September 23, 2013

"Kuwaiti preacher Mubarak al-Bathali ruled recently that marriage depicted on television is considered valid and real."

"His ruling was based on a Muslim hadith, a saying by the Prophet Muhammad."
In this hadith, Muhammad defined three issues as pivotal and serious even if used jokingly: Marriage, divorce, and freeing a slave. "This hadith shows intent has no central part in these three matters," said the preacher, who also ruled that a woman who is married cannot depict a character getting married on television.

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is what happens when fundamentalist religionists have their way. The control creeps to every aspect of life and when laws back up the religion, secular people will find themselves losing freedom. Of course Islam is far more dangerous than Christianity or Judiasim, and the controlling of a population by the dictates of any particular religion is not what this country stands for, is it?

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

The obvious question -- which seems to have occurred to at least one actor, judging by the article -- is whether the same goes for married men. I don't see why it would not.

tim maguire said...

So if the Cairo ballet puts on a production of the marriage of Figaro, the female lead must be played by a different woman each night, but by a different man only every fifth night.

George M. Spencer said...



When I lived in Saudi Arabia (Riyadh, to be precise, the Garden City) a local man tried to impress upon me how enlightened his nation was. You see, Muhammad outlawed infanticide. This was his proof. I kept thinking, "But...but...that was 1,400 years ago."

traditionalguy said...

So that is why so many stars have left their spouses for a newbie actor or actress they romanced with in a movie script.

It's so easy to fall in love, especially when the co-star is Warren Beatty or Elizabeth Taylor.

Deirdre Mundy said...

That explains why Kermit and Piggy are married! (See: Muppets Take Manhattan.)

Moose said...

Boy someone tell Rock Hudson - he'll be surprised.

Unknown said...

Industrial Grade thinking.

MadisonMan said...

So someone who can't tell the difference between make-believe and reality is trying to burnish his bonafides so if he's ever caught in a besieged mall, he can walk free.

Coward.

Pettifogger said...

Michelle Dulak Thompson asks whether the same applies to men. Probably so, but with far less consequence A man need only say "I divorce you" three times. The woman has to wait until he gets around to it and, in the meantime, submit to him.

I've met people with narrow outlooks on life, but I've never met anyone who could hold a candle to such as this imam.

richlb said...

Actually, they would just have to follow it up with a movie scene involving a divorce to get back to square one.

Cedarford said...

When I lived in Saudi Arabia (Riyadh, to be precise, the Garden City) a local man tried to impress upon me how enlightened his nation was. You see, Muhammad outlawed infanticide. This was his proof. I kept thinking, "But...but...that was 1,400 years ago."

==============
If you read Mohammed's life story, he came from a brutal culture that lived by an austere pitiless tribal code that he greatly moderated with Islam. He was a reformer. Much of what he did stands out as quite enlightened compared to what his enemies practiced.
A lot of what we think is objectionable now about Islam was objected to as far too liberal and far too charitable to others by the Moon worshippers and Jews of 650AD. And many things Muslims do we find objectionable were not in Mohammed's teachings but came from reactionary scholars and mullahs making rulings, or Hadiths, after his death.

Your Saudi acquaintance is correct. But Saudis can get quite flustered and defensive when it is mentioned that the Prophet treated women close to him as equals, was supported by his wife and he business he never interfered with. And that accounts of non-Muslim travelers to Arabia said early Islam counseled women to dress modestly, but none of the women were in veiled hajib attire or worse, burquas. That BS came much later.
Nor was Sharia law as oppressive on Dhimmis as it later became under later dynasties.

tim in vermont said...

Did you ever wonder why all of the marriages in Shakespeare are offstage? Same reason. A ceremony was binding.

tim in vermont said...

I guess it is easily enough remedied by saying "I divorce thee" three times after the cameras stop rolling.

William said...

What's the reading on gassing children and shooting pregnant women?

rhhardin said...

Goffman says that a kiss in drama is not taken as a real kiss but an acted kiss.

But sexual intercourse counts as real on stage or not.

He is silent on ankles showing.

Rich Rostrom said...

There were similar rules in Europe back in the day. It was illegal to depict a wedding ceremony. I know that in several famous operas (e.g, Lucia di Lammermoor), the characters sign a contract instead.

Christy said...

What would the ruling be if all the characters were Hobbits? Or Djinns? Or swans?

Big Mike said...

Forward! Into the 12th century!

(The motto of good Muslims everywhere.)

Bob Boyd said...

I don't know about TV marriage, but did you know that if you put Bacos on a TV dinner they become real bacon?
If you are Muslim, don't try this at home.

cassandra lite said...

He obviously read the Atlantic Monthly cover story: Dan Quayle Was Right.

YoungHegelian said...

@Cedarford,

That BS came much later.
Nor was Sharia law as oppressive on Dhimmis as it later became under later dynasties.


I must agree with you on this, and I think, for Saudi Arabia, at least, the villain is King Saud. He worked to make the source of tribal unity and Arabian national identity an uber-rigorous Salafism, "more Catholic than the Pope", so as to speak. He wanted, as newly-minted keeper of the Holy Shrines, to sell his nation as the spiritual center of the Ummah, a position that became open in a big way after WWI when the Young Turks abolished the Caliphate.

Other Muslim countries come by their hard-assedness in different ways, of course.

Gahrie said...

The obvious question -- which seems to have occurred to at least one actor, judging by the article -- is whether the same goes for married men. I don't see why it would not.

Doesn't apply. Men can, and are often expected to, marry multiple times.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

tim in vermont,

Did you ever wonder why all of the marriages in Shakespeare are offstage? Same reason. A ceremony was binding.

Were gay marriages binding in Elizabethan England? You do know that all the female roles in Shakespeare were originally played by boys, yes? I don't know when actual actresses entered theater in England, but it was past Shakespeare's time.

Steven said...

Michelle Dulak Thomson -

You don't see why it would not?

A woman who is married cannot have a second husband under Islamic law, but a man is perfectly allowed to have more than one wife.

So under this ruling, a married actress who participates in a depiction of a marriage (with a man of any status) has committed a transgression against her husband akin to adultery. On the other hand, a married actor who does so (with an unmarried woman) has merely perfectly legally married a second woman.

Bill said...

I suppose, to take al-Bathali seriously, that the license requirement does keep unintended marriages from appearing formally valid.
The marriage must be properly officiated, but no actor, after saying "I do" per the script, wants the person at the alter to say "surprise, I'm a minister".

It still is void as much as Groucho's sanity clause contract, as the parties did not not intend a marriage, but the license keeps things clean.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

A meaningful religion is a religion which is: 1. "interesting" and 2. "giving."

tim in vermont said...

"Were gay marriages binding in Elizabethan England? "

LOL, I knew that was one of those factoids living in my brain I shouldn't trust. D'oh!

Paco Wové said...

"they would just have to follow it up with a movie scene involving a divorce to get back to square one."

What if they filmed it, but it got cut out during editing?