“Each summer, wealthy male tourists from Gulf Arab states flock to Egypt to escape the oppressive heat of the Arabian Peninsula, taking residence at upscale hotels and rented flats in Cairo and Alexandria. Many come with their families and housekeeping staff, spending their days by the pool, shopping, and frequenting cafes and nightclubs. Others come for a more sinister purpose. In El Hawamdia, a poor agricultural town 20 kilometres south of Cairo, they are easy to spot. Arab men in crisp white thawbs troll the town’s pot-holed, garbage-strewn streets in their luxury cars and SUVs. As they arrive, Egyptian fixers in flip flops run alongside their vehicles, offering short-term flats and what to them is the town’s most sought-after commodity – underage girls……….. A summer-long misyar or “visitor” marriage runs from 20,000 Egyptian pounds (2,800 dollars) to 70,000 Egyptian pounds (10,000 dollars). The legally non-binding contract terminates when the man returns to his country. The “dowry” that Gulf Arab men are prepared to pay for sex with young girls is a powerful magnet for impoverished Egyptian families in a country where a quarter of the population subsists on less than two dollars a day…………..Some 75 percent of the respondents knew girls involved in the trade, and most believed the number of marriages was increasing. The 2009 survey indicated that 81 percent of the “spouses” were from Saudi Arabia, 10 percent from the United Arab Emirates……………”

Misyar, the part-time for-sex-only no-commitment marriage is quite common in Saudi Arabia, its birthplace, and has spread across the other Persian Gulf monarchies. It is almost like ‘going steady’ in the West if you get my drift. As I recall, Saudi-style part-time summer “misyar” for-sex-only marriage was made legal (halal, kosher) in Egypt by Al Azhar shaikhs only a year or two before Hosni Mubarak was deposed. I commented on it in a posting here at the time. It was apparently part of, the icing on the cultural shift that Egyptian society experienced under thirty years of the Mubarak regime and his opening of Egypt to Wahhabi cultural and religious influences of his Saudi allies.
Misyar in itself, like the Mut’a among some Shi’as, is not necessarily harmful or criminal. If it is done between consenting adults, except that it is not in this Egyptian case. This report here deals with a more criminal version of Misyar, basically pedophile trafficking in poor underage Egyptian girls. Selling and buying them as sex salves.
Cheers
mhg