The wedding party was still underway at the family’s home in Roubaix when the groom came down from the bedroom complaining that his bride was not a virgin, the paper said.
The groom went to court the following morning and was granted an annulment on the grounds that his bride had deceived him on “one of the essential elements” of the marriage.
The bride acknowledged that she had led her groom to believe that she was a virgin when she had already had sexual intercourse, and did not oppose the annulment, the report said.
The lawyer for the husband, Xavier Labbée, defended the annulment, saying it was justified by the bride’s deception, not her sexual history.
“Quite simply it is about a lie,” he said. “Religion did not motivate the decision . . . but it is true that religious convictions played a role.”
The preacher of a large mosque in the northern city of Lille, where the case was tried, also denied Islam played any role.
"Virginity is not a necessary condition for marriage" in Islam, Amar Lafsar said, although the religion encourages Muslims to practice chastity before marriage.
"They're free," he told RTL radio. "They're in a country of law and liberty. Each is free to respond or not to the message."
But France's Minister for Women’s Rights, Valérie Létard, said she was “shocked to see that today in France the civil law can be used to diminish the status of women”.
Prominent feminist Elisabeth Badinter said the courts should defend Muslim women, not pressure them.
"The end result will be that some Muslim girls will rush to hospitals to have their hymens sewn back together again," she told France Inter radio. “The sexuality of women in France is a private and free matter."
On the other hand, Rachida Dati, the Justice Minister who has Moroccan and Tunisian parents, said the law had actually served to protect the bride.
“Annulling a marriage is a way of protecting the person who perhaps wants to undo a marriage. I think this young girl wanted . . . to separate quite quickly. The law is there to protect vulnerable people,” Dati told the Times.
Requests for annulments have risen sharply to nearly 2,000 a year in France, but experts could recall no case involving non-virginity.
Muslims make up about eight per cent of the population in France, which has vigorously defended its secular system and banned Islamic headscarves in the civil service and in state schools. |
