SANAA (Jalal al-Sharaabi)
The Yemeni Interior Ministry said Sunday that it would not investigate a Jewish bride who eloped with a Muslim man then converted to Islam so she could marry him, to the shock of her relatives and clan.
Liah Saeed al-Naeti, 20, deserted her Jewish husband and eloped with a Muslim, who she married last week. Immediately after her Muslim marriage, Naeti annulled her Jewish one.
A portrait of a Yemeni Jewish family. Like Muslim women, Yemeni Jewish women cover their hair The bride took her clan by surprise, dumping Jewish hubby Haroun Salem, from the northern governorate of Sadah, a week after their marriage on June 30 and eloping with Abdel-Rahman al-Huthaifi, a Muslim with whom she was in love but who the family rejected on religious grounds.
The runaway Jewish bride married Huthaifi last Wednesday after she converted to Islam in Sanaa in the presence of a group of Muslim preachers.
Unprecedented wedding celebrations with fireworks and a procession of dozens of cars led the newlyweds to the groom's house where neighbors gave them a very warm welcome.
The Yemen Observer reported Saturday that Naeti's father, Saeed bin Saeed al-Naeti Naeti, gave his youngest daughter -- Liah's sister -- Barakha Naeti, 18 in marriage to a Yemeni Israeli Jew, who moved to Israel in 1994, on condition that the couple immediately relocate to the Jewish state.
Barakha's quick marriage came on the heels of her sister's elopement suggesting the Jewish family's attempts to avoid further controversy. |
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Angry Jews Yemeni Jewish women at a Jewish wedding The Muslim wedding celebrations were condemned as Yemeni Jews criticized Naeti's elopement and subsequent conversion as a violation of all personal and religious rights.
"She did not convert out of conviction," Yehia Yusuf, Yemeni rabbi, told Al Arabiya. "Her conversion for marriage is not real," Yusuf added suggesting Naeti was abducted and forced to marry a Muslim.
Upon Naeti's elopement and prior to her marriage, the Jewish community filed a report that she was kidnapped from her husband's home. Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujur ordered the interior minister to prepare a report on her disappearance.
"We were waiting for the report and suddenly we heard the news of her marriage," the interior ministry told Al Arabiya. |
" She did not convert out of conviction. Her conversion for marriage is not real " Yehia Yusuf, Yemeni rabbi Naeti's Jewish wedding was high profile, attended by many state officials and held in in Sanaa's Tourist City where the government gave Jews a residential complex after they received death threats in Sadah and Amran.
Social interactions between Yemen's Jews and Muslims are limited and although in Islam only men can marry Jewish (or Christian) women, inter-religious marriage is a sin in Judaism.
There are around 338 Jews in Yemen with 45 families in northern Amran and a total of 67 people in Sanaa who immigrated from Sadah two years.
(Translated from the Arabic by Sonia Farid) |
