RAS AL KHAYMAH, United Arab Emirates — The wedding lights sparkled, a brass
band played the national anthem and the banquet was fit for a king. But as
Rashid al-Kabali and his friends put on their ceremonial wedding cloaks for the
event this month, the grooms were stoically aware of the battle they were waging
for Emirati identity.
Mr. Kabali was among 47 grooms marrying that evening in an all-male mass
wedding ceremony in the parking lot of a convention center. (The brides would
celebrate in separate ceremonies a few days later.)
It was a curious scene, but one with deep social implications. In this nation
of five million, of whom only about 10 percent are native citizens, the battle
for cultural survival begins with “I do.”
“This is about preserving our ways and our culture,” Mr. Kabali said, as he
scanned the grooms seated in a row. “We must marry within our society as our
ancestors did, or we will lose our way.”
The United Arab Emirates, by most measures, is a model of Arab development
and growth. Foreigners continue to stream in, seeking riches and making the
country one of the world’s fastest growing, with a projected economic growth
rate of 14 percent this year. Citizens, too, have benefited from a benevolent
government that provides work, living stipends and countless other benefits.
The rapid growth has also taken a toll on Emirati culture, seen most clearly
in the numbers of Emiratis marrying outside their nationality and their borders.
Divorce rates, too, have skyrocketed, to an estimated 46 percent in one study.
Native Emiratis “are 10 percent of the people here in the country,” said
Obaid Rashid al-Zahmi, director general of the Emirates’ Marriage Fund, which
organizes mass weddings. “If we don’t encourage these people to get married and
to have children, we will disappear.”
But traditional marriages here can be prohibitively expensive: $20,000 to
$50,000 for a representative affair, many grooms said, what with guest lists
that typically run from 1,000 to 2,000. And that does not even include a dowry
and furnishing a house. (The house itself is provided by the government.) Men
often end up taking out loans to cover the expenses, putting themselves in debt
for years.
For middle- and lower-middle-class men like Mr. Kabali, 27, who earns about
$2,000 a month as a policeman, the costs of marrying a local woman can be
prohibitive. To avoid the expense, many Emirati men have chosen to marry
foreigners, or to postpone marriage.
In response, the government some years ago introduced the all-male mass
wedding, a variation on the traditional Arab custom of segregating men and women
in separate rooms during a wedding. In addition, it established the Marriage
Fund, which now throws in as much as $20,000 to help defray costs for men who
marry Emirati women. It also capped dowries at $5,400 and offered free
counseling and therapy to help couples through those difficult first years.
Those who marry non-Emiratis do not qualify, nor do men who have been
divorced. The grant is paid in two installments, half before the wedding and
half several months later, provided the couple are still together. Since the
program was started in 1992, mass weddings have proved popular, with the number
of applicants increasing to 4,862 in 2004 from 3,547 in 1993. The government
budgets $70 million a year for the Marriage Fund. There have been more than 70
mass weddings to date, ranging in size from 4 to 300 grooms.
Yet some academic experts here, pointing to other social shifts that are
undermining marriage between citizens, doubt that the mass weddings will reverse
the erosion of traditional Emirati marriages.
“The increasing intermarriage between national men and nonnationals is more
related to the society opening up, getting more modern and more exposed,” said
Rima Sabban, a sociologist at United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain.
Emirati men who travel or study abroad, for example, often marry women they
meet overseas. Men have more freedom to marry outside the society, and they are
discovering dating, too. And as women earn advanced degrees and enter the work
force, their aspirations are shifting, and they are delaying marriage.
“When women seek to get educated, they don’t think of their marriage
prospects and take years to study and miss on the chances of getting married,”
Ms. Sabban said. “Usually, males in a traditional, male-dominated society prefer
not to marry women who are more educated or paid more than them.” For grooms
like Bader Muhammad, Hair Abdullah and Saif Muhammad, all childhood friends, the
mass wedding proved a catalyst to marry. When the men saw announcements for the
wedding months ago, they and three other friends collectively decided to marry,
Bader Muhammad said. Their families found them brides, they completed the
religious wedding ceremonies and they attended the event ready to show off to
the community.
“When we heard about this, we decided to take part in it together,” Bader
Muhammad said. “All six of us grew up together and we wanted to do this
together.” The men said they planned to go to Malaysia on their honeymoons — but
separately, they emphasized.
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