With the ratio of single Muslim women in the United States rising in comparison to single Muslim men, religious leaders are looking for new ways to find spouses.
Mohamed Magid, imam of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) in Sterling, Virginia, and his wife have begun in the recent few years to host programs that address an issue they said is one of the most important topics surrounding single Muslims today.
A few years ago, Magid made it a requirement for couples marrying in the mosque – one of the largest in the Washington, D.C. region – to first get premarital counseling.
More recently, his wife began a singles program meant to help faithful singles find out what they consider to be the most important characteristics for a Muslim wife or husband given their western surroundings.
The movement stems from rising concerns among many Muslim-American leaders that religious families are not progressing with cultural changes, leaving members of the Muslim community prone to divorce, multiple marriages, or alienation either from Islam or mainstream American life.
The main issues surrounding Islam’s instructions on marriage include what the religion says about interfaith marriage, how well Muslims can know each other before marriage, and what the modern version is of a wali or guardian, a figure in Islam who is traditionally supposed to help women choose their husbands.
“Generation gaps, cultural differences when people from the United States marry someone from overseas, interfaith marriage – the issue of marriage is one of the most important in Islam here right now. Anytime there is a program at the mosque about these things, it’s completely packed,” Magid told The Washington Post.
An increasing problem that has garnered the attention of many Muslim leaders is the excess of Muslim women in the singles’ pool. This stems partly from a tradition that is generally more accepting of men marrying outside their faith than women; some say this is because the man has historically been in charge of what religion his children will practice.
Daisy Khan, a New York activist who also counsels couples with her husband, an imam, organized a Valentine’s Day event for Muslim singles; 15 men and 63 women attended. Khan said she used to be torn about interfaith marriage, but said she is now more concerned that women will either be left unmarried or forced to leave their faith.
Khan said she tries to unite Muslim couples but also believes pious Muslim women should be able to marry faithful non-Muslims.
“It’s my obligation to shift a little, to give a little because it’s important for them to stay within the faith. You have to clear up the mandate of: What is God’s mission? I see God’s hand in this,” she said.
Marriage practices are a growing issue among Muslims today largely because of a strong desire of first- and second-generation Muslims in America to blend in with their cultural surroundings.
Many Muslim dating and marriage traditions largely existed to promote sexual modesty, particularly among women. But many say that separation between potential mates has lost its original purpose and now instead creates more problems.
“It creates these experiences of weirdness where you’re more comfortable with [non-Muslim] John at work than Mohamed” at the mosque, said Zarinah El Amin Naeem, 28, an anthropologist.
The Muslim Alliance in North America, a national group made up largely of prominent black Muslims, held its first national conference in the fall and identified marriage reform as one of its top priorities. One concern is that traditional standards, or a lack thereof, that governed relations between men and women may encourage a rush into marriage, either to have sex or because structures that once screened potential spouses, such as close-knit large families and cultural isolation, have diminished.
“In Islamic culture, there is no dating and no kind of middle ground, so the sense is, if this person is a good person, let’s get married. The impulse isn’t to prolong a courting relationship. Our advocacy is it needs to be prolonged somewhat,” said Ihsan Bagby, co-founder of the Muslim Alliance in North America.
Issues related to marriage vary greatly within the Muslim-American community depending on culture: from issues of marrying strangers – a topic more common among African-American Muslims because many are individual converts lacking strong family involvement in their faith – to issues of interfaith marriage – more common among Muslims of South Asian dissent, who tend to be more traditional than those from Africa or Turkey. Liberal or more secular Muslims have their own issues and go about finding spouses in different ways; some use Muslim dating websites like naseeb.com.
Interfaith marriage, however, is an important topic across many cultures. Historically, Muslims have been more accepting of a Muslim man than a Muslim woman marrying outside the faith. As a result, a substantial gender gap in the dating pool has emerged.
The Quran says Muslims should marry “believers,” the meaning of which has long been the source of great debate but has been widely interpreted to include Christians and Jews, which Muslims consider “people of the book.”
Although the Quran does not address the gender issue directly, traditionally it has been less acceptable for Muslim women to enter interfaith marriages because women are generally believed to be more easily subjugated, and therefore a woman in an interfaith marriage could be forced by a Christian or Jewish husband to raise her children outside Islam, while a Muslim man in an interfaith relationship would be able to control the household’s faith; others, however, say the reality in the United States is just the opposite.
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, an Islamic family law expert at Emory University, argued that gender dynamics have changed in a way that makes interfaith marriage more acceptable under Islamic tradition. “In social reality today, men are not dominant in the marriage relationship. The rationale of historic rule is no longer valid. But people are not willing to accept this. This is a major source of tension,” he said.
