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PARIS - A court ruling that annulled a marriage because the bride was not a virgin has sparked heated debate in France, reflecting the dilemma of a modern European society in the face of Muslim traditions.
Defenders of France's secularism rose in fury after a court in Douai ruled that, because the bride had lied about her virginity, there had been "a mistake about her essential qualities" and the marriage was void.
Critics accused the judiciary of placing young Muslim women at risk of misogyny and stigma. Justice Minister Rachida Dati, who initially supported the ruling but was forced to backtrack, is under pressure to quit.
The couple are of Moroccan background, an engineer in his mid-30s and a student nurse in her mid-20s whose names are being kept secret. Their marriage was arranged by their respective families, according to press accounts.
During their two-year courtship, the young woman was too scared to tell her family she had lost her virginity, so she lied to her husband-to-be.
On their wedding night, as the two celebrating families were drinking mint tea, the husband, thunderstruck, came downstairs and announced that his new spouse was not a virgin. Incensed and humiliated, her parents dragged her home.
The next step was the law.
The husband demanded an annulment and raised the stakes by saying he would go up to the Court of Appeal to press his case.
Fearful that the case, if contested, could drag on for years, the wife agreed to a deal by which both sides accepted that the marriage was void as a contractual basis for it - her assertion that she was a virgin - had been undermined.
"I first saw my client in August 2006, about three weeks after the marriage. She was in a state of shock, completely broken down, almost unable to speak and in tears," said her lawyer, Edouard Mauger.
"She was not forced into this deal. She acquiesced in it because it provided a technical get-out ... in spite of everything, my client was very happy because this decision enabled her to recover her freedom. It was a relief."
That, apparently, was what prompted Dati - herself of Moroccan and Algerian background - to back the judgement last week. "Annulling a marriage is a way of protecting a person ... a way of separating swiftly," she said.
That was to reckon without a backlash. This week Prime Minister Francois Fillon declared he did not want the ruling to become a precedent. Dati thus filed an appeal, as the judgment had "caused a sharp debate in society".
France is not the only country to have tensions between modern law and Muslim traditions. There have been similar conflicts in Britain, the Netherlands and Germany on such issues as headscarves and wife beating.
Legislators are demanding new laws on marriage to prevent any recurrence. Feminist groups have elevated Muslim demands for virginity to the same level of threat to French women of immigrant background as genital mutilation, forced marriage and "honour" killings.
"The ruling was a fatwa striking against the freedom of the women of France," said Sihem Habchi, president of the group Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Downtrodden).
Public debate is a mixture of outrage, sympathy for the woman's desire for a quick exit from the marriage and pleas not to hold distorted ideas on Islam. Some of Arab background also say the old-country demands for virginity - reflected, in the showing of a blood-stained bedsheet on the wedding night - are retreating in modern France.
Others say that, on the grim high-immigration housing estates, young toughs are likely to want to have sex with as many women as possible before marrying a virgin.
To preserve their virginity but keep their man, some girls choose to have only oral sex or be sodomised. Girls who have their lost virginity swap tips on how to con the family or spouse-to-be, for instance by hiding a tiny bottle of blood, whose contents are splashed on the sheet.
Another option is surgery to repair the hymen. How many of these furtive attempts at "revirgination" are carried out in France is unclear.
