Syria Today | Faith and Marriage

Faith and Marriage

Words Dalia Haidar
Photos Adel Samara

“I would never ask any of my friends or acquaintances about their religion or sect,” Zaina, a 27-year-old from Damascus, said. “Their sectarian background doesn’t make a difference to me.”

But when Zaina, who comes from a conservative Muslim family, found out her boyfriend was Christian, it suddenly did become important.

“My first reaction was shock,” she said. “I immediately considered breaking off the relationship because I knew it would be impossible for us to get married.”

Civil marriages granting couples of different faiths legal recognition of their unions are not available in Syria or any Middle Eastern country. Although Syria is ruled by the secular Ba’ath party, both the Christian and Muslim communities continue to adhere to strict religious and social norms. While Syrian Muslims and Christians are famous for living in harmony together, when a relationship develops to the stage of marriage attitudes freeze over.

The issue of interfaith marriage was highlighted in the television drama series Laisa Saraban (It’s Not a Mirage), aired during Ramadan last September. In the series, when Hanan, a Christian woman, decides to marry Jalal, a Muslim, she knows the price will be high. Their marriage remains such a secret that neither family knows about the union until Jalal’s sudden death, when a pregnant Hanan is left to face her conservative family and society alone.

The drama was the first to tackle the sensitive issue of Christian-Muslim marriage in Syria as the central story in a complete drama series and succeeded in promoting discussion about what has long been considered taboo in conservative society.

“I focused on Muslim-Christian marriage because I believe that through tackling the most controversial mixed couple in our society I would symbolically be including other sectarian mixed couples in one religion,” Fadi Koshakji, the series director, said.

Religious law dominant
Much of Syria’s family law is strongly influenced by Islamic law which doesn’t recognise mixed marriages. According to sharia law, a Christian woman can keep her faith when she marries a Muslim man. However, a Muslim woman cannot marry a Christian unless he converts to Islam.

Zaina’s boyfriend promised to change his faith so they would be able to register their marriage. But for many, this is an unacceptable solution.

Khalil Ma’touk, a lawyer and civil society activist, said the most popular option for mixed marriage couples who do not want to change their faith is to wait until they have children and file a case at the Islamic court to register the children as belonging to their parents. This gives their union some technical recognition, although the court still classes the couple as being unmarried.

Legal options for Christians are more complicated. While a number of Christian sects do not recognise a marriage between a man and a woman unless both have been baptised, exceptions exist. For Catholics, Religious Canon No.1125 recognises a mixed faith marriage as long as the Catholic partner declares he or she is prepared to remove the risks of defecting from the faith and makes a sincere promise to do all they can to ensure their children are baptised and brought up in the Catholic church. Both partners in the marriage must be informed of these commitments.

Raymond Girgis, a priest at the Latin Church in Bab Touma, admits that it is “very difficult to fulfill these conditions in the Middle East as the sharia controls the marriage laws”.

“This endangers the faith of the Catholic party, because the Muslim party will definitely apply the rules of Islam in the family,” he said.

Push for change
For Rouba, a young Muslim woman married to a Christian, the solution is simple – introduce civil marriages.

“There should be civil marriages in Syria to protect the rights of the married couple,” Rouba, who asked us to use a different name, said. “In the beginning the young couple might be very excited about getting married and they might be prepared to make sacrifices, but as soon as they face problems they will start to feel weak and begin thinking that they have given up too much.”

Rouba and her husband registered their marriage in a European country so as to avoid having Rouba’s husband change his religion. Unlike most mixed marriage experiences in Syria, their decision was supported by their families.

“My family supported me strongly which helped me be more confident about my choice,” Rouba said. “They did not give any relatives a chance to discuss my marriage with them.”

After eight years of marriage, the couple vacation in their home village with their son and daughter. People admire their experience and respect their choice. Under Syrian law, however, they are still considered unmarried.

Activists, both in Syria and around the region, are campaigning to have civil marriages recognised. Last month couples in Lebanon held mock wedding ceremonies to protest against the absence of secular marriages in their country. In Syria, a group on the social networking site Facebook has gathered 900 members in support of introducing civil marriage.

“Civil marriage presents the respect of choice and the acceptance of the other,” one member, identified as Manal, wrote. “What would this bring to Syria? Harmony, [fewer] honour crimes, less emigration.”

Attitudes divided
Local activists acknowledge, however, that the acceptance of civil marriage in Syria is a long way off.

“I don’t think there is any impetus for issuing a law allowing civil marriage in Syria,” Ma’touk said. “So for those who want to stay in the country, we can always find new ways to bypass the current laws to make mixed marriages possible.”

Koshakji strikes a more optimistic note. Although he was strongly criticised by both conservative Muslims and Christians for his series, he also received much positive feedback about his programme and the solutions it proposed.

“This assures me that there is still hope and our dream is still legitimate,” he said. “This dream is not only about mixed marriages, but also about removing the issue of sectarian identity from people’s minds and replacing it with the human and non-chauvinist sense of national belonging.”

For Rouba, religion remains a marginal issue in her household that only needs to be addressed when the couple’s children start asking about it.

“I will raise my children the way I was raised,” she said. “I will never mention any religious issues to my children such as the differences between sects. I will raise them as well-behaved human beings only.”