Johan Hari has a must-read article about forced kidnap, mutilation and rape of women in Ethiopia, as practiced for generations – and changing now.
Latest Updates: marriage RSS
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aziz
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aziz
“The Accidental Jihad” – a very odd, praiseworthy but also frustrating, essay from a secularist married to a muslim. Here’s my take on it at City of Brass.
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abunoor
Ayesha Nasir publishes a piece (for Slate’s XX) about being discouraged from reading or discussing her marriage contract before her marriage in Pakistan. I was happy to learn more about problems around the culture of marriage in Pakistan, and I hope people will work for solutions. I don’t know Ms. Nasir’s background, but she makes some statements about Islamic law that I think are confused and although in general she makes it clear she is talking about her own experience and culture in Pakistan at times she seems to be making claims about Islamic practice that are not true universally.
It’s safe to say that although there are many deep problems with Muslim marriage in the United States, the problems are generally different than those in Muslim cultures although I’m sure among some recent immigrants there must be more overlap.
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johnpi
Love in Jordan: ‘Dress Western act Oriental.’
In the corridors of the University of Jordan, young women sway their hips in tight jeans, embracing the latest fashion trend the West has to offer. Their male counterparts seem no less committed to showing off their looks, nor to a deeply rooted urge to catch the attention of flashy girls.
This is one of the few places where young people can mix in a country built on strict gender segregation. Despite the superficially Western influenced culture, many young people express exasperation with the traditional mentality governing most people.
But girls and boys, like in many oriental societies, often break the taboo and engage in a romantic relation. But the fate of most romantic adventures is in the end determined by family more than the lovers themselves.
“This romantic relationship is veiled with secrecy, fear and deception,” admits Ehsan, a fourth year engineering student at the university of Jordan who says he must keep his family in the dark over this relationship if he wants to one day marry the girl.
“My family does not know I have a girlfriend. Her family might kill her if they know,” he said.
….“Some of the young people refuse old tradition and want to make their own choices,” he said. “But this culture needs time to grow.”
In Jordan, the majority of the 5.6 million population is made up of young people, with a ratio of two females to every male.
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johnpi
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, ‘Auntie’ Nazi:
Eager to see white folks reproduce, Gaede is touting her services on Stormfront.org, the leading white supremacist Web forum. “I am willing to act as a go between, researcher, matchmaker, older sister and guide for any WNs [white nationalists] who are looking for a WN spouse,” she wrote earlier this month. “Only email me if you are serious about finding a spouse or long term partner.”
Gaede, who lives in Kalispell, Mont., is currently offering her expertise for free. “I have racial contacts throughout the US as well as the world,” she wrote in a follow-up posting. “I am planning to create a more secure and successful way for WNs to meet by creating a screening process, starting with a questionnaire.”
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johnpi
Al Shabaab flogs one man for flirting, another for having a “secret marriage.”
“One of the young men was found engaging in secret wedlock which is illegal under Islamic law,” Sheikh Mohamed Moalim, a senior Shebab official, said from Kismayo.
“The other one was found seducing a lady alone. Both of them confessed to the charges in front of a court and they were publicly punished,” he said.
The flogging took place over the weekend.
Youths in some Muslim countries where sex before marriage is forbidden and the cost of a wedding prohibitive sometimes resort to secret marriage, known as “Qudbosir” in Somalia and “Urfi” in most Arab countries.
The custom, which keeps the matrimony secret from the couples’ parents and sometimes from another wife, is frowned upon in most of Somalia but has been practised in southern regions.
So by this particular interpretation of the Shariah, its purpose is to prevent those who are too poor to afford a wedding from getting married. And they say capitalists are cruel…
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johnpi
When ‘marrying into a good family’ goes horribly wrong.
Inbreeding prompts outbreak of rare pseudohermaphrodite births in Gaza.
Deficiency of the hormone 17-B-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (17-B-HSD) during pregnancy left their male reproductive organs deformed and buried deep within their abdomens.
At birth, doctors identified Nadir and Ahmed as girls, because they appeared to have female genitalia.
As a result, they spent the first 16 years of their lives dressing and acting like girls.
….There are an unusually high number of male pseudohermaphrodite births in the Gaza neighborhood of Jabalya, where Nadir and Ahmed live.
Dr. Jehad Abudaia, a Canadian-Palestinian pediatrician and urologist practicing in Gaza, says he has diagnosed nearly 80 cases like Nadir’s and Ahmed’s in the last seven years.
“It is astonishing that we have [so] many cases with this defect, which is very rare all over the world,” Abudaia says. He attributes the high frequency of this birth defect to “consanguinity,” or in-breeding.
“If you want to go to the root of the problem, this problem runs in families in the genes.” Abudaia says. “They want to get married to cousins… they don’t go to another family. This is a problem.”
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johnpi
Gendered doctrine in Islam.
It was taught to me when I married that on Judgement Day, I as a man will be held responsible for the sins of my wife – that it is not she that will burn in the hellfire for her sins, but I. Likewise for children.
Is this or is this not orthodox Islamic teaching?
If so, how can we possibly criticize any Muslim man for attempting to control the actions of his wife and children?
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mirelle
Tales of the Bizarre: NY Muslim woman slashes husband after she claims he made her do unIslamic things.
NEW YORK – A devout Muslim woman says she slashed her husband’s neck with a kitchen knife as he slept because he forced her to eat pork, wear short skirts and drink alcohol in violation of her religious beliefs.
She’s out on $25,000 bail. This may sound weird already, but it gets odder:
Sarwar’s statement to police paints a picture of a frustrated, confused woman angry that her husband of five months was not what he appeared to be during their brief courtship. Naseem went to her family to ask for a bride and she agreed to marry him, she said in her statement.
But after they were wed, she discovered he had previously dated mostly “white” women, had been married before and liked to go out to drink, she wrote. He said he was Pakistani and a devout Muslim, but in New York he claimed he was half-Pakistani and half-Norwegian, as well as a Unitarian Christian, she said.
He often yelled and cursed her family, she said, and one of his favorite writers was Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” which caused violent protests by Muslims in several countries because the book was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad.
“He hates Pakistan and he hates Pakistanis then why did he marry a Pakistani girl?” she wrote.
There’s more at the link.
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johnpi
The ever-vigilant paranoids at Refugee Resettlement Watch also missed this story:
Congress passed a bill Tuesday that would make widows and widowers of U.S. citizens eligible for green cards even if their spouses died before their applications were approved.
The measure, part of the more than $40-billion Homeland Security appropriations bill, ends the “widow penalty,” which required couples to be married for two years before the surviving spouse would be eligible to apply for residency. Now, surviving spouses can apply for a green card for themselves and their children regardless of when the U.S. citizen died or how long they were married.
Obviously this means that a brown wave of Salma Hayeks will flood our country, seduce our eligible men (and Mark Sanford), marry them and later kill them in their sleep (probably using trained scorpions) in order to conquer America.
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johnpi
Indian mothers-in-law have formed a group to advocate for themselves and their families’ interests against “greedy” young women who marry their sons and then use divorce law that is allegedly weighted in the young wives’ favor to afflict families for wealth and property.
The tenor of the article is reflected in this excerpt:
Sociologist Vasavi said that often the rupture and tension in the traditional family system has been brought about by the ability of educated and financially-empowered young women to question oppression and walk out of abusive situations.
However, there are real abuses of family law going on in India, as reported here.
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thabet
Indian court orders a man to pay monthly maintenance to his Afghan bride:
The Delhi court said that Sabra Ahmadzai’s case of bigamy against the doctor, Maj Chandrashekhar Pant, was legitimate.
It directed Maj Pant to pay Ms Ahmadzai 8,000 rupees ($169) every month.
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johnpi
Another Muslim college student is blogging his marriage search. Last year, I recall reading a blog of a different young man who was blogging his marriage search. I found his blog through a Muslim woman’s blog who was posting about her experiences moving toward – and then away from – a potential.
I wonder how prevalent it is among young Muslim prospectives to blog the “single and looking” experience?
Anyway, here’s an excerpt:
The parents went for the initial meet and they said she was extremely impressive. Good marriage material.
They told me about the girl and the family and it all looked promising.
So, we arranged a date and we went to see the family. Initial impressions, the parents were extremely quiet and as the conversation progressed it seems they’ve lived an extremely sheltered life and imposed that lifestyle on their daughters.
The conversation progressed and a revelation was then made, the girl wasn’t even aware of the marriage. Okay . . They continued and told me she would obey everything I say or do. I sit, she sits – Great . . a doormat!
I couldn’t talk to her because her father thinks that daughters who speak to their potential husbands in front of their mahram are the bad girls. This comment threw me off.
Another day passed. Another experience gained.
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johnpi
Egypt: Fake hymen kit may be banned.
Conservative Egyptian lawmakers have called for a ban on imports of a Chinese-made kit meant to help women fake their virginity and one scholar has even called for the “exile” of anyone who imports or uses it.
I had been mystified about the mechanics of how this device worked when Muslimah Media Watch first blogged it, but here it is explained:
The Artificial Virginity Hymen kit, distributed by the Chinese company Gigimo, costs about $30. It is intended to help newly married women fool their husbands into believing they are virgins – culturally important in a conservative Middle East where sex before marriage is considered by many to be illicit. The product leaks a blood-like substance when inserted and broken.
So the fake virginity kit is basically a gel cap that leaks fake blood. In the novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns” the protagonist fakes virginity by pricking her finger to squeeze out droplets of blood on the sheets after having sex.
I’m curious if there are any other techniques that women use to “fake” virginity? The “blood test” for virginity is an arbitrary and cruel standard because not all women bleed the first time they have sex, and it might be a useful resource to have them listed all in one place.
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johnpi
Domestic violence is on the rise in Afghanistan: A 12-minute video report from a womens shelter in Afghanistan.
Notable for having captured one husband on tape admitting he and his son tried to electrocute his wife, while also admitting he was mistaken in thinking she had had an affair. Oops…
Sad ending when the husband eventually gets custody of all of the children.
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thabet
Ed has the following complaint in his Telegraph opinion piece:
Is that why Husain went running to promote his group in The Daily Wail, a well-known advocate of liberalism and secularism?
He goes onto complain about the marriage habits of British Pakistanis and Bangladehis:
When I visit America, I see Muslims who are free, vibrant, dynamic, and fully American. In France, too, there are greater rates of inter-religious marriages: Muslims marrying people of other faiths, and negotiating how we coexist. In Britain, rates of Muslims marrying outside their faith community are woefully low, and the numbers returning to the villages of Pakistan and Bangladesh for a spouse worryingly high.
Apart from the fiqh question (important for observant Muslims), and the more important one related to religious liberty (more important in the context of British legal systems), we see that Husain is not much different to the molvis and maulanas he would not doubt rail against for their illiberal views on sex and marriage. Both moralise on the desires and choices of individuals, and both demand they engage in personal relationships with the right kind of people; the difference is the molvis and maulanas don’t hide behind the pretence of freedom, liberalism and individual choice*.
The use of “Muslims” is also odd, if we consider the lengths the Quilliamites went to attack the idea of a ‘monolithic Muslim world’, and demand politicians recognise the more pressing fact that there are Arabs, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, etc who happen to be Muslim. If there is no ‘Muslim world’, why is there a ‘British Muslim’ community? Why talk of ‘British Muslims’? Why not stick to talking about British Pakistanis, British Bangladeshis, British Algerians, and British Somalis? And is it only villagers he is upset about? What if a British Pakistani returns to Lahore, or a British Bangladeshi goes to Dhakka (cities comparable to London in population size)?
I will be very surprised if we don’t see more of Ed flogging his political goods (centre-right liberalism and soft-nationalism) to the rabid anti-Muslim hordes in the right-wing press between now and next June. If the Tories do win the next election (and that is the most likely scenario), they will probably start to slash the money being poured into counter-terrorism measures by the current government. Furnishing your pro-British credentials in the popular right-wing press is a good way to ensure you get to keep some of that money you’re so desperate to get hold of.
*There is a more theoretical point here about liberalism, education and the liberal principle of the inalienable right of individuals to choose, raised in Talal Asad’s Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. See the discussion on Britishness and Salman Rushdie.
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thabet
Via Pickled Politics comes news that Jim Fitzpatrick wants to ‘outlaw segregation’:
Mr Fitzpatrick told the PM programme: “Forcing people apart, removing the choice to be able to sit together, for me is a very big issue.
“There is an equalities issue here which needs to be explored. There is nothing as I understand it in law to prevent forced segregation.
“The scope would be to prevent anybody who owns a public hall, place of celebration or community gathering to actually say that one section of the community is barred from entering.”
This is a man who, when an employment minister, helped filibuster a bill which proposed giving the same rights to agency workers as everyone else. (Also, based on his voting record, he backed action which did more than just forcibly remove people apart at a wedding.)
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johnpi
Haaretz reports that the Israeli Prime Minister’s office is unveiling an aggressive advertisement campaign aimed at Jews in the Diaspora saying that Jews who marry outside the faith have been “abducted.”
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johnpi
Comment from Thabet’s earlier post Lots of Malians are unhappy at a new law which gives women ‘equal rights in marriage’.
“It’s a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law – the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country – the real Muslims – are against it,” she added.
I found this to be an amazing ignorant comment considering that in Islam we are duty-bound to always seek knowledge.
(Posting this as a front-page entry because the blog software keeps sending it to the spam folder when I try to enter it as a comment on Thabet’s post).
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thabet
Lots of Malians are unhappy at a new law which gives women ‘equal rights in marriage’.
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thabet
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thabet
Unsurprisingly, Martin Bright wants people to ’stand’ with Jim Fitzpatrick, which means ’standing’ with prats like Alasdair Palmer.
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thabet
Egypt’s ‘marriage (sex) tourism’ problem:
The marriages last any amount of time, from a couple of hours to years. Often they are simply a pretext for the man to have sex with the girl legally, while sometimes the man will take the girl back to his country, where they often serve as maids to other wives.
Last week, Moushira Khattab, the new minister of family and population, launched a campaign against underage marriages to Arab tourists in the villages of Cairo’s 6th of October Province, about 40 kilometres south of the city, known for their high levels of poverty and unemployment and where marriage tourism is rife.
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thabet
This is why we’re fighting in Afghanistan:
The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.
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razib, murtad fitri
Saira Mohamed, Nels Bangerter marry, new york times weddings page.
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aziz
The Ideal Husband: it’s G. Willow Wilson vs Asra Nomani at City of Brass.
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johnpi
Posting this here because Japan is not unique in having a reserved, conservative, gender-segregated culture, and interest in anime has been noted to be high among Muslims elsewhere on this blog, though no one has yet reported this phenomenon among the Muslim anime fan base.
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johnpi
To counter sectarian social breakdown, Iraqi government offers payment program to encourage mixed Sunni-Shia marriages.
The Iraqi government pays all new brides/grooms, but the amount furnished to mixed-sect couples is almost double that of the others, according to Fox News.
(via)
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johnpi
The dating dialogues: “Dialogues between Muslims sharing candid stories of life, love, courting, dating and marriage.”
Young American-Muslims find themselves walking the tight rope between conservative Muslim traditions and liberal American culture. Because of this, Gen X and Gen Y Muslims are well-positioned to pave the way for change. Nearly all have “dated” vicariously through non-Muslim friends. Simultaneously many take their faith seriously and have a sincere desire to propagate it.
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thabet
The Associated Press has a story on Hamas’ involvement in the ‘marriage business’:
The ideal of beauty in Gaza means tall and fair-skinned with blue or green eyes and light-colored hair — and that’s what men usually ask for. But most Gaza women have dark hair and bronze skin.
“If we see a girl that appears to match (a man), but she’s not physically what he wants, I’ll call him and say, ‘Well, she’s pretty, but she’s dark.’ Or ’she’s short, but she’s white.’ We encourage them to be a bit more realistic,” [Nisrin] Khalil said [a 'matchmaker'].
