BEIRUT — Kholoud Sukkarieh and Nidal Darwish weren’t interested in making legal history when they got engaged last year. She’s a Sunni Muslim and he is Shia, and like many interfaith couples in this part of the world who don’t want to convert, they planned to get married outside their home country. Then, at a photography workshop, Sukkarieh met a lawyer with a cause and an intriguing proposal: Would she and her fiancé be interested in using their wedding to do something radical?
Last November, they tied the knot before a willing notary, becoming the first couple in the history of Lebanon to marry in a nonreligious ceremony. In January they embarked on what promises to be a long, fraught challenge to the legal status quo, using an obscure provision of old colonial law to demand that the Lebanese government officially recognize their marriage.
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As is typical of both the globe and this writer, while briefly mentioning that israel also only recognizes internal marriages performed in a relgious cerimony, the article concentrates on muslim horror stories. It fails to mention that in israel, not only are you are forced to undergo religious marriage, but also that the chief rabbinate determines who is or is not jewish. Thus, if it determines that you are jewish, then you are required to have a jewish wedding no matter what you prefer. And, if it determines that you are not jewish, then you are not permitted a jewish wedding and, thus, are often denied the right to marry at all because you can't or don't want to have a muslim or christian wedding. Further, your ability to inherit is also determined by relgious law. Biblical restrictions on marriage are applied in Israel. So, for example, a Kohen may not marry a convert to Judaism. Similarly, chidlren of relationships that the rabinate deems to be adultrous or incestuous relationships are restricted as to whom they can marry.
Of course, to have described these and other religious tests on the right to marry would besmirch the propaganda that israel is both a democracy and free of state decreed religious tests for even the most fundemental personal life decisions.
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