Karzai urges nation to avoid lavish weddings

KABUL): President Hamid Karzai has urged the nation to adopt simplicity in performing all ritual functions and avoid throwing lavish wedding parties, saying the practice has left poor families buried under debt.

“Instead of wasting money on unnecessary things, it can be used by the groom and the bride for future needs,” Karzai said in a radio address to the nation on Friday.

The president said though living conditions of the countrymen had improved over the past few years, still millions of families lived under the poverty line.

He said marriages were being celebrated with simplicity in other countries, even in developed ones, as compared to Afghanistan.

Karzai said it was un-Islamic to serve lavish food to wedding guests and had a bad affect on the economic condition of families concerned.

The president urged the nation to carry out limited expenses on marriages and launch joint efforts at discouraging the trend of luxurious wedding parties.

Religious scholars should come forward and highlight the matter in the light of Islamic teachings, the president said, adding media could also play its role in this regard.

The justice ministry has introduced a new bill which would restrict the number of guests at a wedding party to 300 and limit spending on each guest to 250 afghanis.

“Wedding parties have become like a competition to display wealth and influence,” an official of the ministry’s civil law department, said.

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