Iraqi Widows Attacked For Desire To Remarry

For some women in some countries, a man is their lifeline to society. He provides economic stability, social security and protection for the family.

Men are massacred during war. They die leaving behind widows who have no way of making a living. In a society where women are only wives and mothers, working is often impossible.

Their only option is to remarry.

Widows are traditionally cared for by their adult children or their brothers-in-law. When adult men are in short supply, there are too few men to take on the burden on providing for too many women. This was the situation when the Prophet Mohamed (Peace Be Upon Him) suggested men take up to four wives.

In present day Iraq, government charities are working to find these women husbands. The BBC reports:

The [charity] director, Hana Badrani, told me she has more than 2,000 widows on her books, with a total of 7,000 children whose fathers have been killed. Most of the widows do not have any qualifications to help them get work. They’re trapped.

There are concerns that these matches are financial transactions, that these men are just buying themselves women, made cheaper by the stain of war. ABC reports:

… Others reason that it is cheaper to marry a widow than an unmarried woman.

In the case of unmarried women, the woman’s parents often ask the man to provide a new house or a quantity of gold to his wife. Such demands are less likely to come from widows’ families, they say.

Many women in Iraq believe that this should give women the opportunity to stand on their own two feet. To build a new, woman-friendly world out of the rubble.

“For her dignity as a human being,” Hanaa Edwar, an Iraqi campaigner for woman’s rights said. “Women should feel they are capable of doing what men can do. They can protect their children without a man in the family.

“In this society where there are tough tribal traditions,” she said. “We have to try to build a new look for women in Iraq.”

Her high minded ideals are praiseworthy, but I have to wonder whether this the practical answer for these women. The BBC’s Hugh Sykes interviewed one woman who does not believe she can make it on her own.

I also met Umm Fatima – a young widow who started to sob when I asked her how her four children were coping. Their father Ahmad was shot dead nearly three years ago by men wearing military uniforms. He’d simply been refuelling his taxi cab when they killed him.

Umm Fatima has lost a husband and the family income.

It is hard to feed children’s stomachs with ideals. Unfortunately these women need husbands to provide for them because many cannot provide for themselves. Maybe that is not the way it should be, but that it is the way it is now.

The fact is that marrying a stranger is the best choice these women can make. It could be that they’d rather work. They might all aspire to throw off tribal traditions and run their own lives. But these are not possibilities unless the society in Iraq changes from the ground up.

While I am saddened by the situation that these women are in, I am sickened that people are looking at this situation and blaming these widows. They need help, not censure.