This Reuter’s article tries to discuss a practice of “temporary marriage” in a positive light. The writer, Souhail Karam, presents the Muslim practice of “misyar” as good for “men of reduced means”, as well as for men looking for sex without commitment. Isn’t that a male dream? I mean, you aren’t really supposed to be able to get that sort of arrangement, are you?

Apparently all you have to do get a “lite” marriage that, in the words of a female Saudi historian, “reduces marriage to sexual intercourse” is obtain a misyar contract. It’s so difficult to marry a woman, especially in Saudi society, where you have to spend, as the male, all this money for the ceremony, for a dowry, and for a home. And then — as if that all weren’t expensive enough — if you get a divorce, the man has to pay alimony and child support. It’s just not fair!

Sure, some women scholars (who are women, and so really can’t be very good scholars) say that the whole business takes away the woman’s rights. Shame on her for thinking she had any rights to begin with! At least with a misyar you only have to see her when you want to.

Look at the internet ads for Saudi men and women seeking misyar marriage — they are so alike the “lonely man seeking a lonely woman for casual sex because I’m this desperate” newspaper ads that you might find in Western newspapers.
You see! Western societies and Islam really can find common ground!

Karam does an excellent job of following the journalistic rote of starting your piece with a quaint anecdote to get your reader on the same page as your subject, follow that up with what you actually want to say, and then come back to the anecdote to provide a nice, tidy ending to your piece, leaving your reader wanting just a bit more. In this case we get to hear about Khaled, who wanted one of these “lite” marriages (meaning lite on commitment, financial obligation, responsibility, and consideration for all parties involved) and got one. Then he got the woman he half-way married pregnant (oops!), and so she looked really bad and somehow convinced him to live together “for real”. Then they got used to each other and are going to live “happily ever-after”. That is, until he tires of her (and the kid).

Of course, if he does get tired of her, he could just get another misyar marriage for a little bit to cover his needs for some no-strings-attached hankey-pankey.

This is not intended to be a rant on the practice that was blessed by some Muslim clerics. Rather, I am galled at how the writer of this article can apparently see this whole practice as fine and dandy. Some people might think it bad enough that many women in Saudi society have little to no rights, but this guys seems to think it’s fine. The underlying idea behind the article, which was put under the heading of “Oddly Enough News”, is that it’s fine that 80 percent of misyars end in divorce. That sort of thing is not a problem. In fact, let yourself go hog wild, and eschew the consequences! Morality is bad. We can’t judge others (unless, of course, they’re asking us to consider their morality), so it’s not so bad that women without husbands in Saudi society “are stigmatized”.

Instead of condeming another repressive practice of a culture that tramples on women, we might as well highlight a practice that allows that culture to persist in the same manner but manages to encourage freedom from morals — at least for one sex!