in itself a puzzling quandry. The established church, of any denomination appears to most thoughtful minds, to have totally lost the plot, and lost it long ago; where to begin becomes a problem.
While church attendance is down, which the secularist's gleefully point to the demise of Christianity, the truth may be a very different picture, for I wonder just how many lost souls are out their, holding their councils to themselves. Our elites, the movers and shakers, whose perceptions are governed more by what the 'figures' tell them, than by any genuine evaluation of the real picture. To explain this in a humorous way -
Statistics are like bikinis, in that they both show a lot, but cover the essentials.
There is much profound wisdom in humor.
Bld:
Mark,..We cannot blame women for the desire to be "liberated," what is missing is the proper valuation of family life.
The desire to be liberated from what? Domestic duties? How liberated have women truly become? It seems to me that many women have traded in one form of bondage for another!
The most educated of them have, it's true, found satisfaction as highly-trained doctors and barristors, etc. But for every one of those, there are so many others who just have to slave away at the supermarket check-out! How liberating is that?
At least years ago, women did not have to go out to work. They would be kept by their husbands.
That was not such a bad existence, you know. These days, most women have to go out to work, run the family home, look after the children as best they can (though that isn't easy when a full-time job has to be done on a part-time basis), and in all that somewhere, they've got to try and have a good time. It's asking rather a lot of them!
The divorce rate is much, much higher than it would otherwise be because such a life puts such strains on the relationship.
And perhaps worst of all, the birthrate is at an all time low simply because women no longer have time to have babies and fulfill their nurturing/mothering rôle.
But you say that women have liberated themselves All I can say is this: Thank God I'm not a woman!
Marriage within one's society is one thing, confinement within a traditional marriage where one is expected to remain silent or speak only on women's issues or not at all as often was the case, is another matter.
As in all liberation movements, the desire to throw off shackles and breathe freely with abandon, put women in the same mode as men, a place that is often dirty, ugly, boorish, and violent. Many women long to return to the home, but can not because men have decided that women's liberation also freed them from the unhappiness of boring or incompatible relationship which the law decreed could not be broken in divorce. (Do you remember reading about those days?)
Even in the West, "till death do us part" was remedied more often than not through murder, as the marriage could only end through death. I agree that the free-and-easy sexual lifestyle of modern men and women is distasteful and dangerous for society and for offspring, yet the strict confinement of the past created as much pain and violence as does today's. The difference is that personal and marital difficulties are played out in the open as few choose to keep their own counsel and reveal details which, in the past, were not fit to print nor could they be the subject of polite conversation.
Scapegoating is normal when cultures and societies are on a downward spiral. A stable family unit is important, but will not solve all of the ills of society. Lack of faith could be a reason why men and women choose to grit their teeth and buck up in a relationship, even though they are extremely unhappy. Many relationships were maintained only because of the fear of Heavenly retribution if broken or if the parties strayed.
Egocentric parents existed in the past, but they usually had the use of the extended family to give emotional support to children left adrift by parents that put their own happiness before the needs of children; unhappy parents can do no good for their children.
Why are Western couples often unhappy? Could it be that they expect too much from their relationship? Their heads are often filled with the ridiculous notion that a spouse can meet all needs. Sometimes they do, but more than not, the husband or the wife needs get what they need from family and friends. This does not mean infidelity, but sharing and bonding with others, such as in a social or intellectual group as the spouse usually has different interests.
Those completing traditional marriage within the emirates know what their marriage is: a union of two families, not a union of individuals as we see marriage or relationships in the West. Are they happy? Probably not, as happiness is not a requisite under Islam. Submission is the only the requisite.
Will their culture flourish? Will ours die out? The emirates aren't burdened by multiculturalism and choice. Their culture will probably remain exactly the same, while our will change. All change is stressful and, not necessarily for the better. But sometimes it is. Without change there can be no innovation, no progress, no improvement.
Go back to "the good old days"? If one closely examines the good old days, they weren't that good, only familiar and predictable.
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