PESHAWAR: At least 50 couples tied the knot during a mass wedding ceremony in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Wednesday, even as a countrywide ban on big gatherings including weddings remains in place to stem the spread of coronavirus infections.
Relatives and guests attend the wedding ceremony of 50 couples who tied the knot in a mass ceremony in Landikotal, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Aug. 5, 2020. (Photo courtesy: Shinwari Welfare Organization)
Family members and guests gathered in the hundreds at the wedding venue in Landikotal in Khyber district, sans face masks and with little or no social distancing measures in place.
“We held the program without any fear of the disease,” said Hajji Aslam Shinwari, the chief executive of the Shinwari Welfare Organization (SWO) which organized the ceremony, adding that the virus had not affected Pakistan’s remote tribal districts.
Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, of which the tribal districts are a part, has reported 34,359 infections and 1,215 deaths to date.
Weddings are often a huge financial outlay for Pakistani families, with age-old customs such as the payment of hefty dowries in the form of jewelry, clothes, and money still widely practiced across the country.
Shinwari said he had established SWO with the help of some friends three years ago to support poor couples bear wedding costs in the tribal areas and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“Before I formed this organization, poor people used to come and ask for Rs4,000 or more to help them arrange marriages,” he said. “I then decided to completely finance their weddings.”
School teacher Musa Khan, who tied the knot during Wednesday’s mass ceremony, said he had been jobless since March when schools across the country were shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak.
“I and my parents pray for a long and happy life for Shinwari and his organization because I would have been unable to get married for another 10 years without his assistance,” he told Arab News.
Religious scholar Maulana Amanuddin lauded the mass wedding as a “healthy trend” in accordance with Islamic laws.
“The most blessed marriage is the one with the least expenses,” he said, quoting a widely known saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
