Besides...

Besides, just as proposing marriage to a permanently married woman is prohibited, so is it also in the case of a fixed-term married woman; just adultery with a permanently married woman makes her prohibited to the adulterer forever, so also does it in the case of a temporarily married woman; just as a permanent wife has to observe a period of iddah (during which she may not marry) after divorce, so a temporary wife also has to observe a period of iddah after the termination of the agreed period of the marriage or its dissolution.

There is this much difference, that the period of iddah for a permanent married woman after divorce is (the time of) three periods of menstruation, while for temporarily married woman it is (the time of) two period of menstruation or forty-five days. In the case of a permanently married wife, a man cannot, while she is alive, marry her sister. In the case of a fixed- marriage, also, two sisters cannot be married to the same person at one time.

These are some of the relevant principles of temporary or terminable marriage as mentioned in Shi’ite jurisprudence, and our Civil Law has observed them to the latter. We, of course, uphold this law which has the above distinctive features. If our people have, in the name of this law, misused it and are still misusing it, the law itself is not at fault. If this law were nullified, the objectionable practice would not stop; only the form would he changed.

Besides, there would be hundreds of evils that would result from the annulment of this law. We must not launch an attack on the spirit of the law, when we should be reforming and awakening man, simply because of man’s lack of capability and fitness for reform, and then exonerate man and hold the law responsible. Now, let us examine what necessity there is for a law in the name of fixed-term marriage, when there is already a law of permanent marriage?

Is a fixed-term marriage, as the contributors to Zan-e ruz have written, incompatible with the dignity of a woman as a human being, and against the spirit of the Charter of Human Rights? Is not temporary marriage, if it ever was a necessity at all, a necessity of a by-gone era? And is it not true that the contemporary life-style, the conditions and demands of present-day life, argue against it? We shall examine this point under two headings:— a) Contemporary life and fixed-marriage.

b) The defects and evils of fixed-term marriage.