The social politics of weddings in Yemen

Yemen has unique and violent traditions that give a special character to its weddings, which are costly and lavish, especially considering the country’s low per capita income. The weddings involve traditional clothing, knives and guns, which sometime kill people — as happened in Ibb province in September, when a tribal sheikh was killed by celebratory gunfire. That incident resulted in the signing of a popular document criminalizing shooting at weddings. Yemeni law already banned that practice, but the law was not being enforced.

A year earlier, a Yemeni Airways civilian aircraft carrying 150 passengers was hit by a stray bullet fired by wedding revelers as it was about to land near Sanaa International Airport. 

The phenomenon of mass weddings is spreading in Yemen. In October, a mass wedding involving 4,000 brides and grooms took place in Sanaa, without intermixing; the brides and grooms were kept in separate halls, and no camera phones were allowed.

The largest mass wedding in Yemen was organized by the Orphan Foundation for Development and funded by former Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Two years ago, that same foundation organized a mass wedding that was the largest at the time and was funded by the late Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz. The change in funding source is due to the changing regional alliances of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Orphan Foundation is considered to be one of the Brotherhood’s social tools. And the compass of financial flows after the Arab Spring — under the guise of charity work — shifted from Riyadh to Doha.