BIZARRE CUSTOMS

I almost didn't post this as it seemed beyond the bounds of possiblity. However a quick internet search seems to confirm this practice..

She was known as a gentle and pious woman who had been married to a textile merchant in Baghdad's most exclusive neighborhood. But the war, friends told the man, had left her widowed and destitute. Two months ago, the man approached Ahmed with a proposal: her body in exchange for $15 a month, plus groceries and clothes for the children.

"Don't worry," he told her. "It's not a sin."

Ahmed's hands shook and her face reddened with shame as she signed a one-year contract for a muta'a, a temporary marriage recognized only by Shiite Muslims. Like many Shiite practices, muta'a was banned under the Sunni Muslim regime of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Now, hundreds of Shiite women who lost their husbands and livelihoods in the war that toppled Saddam are resurrecting the practice.

"What I did was not wrong, but I regret this marriage with all my heart," Ahmed said. "It's ruined my relationship with my children. My son calls me a bad woman, a prostitute. They have no idea I did this for their sake, so I can have money to spend on them."

Clerics who support muta'a say the practice offers sexual and financial freedom to widows. Iraqi women's advocates, however, speak out against what they call the economic enslavement of women prevented by custom from working outside the home. The practice occurs in such secrecy and with such a social stigma that no one can give a firm figure on the number of muta'a contracts that have been signed since the war ended last spring, though estimates stretch into the low thousands...

Muta'a emerged at the time of Prophet Muhammad, who sanctioned it as a way to ensure the financial security of widows and divorcees during times of war. Later generations of Islamic rulers disagreed on continuing the practice. Sunnis condemned it as outdated and easy to abuse, while most Shiites maintained that banning anything the prophet allowed was heresy, Islamic scholars said...

"After the war, this type of marriage increased because of the number of widows, especially those with children," said Hazem al Araji, a religious authority and keeper of one of the Shiite holy shrines in Baghdad. "How else can they support their families?"...

"He is not obliged to pay her anything more, and he can't have sex with her until the money is paid up front," al Shadidi said. "Sometimes the payment is only symbolic; other times it's a kilo of gold. Only widows are desperate enough to accept this arrangement. It's done in secret, but it's not forbidden."

Around the corner from al Shadidi's marketplace office, 26-year-old Ahmed Risouli scanned the crowd outside his gold shop for women in mourning clothes who dared to meet his gaze. Risouli said he "can't remember how many times" he's entered into a muta'a and boasted of a surefire way to lure cash-strapped widows.

"From first sight, I can tell whether a woman will accept muta'a or not," Risouli said. "I'll give her roses and invite her to expensive restaurants. When she's weak, I kiss her and we talk about the terms of a muta'a. The only problem I have with this marriage is that the woman always falls in love with me. I tell her, `For G-d's sake! It was a deal for two days!'"

I suppose it goes without saying that societies in which women are suppressed are societies in which such predatory practices will survive.