Personally, I’m happy with the one wife I have. In fact, I doubt I could handle two of her; while she’s a wonder, I love her more than life and we’re very happy together, she is, shall we say, forceful.
But it’s not one world, as the late, great Paul Harvey used to say. The now-defunct Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr (sounds like an American rapper, doesn’t it?) was planning to marry his four mistresses, as Israeli intelligence has now uncovered.
Israeli spy agencies have uncovered information about Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr’s plans to marry his four mistresses over the phone, according to a report.
The New York Times reported this week about its investigation into how deeply Israeli spies had penetrated Hezbollah leading up to the assassination of its top leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as other commanders in the Iran-backed terror group.
Israel announced in July that its forces had killed Shukur during what was, at the time, a rare and provacative strike in Beirut.
Un-aliving Hezbollah leadership – scratch that, Hezbollah anyone – is always worth doing, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are pretty good at doing it. In this case, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. But when it comes to marrying, it seems this guy was doing it on the remote-work model:
Leading up to the strike that killed Shukr, Israeli intelligence agencies had identified four of his mistresses, according to the Times.
Shukr – apparently uneasy about his affairs – earlier this year reached out for help from Hashem Safieddine, one of Hezbollah’s highest religious clerics, to have the four women wedded, two Israeli officials and a European official told the Times.
Safieddine, in turn, reportedly arranged four marriage ceremonies conducted over the phone.
In Western culture, a marriage isn’t generally considered binding until it is, well, consummated. That’s not something one can do over the phone. As far as the four mistresses, it’s been a while since I read the Qu’ran (yes, I have actually read it), but as I recall, it allows four wives, although there is a cautionary note noting that it is difficult to deal fairly with more than one. In this culture, I’d argue that the men can’t even deal fairly with one, but that’s an argument for another time.
Societies that allow this sort of thing tend to run into trouble. Why? Because they tend to produce a lot of young men who, due largely to hoarding by older, richer, and/or more influential men, have no prospects of marriage and family. Take a lot of healthy (at least, physically) young men, ensure that they are sexually frustrated, and remove any prospects for a wife, home, and family, and you have a recipe for radicalization. And isn’t that what we are seeing now across the majority Muslim nations?
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But here’s the real fun part of all this:
The intimate and sometimes mundane details of Shukr’s personal affairs point to how closely Israeli intelligence agencies managed to track the moves of Hezbollah’s leadership.
By releasing this information, Israel is telling Hezbollah, “You no longer have any secrets. We know what you’re doing. We are watching you, and we can revoke your birth certificates any time we please.” And that is a powerful message.
This seems appropriate.
