Iran battles to promote merits of marriage
By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Mashhad
Published: March 9 2009 17:31 | Last updated: March 9 2009 17:31
After a day-long journey on a rusty train, Afshin and his fiancée, Fahimeh, along with 120 other couples, reach the holy northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad to celebrate their state- organised mass wedding.
The young couple say they are blessed that their first trip together is to the shrine of Reza (765-818), the eighth Imam of Shia Muslims, and the most popular honeymoon destination in Iran.
The trip is part of a plan started more than a decade ago by the office of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, to encourage “student marriages”.
The organised weddings have brought together 40,000 students every year, out of a total student population of 3.5m.
These are the children of the 1979 Islamic revolution, products of the baby boom of the 1980s when Iran’s rulers were determined to strengthen the “Islamic army” by encouraging more births.
But now one of the regime’s biggest challenges is the army of educated people – not fighters – who are coming out of universities.
Today’s youth – 60 per cent of the population is under 30 – are not as eager for marriage as their parents. Better education, aspirations for independence and difficult economic conditions have driven up the marriage age for men from about 21 in the 1970s to 26 now, and for women from 18 to 25 during the same period.
Mohammad-Javad Ali-Akbari, the head of the National Youth Organisation, recently warned that Iran was facing a “marriage crisis” and too many people were having sex outside wedlock, which is illegal under Islamic law.
Insisting that this predicament was “more dangerous than the enemy’s bombs and missiles”, the organisation said that up to 15m of Iran’s population of 70m should be getting married but are prioritising education and jobs instead. It warned that the marriage age in big cities was nearing 40 for men and 35 for women.
Conscious of the challenge, Iran’s leaders have been scrambling to encourage marriage. Ayatollah Khamenei’s sponsored mass weddings are the most prominent initiative. But Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the president, also launched a special marriage fund three years ago that offers cheap loans for new couples.
While boys and girls are segregated until the end of high school, they are allowed to attend mixed classes at universities, which worries the clerics. Most importantly, girls, who now account for 65 per cent of the university student body, have increasingly high expectations from life, and want more than finding a suitable husband.
Many young men, meanwhile, cannot afford to marry. The unemployment rate among educated people is 25 per cent, and the average salary is $500 (€395, £362) a month. Soaring housing prices, meanwhile, have forced young people to seek second and third jobs to pay the rent.
Afshin and his bride are a more traditional couple. He says marriage is essential for his mental health, keeping him “away from sins” and from illegal sex.
“I am concerned about economic issues but I’m not afraid,” says Afshin, 27, a psychology student. “I don’t have a job, I don’t have an apartment and neither my family nor my wife’s family can financially support us.”
Fahimeh, 24, did not go to university and believes a woman’s role is what conservative leaders of the revolution stressed three decades ago in the constitution – to help “restore the vital and much-appreciated task of motherhood”.
Ahmad-Reza Dehghan, a representative of Ayatollah Khamenei who attends the mass wedding, says marriage should turn into a “national concern” to meet the youth’s “emotional, sexual, intellectual and social needs”.
The ceremony in Mashhad is simple. Brides wear modest, floral chadors – the head-to-toe cover – and light make-up, in what they say is a symbolic celebration that challenges the idea that weddings have to be costly.
At the end of the ceremony, each couple is promised a gold coin worth about $200 from Ayatollah Khamenei and can expect another $100 in cash from Mr Ahmadi-Nejad to be offered later. Students are given $4,000 by the government and an $800 loan from their university.
Afshin will use his share of the loans to pay the deposit on a 50 square metre apartment in a lower-middle class area in eastern Tehran. Fahimeh says she will help her family pay the dowry. The happy couple say they are looking for a simple life. “This tendency towards modern ideas among young people has shaken the marriage institution,” complains Afshin.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
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