More than 2,200 Yemenis have tied the knot during the past month at a series of mass weddings funded by Saudi businessmen and various charities, Arab News reports:

"Each groom is given 65,000 Yemeni rials ($290), a gold necklace, a ring and clothes. Another 30,000 rials ($133) and a meal for 300 is granted to the bride's family. Eligible grooms must be employed and have to be unmarried."

Mass weddings of this kind are not unusual in the Arab countries (I first wrote about them almost 10 years ago). Obviously they are a boon for the impoverished couples who take part, but I do feel rather ambivalent about them. For one thing, they are usually organised by conservative religious elements – the same types that we find in the west promoting marriage as a cure for most of our social ills.

Also, mass weddings can never be anything more than a palliative. The underlying problem is that marriage has become prohibitively expensive for many Arabs while, at the same time, anyone who remains unmarried is generally regarded as a social failure.

The average age for marriage is rising, while the taboo on sex before marriage (together with the obsession with female virginity) leads to all sorts of frustrations. Behind that is the dowry problem and the attitude that marriage is an economic partnership between two families rather than the culmination of a love affair.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 14 May 2010.