Manama: A senior Saudi religious figure said that women could use newspapers, magazines and social networks to express their wish to get married and to seek marriage proposals.
“The only condition is the truth,” Shaikh Abdullah Al Mutlaq, member of the Council of Senior Scholars, said. “A woman can declare in the media and on websites that she is keen on getting married as long as she does not deceive anyone and these media are trustworthy,” he said, Al Hayat newspaper reported.
However, he warned that women must make sure their declaration does not contain any form of lies or deception and that it will not be used to start forbidden contacts or relations.
Several women said they resorted to social networks to seek marriage after they gave up on receiving direct proposals.
One woman said that she was a 47-year-old divorcee who was forced to live with her brother and his wife.
“My presence in their home is causing tension with my brother’s wife, but no-one has come forward to ask me to marry him,” she said. “I resorted to some of the marriage sites on the Internet, hoping to find someone who will marry me and change my life,” she said.
However, she added that she found that most of the people who used the sites were keen on starting relationships and not on marriages.
Om Mohammad said that she was a widow with five children.
“Unfortunately, all those who wanted to marry men said they could not take in the children and wanted me to keep them away,” she said. “However, I flatly refused and I have of course ended up without a husband. I thought I should contact some of the television stations that publicise marriage offers and I might have a new chance,” she said.
One man, a guard in his 20s, said that he could not find a woman who accepted him as a husband.
“I did ask several women to marry men, but they all refused because of my low education level since I studied until the fourth grade only,” he said. “I eventually turned to the Internet and logged into a marriage site. “I was fortunate to meet a divorcee who accepted to marry me even though she was ten years older than I was. Today, we lead a very happy life together,” he said.
