Couple's 'Vow Renewal' Was String of Insults

(Oct. 29) -- It should have been one of the happiest days of their lives. The European couple had decided to renew their wedding vows in the tropical Maldives islands in the Indian Ocean and paid $1,300 for the ceremony to be conducted in the exotic local Dhivehi language.

But their enjoyment has since turned to embarrassment, after a subtitled YouTube video revealed that the Islamic blessing the lovebirds received was in fact a string of insults. "You are swine," the hotel employee declared, as other staff members struggled to contain their giggles. "The children that you bear from this marriage will all be bastard swine. Your marriage is not a valid one."


The couple -- who are thought to be either Swiss or French -- hold their hands up in prayer, and glance happily at each other throughout the 15-minute ceremony, blissfully unaware of the words' true meaning. "You fornicate and make a lot of children," the celebrant continued. "You drink and you eat pork. Most of the children that you have are marked with spots and blemishes." At one point the camera shifts to the official-looking wedding document the man, identified as Hussein Didi, is supposedly reading off. It turns out to be a list of regulations for hotel staff.

Didi appears to run out of slurs part way through the ceremony, and so indulges in a spot of freestyling, throwing in mentions of bestiality, sexually transmitted diseases and "frequent fornication by homosexuals."

And when the happy couple move down the golden beach to plant a coconut palm, a symbolic act intended to mark the rebirth of the marriage, the mocking continues. "Don't look at the breasts!" the cameraman says as the bride leans over in her white wedding gown to drop the sapling into the sand. "My beard has gone gray watching those things. I have seen so many of them now that I don't even want to look any more when I see them."

Officials in the Maldives have reacted furiously to the video, which they worry could damage the islands' main source of income: tourism. Agence France-Presse today reported that celebrant Didi had been arrested together with another hotel employee. "We started investigations and treat this as a very serious matter," said Maldivian police spokesman Ahmed Shiya.

During his weekly radio address, President Mohamed Nasheed said he was "disgusted" by the event and described the behavior of those involved as "absolutely disgraceful," according to Maldivian news site Minivan News. He pledged that the government would leave "no stone unturned to ensure that an incident like this never happens again."