{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Cupid with a beard: Teheran takes time off from fighting ISIL to - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/-/434750/2734550/-/ef8dsc/-/index.html

Cupid with a beard: Teheran takes time off from fighting ISIL to

It would be reasonable to think that Iranian state's plate was more than full.

Teheran has to deal with a plethora of issues in its troubled neighbourhood: The Islamic State insurgency — prompted in large part by Sunni states wary of Shia Iran's growing power in Iraq — is refusing to die, despite being under feverish assault from an alliance of strange bedfellows; Iran's Huthi surrogates in Yemen are being pounded by Arab aerial bombardments underwritten by the Saudis; it still has to play stone-faced poker with the West to ensure the sustainability of a nuclear agreement that may or may not hold.

In all this, the ayatollahs in Teheran look like they are crossing a minefield, in which luck may be as important as skills.

It's lucky for Iran that the Israelis have shown themselves to be foolishly stubborn in their dealings with Washington over Palestine, and Ben Netanyahu's obvious contempt for Barack Obama's concerns has not helped the latter to want to appease the former. Otherwise Iran's nuclear deal would have been dead in the water, ab initio.

Against the ISIL, Iran is part of a cat-and-mouse alliance in which well-entrenched foes have come together to fight perhaps the only thing that could ever bring them together — a barbaric and brutal force from hell that seems to hold a weird and uncanny fascination for young scholars from Western academia.

So, to say that the Iranian state must be very busy would be an understatement. But then, how does it find time to meddle in affairs of the heart by organising a matchmaking website targeting lonely young people looking for prospective spouses? But yes, that's what the government is currently doing.

Recently, a minister responsible for youth in the Teheran government announced the setting up of a website,hamsan.tebyan.net to deal with the apparently bothersome divorce rates in the country, now estimated to be at 22 per cent of all marriages and mainly affecting thirty-somethings.

It's understood that in a very conservative society, boys and girls don't mix so easily, and discovering a suitable match based on personal knowledge and appreciation is a challenge. Okay, but should a government overburdened with all those issues above wade into Cupid's territory when there exist private websites that do just that?

According to the BBC there are more than 300 such websites.

No way. The Teheran authorities, associated with a certain beard and turban, hardly approve of these websites, which may perhaps allow such licentiousness as sex before the knot is tied: All sex has to be halal.

It is expected that at the time of her wedding, the bride will be a virgin, though the groom could be anything but. Do not ask why, because that is the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.

But there's nothing that the mullahs cannot fix, and for this, too, there are remedies for the more impatient. Some sites allow for temporary liaisons that may last any length of time from 30 minutes to 99 years, the only requirement being that such a contract be entered into in the presence of a cleric. Under this system, called "sigheh," there is no paperwork, and only the approval of a mullah will do.

It's a device meant to allow young men to have sex outside matrimony as well as married men interested in pleasure without the obligation to take a second wife. It's of course for men only.

Women who are caught engaging in a little pleasure-seeking of their own are likely to be flogged or stoned to death in public. Happily, it's reported such medieval penalties are hardly imposed in our day and age.

In India, home of the arranged marriage, liberalisation is taking the route of more and more parents engaging in some consultation with their sons and daughters and trying to reach some sort of a consensus on the suitability of a suitor or suited.

But the Iranian move is quite novel, seeing as it involves a government, and one not short of something to do.

But, as they say, if there's something urgent you want done, give it to the busiest person around.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com

Cupid with a beard: Teheran takes time off from fighting ISIL to - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/-/434750/2734550/-/ef8dsc/-/index.html

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