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Agreement aims to reduce the high cost of weddings that has kept several men from getting married
By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief
Manama: Tribe leaders in Samtah in southwestern Saudi Arabia have agreed on a ceiling for dowries to be given by grooms to their brides.
Under the accord, no family should ask for a dowry of more than 50,000 Saudi Riyals from a groom. The amount is reduced to SR30,000 if the bride had married before and is a divorcee or a widow, Saudi daily Al Sharq reported on Monday.
The formal agreement aims to reduce the high cost of marriages that has kept several men from committing themselves to get engaged.
Samtah headman Abdul Aziz Al Tayyar praised the deal reached by the tribe leaders in their bid to raise awareness among members of the community about easing marriages and limiting the social and economic damages resulting from the inflated dowries asked by brides and their families.
Marriages are delayed, the number of spinsters is increasing, newly married couples are overwhelmed with crushing debts and many Saudi men end up taking foreign wives, Al Tayyar warned.
Islam requires the payment of a small dowry as a token of care and compassion between the bride and groom and their families.
However, and although in Islamic marriages, the dowry is purely symbolic, just like white dresses in Western weddings, many status-conscious families in the Gulf regard it as a source of prestige or as an insurance policy payable to the wife in case of divorce.
Traditionally, the dowry of a Gulf woman comprised of silver jewellery, but brides today prefer gold and cash sums, often inflated by demanding families.
Extravagant dowries and hyper-inflated bills from lavish wedding celebrations, ornate garments, lavish receptions and dinner banquets have often led young Gulf men reluctant to fall into debt to turn to other countries to find brides, mainly in Egypt, Syria and Jordan among Arabs, India, Pakistan, Thailand and The Philippines.
However, Gulf women have regularly complained that by taking foreign wives, the men effectively contribute to the increase in the number of spinsters in their countries.
Seeking to curb the phenomenon of men taking wives from abroad, authorities have imposed conditions to restrict international marriages. They also sought, alongside religious societies and community centres, to organize mass weddings to help couples alleviate the burden of wedding costs.
Women make up 49.01 per cent of the 20 million Saudis, and according to official figures, 97.2 of the Saudi women who got married were less than 32 years on their wedding day.
The figures by the Central Authority for Statistics say that 227,860 Saudi women were past 32 years and were not married.
© Gulf News 2017
