ABSTRACT
Assumptions around ‘jihadi brides’ are that their main functions are to bear children within polygamous marriages in order to populate the Caliphate, while their husbands wage violent jihad against anyone who disagrees with them. To maximise their offspring bearing potential, they have to be young, but also obedient and subservient to their husbands, while accepting the prospect of early widowhood (Saltman and Smith, 2015). This imagery again feeds into essentialised cultural and religious constraining discursive frameworks of Muslim women as sexualised and fetishised ‘Others’ destined to live lives of ‘degradation and despair’ where women are objects of the ‘process’ and devoid of agency rather than active participants. They suggest that Muslim women can only exercise individual agency once they have consciously dissented from the familial and cultural group (Bhopal, 1997). These discursive frameworks link into broader pathologised discourses of Muslim families and Muslim relationships between men and women and have become an almost standardised trope when Muslim marriages are under scrutiny. Other common
stereotypes regarding Muslim families and marital practices present them as ‘forced marriages’, often with women being ‘married off’ to uneducated first cousins from villages ‘back home’, or tend to link the preference for a Sharia compliant marriage with Islamist tendencies among Muslims. However, some on-going research I have been conducting on British Muslim relationships highlights experiences that I believe, are far more reflective of young Muslim women’s (and men’s) lived realities than the scenarios currently found within media and some policy discourses. Contrary to these stereotypes, young Muslim women are asserting their agency at every stage of the matrimonial process – from their very decisions to look for a marital partner, how they decide which form of matrimonial service(s) they will engage with, to negotiating marriage contracts and asserting their rights as Muslim women and wives within marriage. My earlier work highlighted how Muslim women, along with their parents, viewed the possession of a degree, not just in practical, employment related terms, but also as a means to secure a successful and ‘good quality’ husband. In this sense, a degree acted as an ‘insurance policy’ that would allow women to ‘stand on their own two feet’ if future circumstances, such as financial or marital insecurity, necessitated (Ahmad, 2001). This remains the case for younger cohorts of women, who often outnumber men in terms of attendance at matrimonial events. In recent years, British Muslim marriage practices have witnessed a process
of rapid social change. Where parents and extended family networks once played key roles in matrimonial matters, the loss, or weakening of these networks, coupled with a growing professionalisation and individualisation (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995) among second and third generation British Muslim men and women, and the growth and commercialisation of internet-based Muslim matrimonial sites and matrimonial events catering specifically to diverse British Muslim social and ethnic groups, have led to changing concepts of what contemporary Muslim relationships represent and a need to revise taken-for-granted terms such as ‘arranged marriages’ often described in earlier ethnographic accounts of Muslim families (Ahmad, 2006; 2012). Many young Muslim women not only exhibit high educational and employment aspirations, but also high expectations when choosing a life partner. Many parents recognising the limitations of their own networks assume that the education and professional status of their children mean that they are better equipped to find their own partners, and many women have spoken of how their parents were open about them meeting potential partners either at university or work. Parents are effectively devolving responsibility for finding matrimonial partners to their children. Despite the wide choice in matrimonial services and their own academic and
professional achievements, many British Muslim women are experiencing difficulties in attracting suitable matrimonial partners expressing concerns around their own perceived lack of desirability, concerns over increased ages while studying and then working, being ‘over-qualified’ and high achieving thus ‘pricing themselves out of the marriage market’, negotiating and contending with ‘male
egos’, the lack of emotional maturity among Muslim men, and questioning the efficacy and quality of existing and emerging matrimonial networks (Ahmad, 2012). These concerns have been compounded by the perceived tendencies among some Muslim men of either choosing to marry outside their religion and culture, or relying on parental matches with partners from their country of origin, and for expressing preferences for younger women or those who may be less career oriented. As a result, Muslim women often complain about a lack of suitably educated and professionally employed men on matrimonial websites and at the various matrimonial events that are held across the UK, Europe and North America. Marrying ages among educated Muslim women in Britain (and inter-
nationally) are increasing, and while this is sometimes attributed to a deliberate desire to delay or eschew marriage in order to further careers, the research suggests that single status among second and third generation Muslim women is the result of a complex interplay of factors and not necessarily an active choice. Some commentators have described the rise in the numbers of single, professional Muslim women, as the ‘Muslim spinster crisis’ (Mohammed, 2012), or more generally as the ‘myth of the happy celibate’ (Imtoual and Hussein, 2009), referring to the very possible reality that some women may not marry at all. Given the significance of marriage and family among Muslim communities, there are considerable emotional consequences experienced by Muslim women associated with perceptions of ‘rejection’ and ‘failure’, increased age, spinsterhood and potential childlessness, and this is one of the areas that is currently being researched. While the above difficulties are very real and contemporary, they should not
detract from the fact that this cohort of women are exercising agency in wishing to pursue a ‘halal relationship’ leading to marriage. For instance, many of the practising and hijab-wearing women I have been speaking to did not view ‘love’ within the parameters of an Islamic or ‘halal relationship’ prior to marriage as a contradictory emotion and looked forward to the prospect of ‘romance’. Similarly, observations from my fieldwork reveal women to be highly self-aware in terms of their rights as Muslim women and potential Muslim wives; many talks on rights and responsibilities within Muslim marriages are overwhelmingly attended by young, educated Muslim women who are not afraid of stipulating certain demands when negotiating a potential marriage. A noteworthy example is that a ‘non-negotiable’ for many Muslim women is their refusal to live with in-laws after marriage and an insistence on living away from the husband’s family. Similarly, the fact that many women attending marital events do so without a chaperone also signifies an active agentic choice. In contrast, some Muslim men attending events are intimidated by the process especially when confronted with self-empowered Muslim women with very clear views on their expectations of a husband and married life, and this has resulted in accusations of women being ‘too choosy’, having ‘unrealistic expectations’ and ‘waiting for Mr Perfect’ as exemplified in the following quote:
I think the girls in UK need to wake up. They are gone over 30 and still dreaming/waiting for Mr Perfect. I am good looking, AAT qualified, house owner, British citizen (not born), 36 and divorced (no kids), mum and dad lives with me. A lot of girls reject me for one of these reasons without even seeing me.
