France overrules Muslim couple's annulmentMONS-EN-BAROEUL, France ? It was a match made in heaven, and both families approved. The groom was a computer engineer, the bride a nursing student. Children of Moroccan immigrants, they had thrived in French society and seemed at home with its ways.
But on their wedding night, the groom discovered that his bride was not the virgin she had said she was. He stormed out of the bridal chamber. His father, outraged, said the marriage was off. That same night, he returned the young woman to her family home.
The drama in this middle-class suburb of apartment blocks and supermarkets, on the eastern edge of Lille in northern France, could have remained a private family affair ? that is what its main protagonists desperately wanted. But instead, it set off a legal struggle with strong political undertones and an explosion of outrage by media-savvy activists in Paris. In the end, it became a parable for the strain France has encountered in absorbing the more than 5 million Muslims, about 8 percent of the population and growing, who have made this country their home.
As part of a national round of soul-searching, French leaders are recognizing with unusual frankness that the country needs to do more to promote integration of Muslims and other children of immigrants. President Nicolas Sarkozy last week named Yazid Sabeg, a successful businessman born to Algerian immigrants, to head a government department assigned to get more minority candidates into politics and more minority students into the elite academies that turn out France's leadership class.
"We must change," Sarkozy declared.
Full article here.
This one is slightly odd. On the one hand I think it's stupid to require a woman to be a virgin when you marry her. I agree it is also discriminatory as it can't realistically be applied to men. On the other hand in a sense there is a breach of an agreement here, if the marriage was initially conducted under the assumption that she was a virgin. The article doesn't make it clear whether she had specifically said she was or not. What do people think of this one?
Topic: Unusual legal precedent here.