Tempus 2009 v 37

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Lebanon's mixed marriage - Not at home

Couples from different religions still cannot marry in their own country

WHEN a stellar Lebanese couple—a television talk-show anchorman and a rising female politician—recently got married, they had to tie the knot in a registry office in Cyprus. That is because Malik Maktabi, of TV fame, is a Shia Muslim, whereas Nayla Tueni, a member of parliament, is a Christian. Her father, an influential owner-editor murdered four years ago, was Greek Orthodox, her paternal grandmother a famous Druze poet. Perhaps oddly for a country with 18 officially recognised religious groups and fewer than 4m people, Lebanon has no provision for civil marriage.

It is the religious authorities that oversee marriage, divorce and inheritance. Couples from different religions, atheists and those who do not belong to one of the officially recognised religions— for instance, Buddhists, Hindus, Bahais and members of unregistered Protestant groups—cannot marry in their home country. Even for couples fortunate or pragmatic enough to share a religion, marriage overseen by the religious authorities has drawbacks. The Maronite church, Lebanon’s main Catholic one, forbids divorce. If a Sunni man dies, a Sunni widow may inherit only half of his estate.

But though civil weddings are not permitted at home, the government does recognise those that take place abroad. Enterprising travel agents are keen to help people use this loophole by arranging all-in wedding package holidays: “Just say ‘I do’ and we’ll do the rest.” For $1,900, couples can hop over to Cyprus (half an hour by air), where a civil registrar, witnesses and photographer are at hand. The travel agent deals with all the tricky paperwork. The happy pair can sign on the dotted line and be back in Beirut on the same day. One travel agent says he has sold more than a thousand wedding packages since he began offering the service three years ago.

Not everyone is happy, though. Civil-rights lobbyists have long argued that marital status should be determined independently of the religious authorities. Pollsters have found a majority in favour of allowing civil marriage in Lebanon. On Valentine’s Day this year campaigners protested against the law by staging jovial mock wedding ceremonies in a Beirut bar.

Change, if it comes, may be slow. The last serious effort to allow civil unions was in 1998. But campaigners notched up a small victory earlier this year when the interior minister, Ziad Baroud, ruled that Lebanese citizens would have the option of removing their religious-group classification from their national identity cards.