Buying a Marriage on the Blackmarket

In Oman, and some other Gulf countries, it is illegal for the men who are citizens of that country, to marry women other than those who hold the same passports as themselves. Omani men can only marry Omani women. But there are those who take wives in secret from the government, as in Islam, it is allowed for a Muslim man to marry any Muslim woman regardless of her citzenship. They either found an Islamic and brave Imam who cared more for the religion than keeping his standing job position in the country [as all Imams should be] believing that only God/Allah can make things lawful or unlawful for the Muslims, not countires. If he believes other than this, well, he is not a Muslim, because it is a form of shirk/disbelief in God) to make unlawful something God has made lawful for mankind.

Please Omantel don't block me, this is true.

But most recognized Imams in Oman are cowards. No offense guys, but you are. And some of the ones left over, are creeps.

This post isn't about the cowards. Cowardice I get, I understand it. It is a sign of weak faith but I don't hate on that. Most men are cowards, husbands, even are the same. Omani girls, who don't go against their families wishes to marry the kind of man they wish to, even though it is halal to, ect... Cowardice I can live with, and just pray for ya'll to have your faith and hearts strengthed.

But creeps.

Any Imam (usually in charge of the Mosque's prayers) will know that selling things from the door of the Mosque is not allowed. The Prophet Mohamed (peace and blessings be upon him)said, “The most beloved places to Allah on earth are the Masajid, and the most hated places to Allah on earth are the Markets.” [Muslim] and “Whoever sells in the Masjid, say to them: May Allah not grant success in your sale.”

This is nothing new to people who worship and believe in God, Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

"And Jesus [Muslims call him Isa A.S] went into the temple of God [Muslims call God 'Allah'], and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves..." King James Bible, Mathew 21:12 Making sales or a business out of the Mosque is forbidden. But, some Imams are making a small business out of black market secret marriage. The average cost for a secret marriage in Muscat is 300 OMR-1000 OMR. BTW, my marriage wasn't that secret or black market bought. But a friend's story inspired me for my novel. I'll write it better but concept goes like this.

Couple seeks out an Imam they hear is willing to marry couples in love without Government permission. Imam informs them that he will marry them, but he is going to charge a "danger" fee for himself and the "witnesses" (and he's only willing to have witnesses he trusts. This is more more money than the couple has, more money even than the girl's maher (marriage dowry from the husband to her) though she offers it up to the greedy Imam.

The brave Omani man wanting to marry the girl gets an idea. He says he has the money but will have to drive to get it from the bank machine but the Imam and the witnesses can follow their car after the wedding. Imam agrees and calls his two "witness" thugs and gives the young couple their Islamic marriage document so they can preform hajj together. The Omani man takes his nervous bride and new wife with him in the car and the creepo Imam and his thugs follow close behind. The Omani man makes a salary of 270 rials a month and the girl's maher was one silver ring and a rose in a traditional box, plus 100 rials. They don't have the money in any bank machine.

The Omani man drives a certain way that he is familiar with and hails down an ROP cruiser that is always parked there and makes like he will tell on the blackmailing Imam and beg mercy from Oman's laws from the ROP guys [who probably disdain the law themselves, as many ROP men that I know have secret marriages to Philipino Muslim girls]. The creepo Imam freaks and takes off, afraid of losing his job. The Omani man then asks for directions in a touristy way to the slightly suspicious ROP men. After that is finished he turns back to his new wife and says:

"The Prophet Mohamed sallalahu alahi wa salaam said, "Whoever sells in the Masjid, say to them: May Allah not grant success in your sale."" New wife laughs nervously. "-And don't you think we said that the best way possible?" He grins.

ODE to the old toyota truck

Yes, I know, it was against the law back in the day for us to have owned the above pictured truck. I know it is an Omani-only thing (M, the ROP guy who got it for us back then didn't seem to care much and K, I know the image of my Mother as a crazy Beduoin woman would never have been complete to you if she wasn't zooming around in a truck which in it's previous life had been toting camels). Apparently, Suburban (my fave Oman blogger) from Other Oman wrote this post http://otheroman.blogspot.com/2010/07/on-facebook.html that now the mulkiya for these old trucks can't be renewed, if you are like us, well, foreigners.

I LOVED that truck. Oman just wouldn't have been Oman without it. What is wrong with a white person driving a pick up truck now really? Why is that un-Omani? Here is my ode to our old truck:

ODE TO THE OMANI WHITE TOYOTA PICK UP


You took us to Nakl, up Jebel Akhdar, that wild flight:
The year Mum was swearing at the Christmas lights.
While they burnt out, cheap Indian imports.
And you took us in reckless sport,
Racing the toothless Beduoin man with his camels
In the back for show, strange looking mammals;
M told us this was your past life-
Before you were gifted to a PDO wife-
We got invited to his nephews wedding;
Where we almost married J off, so jetting,
Cruising down Sultan Qaboos highway
After cutting us brutally off, they gave way
Omani men shocked to see driving manual,
Three ladies with wild hair and suits of Chanel.

One OPNO's List of How to Marry an Omani How-tos

Once upon a time OPNO was in love with an Omani man. One she knew since she was ten years old, running down the road with scraped knees and no shoes. He thought she was older, fourteen year old drop out from highschool on his first job- at least his age, because she showed no fear and was inquisitive about things most 10 year old Omani girls were not and said what she was thinking in every social occasion, no matter who she offended, thoughts far too precocious and daring for a 'mere child'. He was intrigued, and confused by her manner of dress, white girl in salwar kameez climbing a mountain with no shoes, unwitting of scorpians. He saved her the first day he met her from a scorpian, and shortly before she left the last time, he saved her from drowning during Gonu.

When she was sixteen years old he naively went to her mother and asked for permission to marry her. The girl was never informed that 'her bestfriend' had done so, at the time daring enough to bet on a life in her country, thinking a familial support structure there would similiar to the one of the Omanese. She was sent away back to the UK, where she always took out an old picture of them together laughing whenever she was sad, sure after all these years that her old Omani friend had married and wishing wholeheartedly that he was happy and laughing still.

Without meaning to one day, a grown woman, she returned to the Sultanate of Oman, holding the old photograph in her memory still. She drew it in charcoal, smudges under her eyes, under her finger nails, in her blonde hair. Chance had it the first man she met that day was the same one who had loved her all those years ago. Neither of them were naive little children anymore though, that thought they could change their worlds simply base don the attraction and comfort they had always known with eachother. She was a woman that would never fit into a box, and he was a man that could rarely get out of the box.

OPNO did not know about the law about Omanis not being allowed to marry non-Omanis, but the Omani man being the man that he was, informed her. Her heart broke in a dozen different ways that she tried to drown in fake laughter one day at Quantab (the day she met Y) professing a hatred for love songs while playing a mad game of football on the beach at the diving center before the sign that "no football", flouting the one law that she could.

She did not eat for two months and her collarbone jutted out, pretending she was okay, laughing off the ridiculousness of it all, and it was only the help of another woman who'd been through the same thing forcing food with commands from the Quran that her behaviour was haraam that she eventually gave up on the Omani man. He pretended to be distand and even was cruel to her, out of love, for he knew she would wait ten or even thirty years for him, and even then, his family would make it impossible, when the laws of Oman no longer did.

She was willing to do so many things. Here is her list for her love of how they could be together if only the law in the country were different and the culture:

1.) I will save the Sultan's life, or protest with a big sign in front of his palace (so what if they shoot me) and maybe he'll be impressed by my bravery, give me an audience, and let me change the law.

2.) We could marry in secret. If I had children, I'd have them in the UK, and the wouldn't have Omani passports, but when you were forty you could marry me legally and adopt them, maybe???

3.) I would wait until you turned 40. I wouldn't care if you married already because your family made you. If you were happy with your wife I would just be your friend and my soul would rejoice at your happiness. If you were unhappy, I would totally love your wife like my sister, and spend all my money giving her all the things that she wants, and take very little for myself but your love and your smile, for they are all I desire of this dunya.

4.) Let me be your beduoin wife. The laws of Oman won't apply out in nowhere if I live in a tent. Bring me water and you when you can and I will have more than I ever dreamed. I am brave enough to have my children with no doctors, no hospitol. My ancestors did it in the dark ages, why can't I?

5.) My friend's joke we could blind you with your cousin's laser pointer or cut off your leg and then the laws of Oman wouldn't count because you are disabled. While YOU might be majnoon [crazy] enough to agree to this, I am not the biggest fan of the idea. And the idiots at the ministry that turned down our application for permission would probably still not grant it, as disabling yourself on purpose is probably against the law somehow. Sighhhhhh...

6.) I could become your maid. But who has ever heard of an upper-class British citizen with a 2000 rial salary working as a maid in Oman? Someone would figure something was out and report us surely. And no children this way.

7.) If slavery weren't illegal I'd take a ridiculous loan from you that I couldn't pay back (even though my bank account far exceeds your five year earnings) and then you would own me and we could live together and not be married. Right? I will write a Shiekh in Saudi for a fatwa. [And she did].

8.) I could be your girlfriend for a week [he never touched her out of respect for her] and marry someone else, pretending he is you for the rest of my life, a sinner and uncontented. Maybe the worst idea ever???

9.) I could not marry anyone at all [opposite of what I need/want] and know you'd do your best to love me like a brother and a friend. Apparently this is the best I can hope for of all my ideas. Yet I hate it the most. And other's tell me it is a sin not to marry, but wouldn't it be a sin to marry someone else anyway, and never in my heart be faithful to them???

10.) I am going to try to be a good woman. You have to promise to pray five times a day, ok? Because I am going to ask Allah if I can be your wife in Jannah [heaven], since I cannot be here on this earth, in this country. We can both raise our children to think differently. This is the best I can do. Nothing else really makes me want to go on but a duty to God and a hope that He'll fix everything one day.

Reading the list again, after hearing it the first time in some odd years [I find my roomate's notebook], rips me to shreds anew, when I remember that day at Qantab, convincing OPNO with all my OPNO might that life does go on, and love is a drawing in our minds we can trace from memory and draw again and again on new paper. Women have become master forgers in Oman, tracing copy after copy of loves found and lost, men the same. That is only one of the stories that inspired the marriage vote on the blog. Maybe it moves you or maybe it doesn't, doesn't matter to me, as I already said, my blog is irreverently biased to my own opinions, and other posts, to other people's opinions.

For those that do care: Did they both marry others? Perhaps yes [she helped him find a woman she thought he would find happiness with and he suggested she marry his bestfriend]. Are they both happy? Well, for what I know they both smile and laugh. But the small circle that knows them deeply, who knows how to read their ticks, can see a regret that they were not born of a different race or caste, a frozen memory in how she stares off into space, and how he changes the subject abrubtly, nodding his head to one side.

Why did they not just run away together you might harshly ask, if they loved eachother so much? Well, like THIS OPNO, both are Omani to the core. And neither could survive long away from the family and friends binding them here. Both are Omani and yet one holds a passport in his hand, and the other, a passport in her heart.

This is for the Omani Readers: the ban on marrying foreigners, your thoughts, and mine

So, if all the Oman blogs could put this out, simply because I am curious for both female and male Omani opinions on the matter, what do Omanis think about lifting the ban on marrying foreigners? I have a poll on the sidebar and wish you’d vote, if you are Omani, because this issue has long affecteded me and my friends (both foreign and Omani).

Right now, as is, unless you have some wasta, marriage to a foreigner requires a few things under Omani law. For an Omani man to marry a non-Omani woman it isn't allowed unless he is has been divorced a few times with children, he is mentally or physically disabled, or he’s over forty. For an Omani woman, if she’s divorced or widowed with children they make exceptions, same if she is mentally or physically disabled.

While one friend TRIED to tempt me with their handsome Omani friend who is quite disturbed and pocessed by an evil Jinn [I think Oman law would totally allow the marriage based on the insanity clause] I kinda held out. I don’t like evil Jinn. It’s kinda a personal thing. Just NOT attracted to creepy scary things that talk to me in demon voices. Yeah. LOL.

Anyways, here are my thoughts. I am a Muslim. In Islam, making something unlawful that Allah made lawful for mankind is ACTUALLY a form of shirk (disbelief in Allah), the kind of shirk the Qu’ran says committed by Jewish and Christian priests in different periods of history. So I don’t think there should be a law saying which country an Omani man or woman can marry from. Kinda because it is shirk, though I DO know the merits of why such a ban was proposed in Oman.

I think the ban should be lifted. But with conditions to preserve the unique culture of Oman:

Conditions being, to preserve the moral culture of Oman, Omani women should only be able to marry Muslim men. This is also in Islamic law. The men should be able to prove they can provide for the woman and be able to fit into her family if they are going to stay and live in Oman.

For Omani men, they should be able to marry Muslim, Christian, or Jewish foreign women, as this is what the Qu'ran says. But it is says ****PRACTICING**** Jewish and Christian women [of which, few will agree to marry a Muslim, because I HAVE practicing Christian and Jewish friends and most don't their kids to be raised Muslims]. So that stripper from Thailand? She doesn't COUNT as a practicing Christian my darling Omani boys. You don't want a bunch of immoral European, Asian, and Western women married to Omani men (as fun as that sounds boys LOL) but it'll totally ruin the culture of your children. In addition to that, Christian or Jewish women would have to sign a clause saying they would allow their children to be raised as Muslims and that their holidays would be celebrated outside of the home without the involvement of their children. [I added this for you PhantomX, cuz that is a valid point, as a Muslim with non-Muslim relatives this is something I will have to enforce when I have children].

These are my rather simple thoughts on the matter. I love Oman, I love the Sultan, and generally love how Islam is practiced here by the Gov.. This is one exeption to that love. I wonder what you all think. If on other blogs, please repost my poll for your Omani readers so they can participate. Thanks!

Story # 1 that inspired this post: http://howtolivelikeanomaniprincess.blogspot.com/2010/07/one-opnos-list-of-how-to-marry-omani.html