BEIRUT — Nay El Rahi has been fighting for women’s rights in Lebanon for years. One of the historic demands of the Lebanese feminist movement is the legalization of civil marriage in the country. As a researcher, Rahi has also studied this topic throughout her career. So when it was time for her and her partner to tie the knot, they knew the only way to do it was through a civil union. But since civil marriages are not allowed in Lebanon, they had to fly to Cyprus.
“I wouldn’t have gone to Cyprus if I had been able to do that here, because we are from different religions and we are both seculars,” Rahi told Al-Monitor. Marriages in Lebanon are traditionally performed through a religious authority, depending on the religious sect. For interfaith marriages, one of the partners has to convert to the faith of the other spouse. In a country where “religion is politicized,” according to Rahi, civil marriage is a very controversial topic.
That's why when three newly elected members of parliament coming from the protest movement raised their hands in favor of it, religious authorities were outraged. Right after the May 15 elections, Sunnis Halime Kaakour, Ibrahim Mneimne and Waddah Sadek positioned themselves with civil marriage during a debate on Lebanese television. Just hours later, Sheikh Hassan Merheb, deputy inspector general of Dar al-Fatwa, the highest Sunni authority in the country, started attacking them. Merheb accused them of “not representing Sunnis” and called believers to “spit in their faces” if Kaakour, Mneimne and Sadek didn’t reconsider their positions.
“I got a lot of pressure and threats because of my support for civil marriage,” Kaakour told Al-Monitor. “They used mosques and religious men against me; they even tried to incite the people to be violent with me,” she added. The subject is a “taboo, a red line” in Lebanese politics. It has always been. Despite multiple attempts to pass a law that allows civil marriage ceremonies in Lebanon, with the first bill being introduced in the early 1950s, this landmark still seems very far away.
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