" FRANCE HAS reacted with shock and outrage to a decision by the high court in Lille to annul a marriage because the bride was not a virgin.
The case involving a Muslim couple has revived fears that France's second religion is eroding the country's secular tradition.
Two years ago, a 30-year-old French engineer, a convert to Islam, married a 20-year-old Muslim nursing student in the northern town of Roubaix. She had assured her fiance that she was a virgin.
The last of 500 wedding guests were still drinking mint tea in the hotel reception when the bridegroom returned, distraught because there were no bloodstains on the sheets of the marital bed. He contacted his lawyer the following morning to file for annulment. His bride later admitted she had had sexual intercourse before marriage.
"He felt tricked," the groom's lawyer, Xavier Labbée, a specialist in family law, told Le Parisien. "He couldn't imagine building a lasting union based on a lie. The court understood."
The tribunal based its decision on article 180 of the French civil code, which says: "If there was an error about the person, or about the essential qualities of the person, the other spouse may demand the annulment of the marriage.""
That's a story from France, a country that usually keeps religion and state separate; the pressure from an increasing Muslim population there will bring more of this sort of legal conflict both in France and here.
For an interesting article on the difference between the integration of immigrants into France and the UK take a look at Theodore Dalrymple
I am waiting to see if the BBC cover this story, somehow I doubt it.
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