In a sad showcase of a widening gap, ardent Sunni and Shiite Muslims continue to bicker who is the most virtuous and honorable when they criticize each sect’s offshoot and obscure forms of marriages — not widely practiced by mainstream Muslims.
Sunni Muslims loathe and deplore some Shiite Muslims for practicing Mut’a or pleasure marriages, that is when a man and woman can marry for as short as one hour. They believe it is “legalized prostitution” and finds no ground in Islamic principles, which stipulate the intent of marrying a person should be out of a perpetual nature and that the two should be tied as further in time as possible.
Shiite Muslims, who criticize many other forms of oddball cases of marriages practiced by some Sunni Muslims such as Misyar, where a man can marry a woman by not having to live with her or spend money on her but can walk to her place to consummate the essence of this marriage – a sanctioned sexual relationship between two people.
For Shiite Muslims, they feel why fingers are pointed at them, when they Sunnis have type of marriages that feed their sexual appetites.
But that’s not what majorly irks the Shiite Muslims, who suffer by the hand of Sunni hardline takfirist, who see Shiite Muslims as apostates.
What Shiite Muslims loathe and despise is the so called Jihad Al-Nikah — where a woman offers her body to ISIS militants fighting in Iraq and Syria.
In 2013, Tunisia’s Interior Minister Lutfi bin Jidu said Tunisian women who left to Syrian for Jihad Al-Nikah returned home from Syria pregnant.
Despite Jidu’s statement, controversy over the existence of such marriage continues till our current day.
This August, social media saw a big storm following a statement by Nawfal Al-Akoub, mayor of Iraq’s second largest city Mosul, which is still occupied by ISIS militants since 2014.
Akoub inflamed the wrath of many Iraqis especially Sunni Muslims when he talked about stateless children born out of Jihad Al-Nikah from Iraqi women and ISIS militants in Mosul. He talked about it as a social dilemma post-liberation of Mosul from ISIS goons.
The storm against Akoub twirled and twirled and almost knocked him out of his positon but for many especially people of Mosul, his credibility is gone for shaming and disgracing the honor of Mosul women.
Many Sunnis, who loathed Akoub, see Jihad Al-Nikah, as a propaganda tool initially proliferated by the Syrian regime to discredit Syrian rebels, who are mostly Sunni Arabs, as well as Sunnis in Iraq.
Many other Sunnis do not even see Jihad Al-Nikah as an acceptable form of marriage in Islam.
With the Akoub storm quieted down, another hurricane erupted.
On Sunday, the London-based Asharq Al-Awast – which reflects more of a Sunni perspective – published a highly controversial article claiming that a World Health Organization (WHO) official is waring Iraq of “unplanned pregnancies” in the holy city of Karbala during Arba’een mourning rituals, subtly highlighting that Muta’a marriages were a regular occurrence.
Arba’een commemorates the 40 days after the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammed.
The article did create a whirlwind reaction: Asharq Al-Awsat editor in Iraq resigned, WHO attacked the newspaper saying its action was “completely erroneous and unethical,” and angry Iraqis rejected the daily’s apology!
A Baghdad court has also issued arrest warrants for the papers’ two correspondents over a false news report accusing Iranian pilgrims of sexually harassing Iraqi women.
NOW PLEASE LISTEN
At the end of the day, these type of marriages do not take place with regular Muslims girls be it Shiites or Sunnis as both hail from cultures that top and place virginity or purity as a number one criteria especially in IRAQ.
These women also come from cultures that punish them if they dare to lose this fine hymen prior a traditional marriage through a horrendous practice that still continues in the
– which by the way we can all wholeheartedly prove – called honor killing.
Anger coming from both Sunni and Shiite Muslims show that both have the same values in spite of their differences. Both want their women pure and virgin, and both want to keep whatever obscure type of marriages exclusive for men practiced with women – who can manage to trespass the red line and lose their hymen.
If religion is man-made, then these type of marriages are EXCLUSIVELY for men’s pleasure. Leave women – Shiite or Sunni – out please — and if the international community was MAN ENOUGH – then they would bring all YAZIDI girls back!
From Baghdad To New York 