Wedding ceremony in Malaysia used to be crammed
during the school holidays. Nowadays, it
is held on weekends.
In the Malay society, wedding reception is
generally held separately from the marriage vows ceremony (akad nikah). The Americans tend to do it concurrently. I used to attend wedding ceremonies of some
Christian friends when I was in the United States. The marriage vows and the reception were held
concurrently.
In Malaysia, I have attended many marriage vows
ceremonies since the last decade or so.
Most of these went without any drama.
This was not always the case, though.
When I was a boy, the marriage vows ceremony was
something dreaded by the groom. The vow
itself is simple enough, but many grooms somehow could not recite it
properly. For the vow to be valid, the
two appointed witnesses must declare that it is valid. This is not something that the Malays, being
Muslims, take it lightly. Invalid vow
would invalidate the marriage. If
marriage is not valid, then the couple cannot live as husband and wife
lawfully.
Technically, it would take nothing more than a
fraction of a minute to take the vow, for it entails only a simple declaration
of accepting the bride in marriage with the stipulated dowry. But the problem in those days was that some qadis (the officials who perform the
ceremony) and the witnesses insisted on the vow being recited exactly the way
they wanted it, and all within one breadth.
If the groom stuttered, then the vow was not considered valid. Even if they did not stutter, but could not
complete it within one breath, it was still considered invalid. Then there were some semantic issues which
complicate the matter further.
Worse, before taking the vow, the already very
nervous groom would be tested about his knowledge on a few basic Islamic
rituals. Furthermore, they would generally
be asked to recite a few basic recitations, especially those recited during the
prayers. By the time the grooms went
through this little ordeal, their mind went blank. Thus, what should have taken a fraction of a
minute often went into hours. I heard of
cases whereby the ceremony had to be temporarily postponed, to allow the groom
to regain his lost mind after taking a short break. One ceremony in my village had to be
postponed to the next day, because the groom never recovered his senses.
Partly to address this issue that marriage course before
the matrimony was introduced in the 80’s, and is continued till these days. The purpose of the course is not only to
prepare the couple about what to expect after marriage, but also to educate the
groom about the marriage vows. Since
then I never heard of a groom “shitting in his pant” during the marriage vows
ceremony. In most marriage vow
ceremonies I attended these days, the groom managed to get his vow validated
with only one recitation.
The Americans, and I suppose other Western
countries, do not seem to have this problem.
During the marriage vows ceremony, all the groom and the bride need to
say is: “I do.” Their ceremony appears
to be real marriage vows ceremony,
for the bride and the groom must take their vows to love and support each other
through thick or thin. In the Muslim
marriage vows, or more properly the aqad
nikah, it is more like an offer and an acceptance. The groom will be offered the bride in
marriage for a stipulated dowry, and the groom must declare his
acceptance. The bride, meanwhile, does
not need to do anything.
Technically, it should have been quite simple and
straightforward. And as far as I can
ascertain, it is simple and straightforward during the time of the Prophet. In those days, the aqad nikah would consist of the father (or the guardian) of the
bride offering the groom his daughter in marriage with a stipulated dowry, and
the groom should declare his acceptance.
The ceremony was not generally performed by the appointed official
(qadi), but by the father or the bride’s guardian.
Among the Malays, the matter is institutionalized
to make it more complicated and poses quite an ordeal to the groom. It seems that to perform the marriage vows
ceremony, one has to be of a certain virtue.
In most cases, being a father and a guardian is not good enough.
During the time of the Prophet, however, the issue
about the guardian (wali in Arabic,
the one with the right to give bride in marriage) appears to be rather simple. According to Muhammad Qutb in his book, Women Around The Messenger, when Umm
Sulaym, the mother of Anas, wanted to get married to Abu Talhah, she asked her
son, Anas, who was not yet reaching puberty at that time, to marry her. And the young boy Anas married her mother to
Abu Talhah. No doubt Anas was a man of
virtue, and was considered among the leading companions, but when he married
her mother off, he was only a boy.
This is probably an extreme example of simplicity,
and probably an isolated event rather than the rule, but generally speaking,
the acceptance of marriage offer was rather simple then. The groom only needed to declare that he
accepted the marriage of so and so with the stipulated dowry.
In any case, the strict requirement on taking the
marriage vows appears to be largely a Malaysian phenomenon. Years back, when I was in the U.S., I also
attended marriage vows ceremonies among Malay students who got married
there. The taking of vows over there
somehow appeared to be very simple.
When one of my housemates got married, his ceremony
was conducted by a Sudanese clergy, who conducted the ceremony in Arabic. My housemate who was taking the vow did not
know Arabic, and the Sudanese clergy did not know Malay. When the clergy pronounced one word, he
stopped so that my housemate can utter that word. Next he moved to the next word, and my housemate
uttered that word, so on and so forth until the whole sentence was
completed. It took a minute or two to
get the whole thing completed, but somehow the marriage was deemed valid,
although the whole recitation within one breadth thing was not adhered to.
My housemate who did not know what he was uttering
when taking the marriage vows in Arabic, requested that the vow be done again
in English, and it was done. No one
raised eyebrow. It was simple in the
U.S., even for the Malays.
Still, the marriage vows ceremony for the Malays in
Malaysia are relatively easy. They do
not have to go through the difficult rites of passage like some tribes in
Africa and other less developed societies, if what we watch on the television
is true.
And more importantly, they do not have to go
through what Prophet Jacob went through, suppose the Biblical story is
accurate. As we are told in the Bible
(Genesis 29), Jacob served his uncle Laban for seven years in order to marry
her cousin Rachel, the younger sister of Leah.
When he completed his time, he asked his uncle to give Rachel to him in
marriage, as had been agreed. To his
dismay, he discovered that it was Leah who was in bed with him during the
wedding night.
Furious, he confronted his uncle for cheating on
their agreement. The stipulated
condition to marry Rachel was already rather onerous. Jacob had to spend seven years shepherding
his uncle’s sheep in order to marry his beautiful cousin, only to discover
after the wedding night that it was his homely cousin who was in bed with
him.
His uncle Laban merely replied that it was not the
custom of the people in that country to give the younger daughter when the
older one was still unmarried, and if Jacob wanted Rachel, he had to serve
another seven years. Since it was
Rachel whom Jacob desired, not Leah, the wily uncle managed to get another
seven years of free service from his nephew.
At least the Malay men do not have to go through
such an ordeal.
