THERE ARE many ways of dealing with problems. Some require laws while others need only awareness, but in Saudi Arabia it seems the easiest way out is to ban the problem from happening. Needless to say, banning never works but it still remains our favorite solution.
Three years ago there was a campaign to dissuade Saudis from marrying non-Saudis. The campaign aimed at enlightening people about the negative aspects of going outside the Kingdom’s borders and choosing a partner. The study deservedly earned the disdain of many at the time. It failed to solve anything that its proponents saw as problems nor did it reduce the number of Saudis who wanted to marry non-Saudis.
This week, I was shocked to see an interview with an official in a local paper. He was speaking about this very issue and the interview began with a denial that the numbers of Saudis marrying foreign women/men had reached “alarming” levels. The official stated that the ministry had put in place measures and guidelines to limit the “negative and harmful aspects of such marriages.”
The interviewer then asked what would be done if someone took the step of actually marrying a non-Saudi without taking official permission. Following are the measures:
* Disciplinary action against the Saudi;
* Not allowing the marriage to be registered as legal in the Kingdom;
* Not granting an entrance visa to the foreigner — either wife or husband — and if the wife or husband are already in the Kingdom, then their residency is terminated.
Heavy measures indeed! One would think that whoever was punished so harshly was a serious and hardened criminal. In truth, he or she is simply someone who tried to live his or her life within his or her rights as a human being. Now I understand and accept that there are procedures to be followed before visas can be issued and residency can be given to non-Saudis, but these things should not encroach upon people’s God-given rights. In several cases, women choose to marry men from abroad and they are entitled to judge for themselves if they are making the right choice.
In our family-oriented society in which a family’s consent for a marriage is necessary, if the man and woman marry with the family’s blessing and approval, that should be enough for everybody. Taking the matters to a higher level than the family concerned and turning the marriage into an international affair that requires official permission is complicating things unnecessarily and I wonder how such can be Islamically justified.
I know of several cases in which women had to wait for years to get permission, even though they had the consent of their families.
To look for a moment at the matter from another perspective, there are many undecided cases in the courts of Saudi women who have filed for divorce from their Saudi husbands. In many of those cases, the women have been abused and sometimes denied access to their children. For whatever reason, many of those cases, involving only Saudis, have not been resolved and it seems that few of those who should are actually trying to find legal ways and solutions.
Some Saudi men have also had bad experiences when they married women from outside the country; for sure, marrying a Saudi is not always guaranteed to work wonders or to result in blissful happiness. At the same time, there are cases in which “mixed marriages” (between a Saudi and a non-Saudi) have outlasted many Saudi-only marriages. It seems that this brings us yet again to an idea that has been sadly prevalent in the Kingdom for some time — that we Saudis are special and different. We are not but we like to deceive ourselves.
I remember a friend who was trying to get permission to marry a non-Saudi. She waited for two years before discovering that the documents were locked in some official’s drawer simply because he thought she should not marry outside her tribe and country. Only by pulling some strings was she finally able to get her papers processed and marry the man of her choice.
Her case has always made me wonder: Why do people need to postpone their lives and decisions for the sake of a man-made law that should not even exist?
