young bangladeshis and the islamic family: conflicting ideals santi rozario, cardiff university, uk...
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Young Bangladeshis and the Islamic Family: Conflicting Ideals
Santi Rozario, Cardiff University, UK
For How Fares the Family? International Conference on Resilience and Transformation of
Families in Asia, ARI, NUS 4th to 5th August 2008
The Project Three-year ESRC project, ‘The Challenge of Islam:
Young Bangladeshis, Marriage and Family in Bangladesh and the UK’ (S. Rozario, PI, with G Samuel & S. Gilliat-Ray (CIs)
Central theme is influence of modernist forms of Islam on marriage and the family
Fieldwork with young Bangladeshis in Bangladesh (rural and urban - Dhaka) and UK (mainly with people of non-Sylheti background)
Began Jan 2008 with initial visit to Bangladesh; this paper is mainly about early work in UK, Apr-July 2008
Major Issues
Tension between ‘traditional’ extended family and young women’s desire for more individualised life-pattern.
Tension between Western models of romantic love and marriage and desire to behave in a proper Islamic way
Polygamy as a solution to problems of ‘spinsters’ and divorced women
Modernist forms of Islam
We’d expected both samples to be dominated by Tabligh-i Jama’at, Jama’at-i Islami and similar Wahhabi/Deobandi type organisations.
In fact, initial contacts both in Bangladesh and UK led to a much wider variety, including several Sufi-inspired groups
Main emphasis in this paper is on Islamic Circles (London) and Hijaz Community (Nuneaton), also some unrelated individuals
Hijaz Community
Sufi community centred on Hijaz College, near Nuneaton, and the shrine of Shaykh Abdul Wahab Siddiqi (Pakistani Sufi teacher, 1942-1994)
Hijaz Community Now led by his eldest son, a
Western-trained barrister, Shaykh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi
Nuneaton campus is also spiritual centre for the Shaykh’s followers
Annual urs (‘Blessed Summit’) in July
Increasingly modern and Western in its self-presentation
• Mostly Pakistanis, some Bangladeshis and others
Theoretical Approaches
The paper has some discussion of our general approach
Saba Mahmood (Politics of Piety 2005, etc) on Muslim women in Egypt - women’s embodied agency as directional,
as ‘cultivating and honing a pious disposition’
- women are not just being submissive but consciously and actively crafting their selves
Theoretical Approaches contd
“In her recent study of women in the Egyptian piety movement, Mahmood (200) prefers to think in terms of dispositions rather than habitus, because she stresses the agency involved in cultivating a pious self. However, I employ Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of habitus in this article to underline the historicity of social structures and individual dispositions.”
- Rachel Rinaldo, J. Contemporary Islam (2008)
Theoretical Approaches contd
Our general perspective Islam (as a set of ideas, practices, ideal dispositions etc)
structures people’s behaviour, However, people use Islamic and other resources creatively
to respond to their life-situations. These responses both act to shape people’s future selves,
and also act on the overall field, which is fluid and constantly transforming. This field includes ‘Islam’ itself as a set of ideas, practices etc
Individual responses need to be understood in relation to their life-situations - in this case, specifically, in relation to marriage and the family
Finding a Marriage Partner
The norm in UK Bangladeshi community remains arranged marriage, though initial contacts may take place via an increasing variety of informal mechanisms [examples - contacting distant cousin via Facebook; mutual friend setting up indirect contact]
There remains an expectation of avoidance of private meetings between future spouses prior to marriage, and considerable unwillingness to go against one’s parents’ wishes
Families may wish children to marry relatives from Bangladesh, to resolve debts and obligations to family in Bangladesh
Finding a Marriage Partner - contd
Some men may welcome marriage to a relative from Bangladesh, since Bangladeshi women born and/or educated in UK are seen as potentially corrupted by Western influences, though others may prefer a ‘modern’ wife
Women born and/or educated in UK may have problems if married to a husband from Bangladesh, with ‘traditional’ expectations of the wife’s behaviour [NB Questions about ongoing reshaping of ‘tradition’ - nuclear household etc.
Regardless of the husband’s expectations, the husband’s family may expect an educated woman with a career to drop her career and adopt a ‘traditional’ subservient female role
Islamic Circles
Started London 2001 by two young Bangladeshi men
Wide range of talks and social events on Islamic topics, martial-arts self-defence for Muslim women (‘Ninjabis’) etc
Islamic Circles- July 2008 events
Islamic Circles & Marriage
They set up a matrimonial service in 2003
They now arrange three or four themed matrimonial events a month in London - model imitated elsewhere in UK
There is a specific problem of women who can’t find husbands
Lots of effort to construct a mixed social gathering (under strict controls) as properly ‘Islamic’
Islamic Circles & ‘Free Mixing’
“If there is no such word for “free mixing” in Islam, why have our scholars used khalwah or seclusion as its nearest equivalent, and why is there so much emphasis on trying to avoid free mixing, especially in the West where strict segregation between the sexes is not practically achievable anyway? Does simply speaking to a person of the opposite sex with whom you are not married suggest that you are trying to get closer to them on a sexual level, and are therefore doing something haram? . . .
Islamic Circles & ‘Free Mixing’
“What is the definition of a “mixed gathering”? How do we develop natural, modest, friendly yet non-flirty behaviour between members of the opposite sex without obsessing about free mixing?”
Islamic Circles e-mail circular July 2008
Islamic Circles Marriage Event 1
Islamic Circles Marriage Event 2
Islamic Circles Marriage Event 3
Islamic Circles Marriage Event 4
One should first purify their intentions, i.e. to seek the pleasure of Allah by fulfilling one’s obligation to seek a marital partner in a halal way. It should be treated as a form of worship, so that this will set a precedent for one’s willingness to adhere to Islamic etiquettes throughout the event.
Listen carefully and follow all the instructions set out by the organisers.
Forgive the organisers and facilitators for their shortcomings.
Try to be in a state of ablution (wudu) if possible.
Islamic Circles Marriage Event 5
• The best starting point is to recognise that you are a humble servant of Allah who is attending the event because you, like all the other participants, are looking for a spouse, and therefore want to behave in the best of manners.
(Pamphlet distributed at marriage event)
Islamic Circles Marriage Event 6
“It is important to recognise that finding a suitable spouse is a massive problem for Muslims today. It has to be addressed practically, not just through lectures and seminars about the fiqhi (juristic) nature of marriage and the ideal scenario.”
(Islamic Circles pamphlet)
Hijaz Community and Marriage 1
• The community gives members access to a wider range of partners from different ethnic communities (Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Somali, Surinamese, etc), who will ideally share their Islamic ideals.
• The Shaykh as an authority replaces the authority of their parents, who may be seen as not understanding true Islam, and justifies disobedience to their parents’ wishes
• Members may also expect the Shaykh to find them a marriage partner within the community
Hijaz Community and Marriage 2
• Parents may be concerned about their children’s involvement in the community in terms of their abandonment of standard life and career choices
• They may also be worried about the risk of the Shaykh marrying their children off to an ‘unsuitable’ person - “He’d better not marry my daughter to some Pakistani!”
Expectations of Love and MarriageMarriage is seen as an important
Islamic obligation: ‘Whoever has married has completed half of his religion; therefore let him fear Allah in the other half!” (hadith of Bayhaqi)
Tahera (Hijaz community member) on how ‘you can’t have true love unless that marriage is based on love for God’.
Tahera on marriage “So when I love my husband I hope I will love him
because he loves God. I will look at him and I will see this fantastic guy. I will look at his love for God and I will look at his face and see his love for God and I will love that love and by loving him I will love his love for God and therefore I will love God… and I hope he will do the same with me. I hope to become a person he will look up and say, OK, she is not that fantastic, but she loves God and I am going to love that love in her. And then ultimately that relationship is completely selfless, I am not going to be in this for me and he is not going to be in it for him.”
Munira on marriage “One thing that, a lot of people, who are single and
are trying to develop themselves spiritually, they actually fear getting married because they feel that [the marriage] will stop them from their love for Allah – I think this is a huge sign of their faith, but it’s a genuine fear because where does your partner come, if you put God as your priority, but the beautiful thing is that if you do marry and it is somebody who is in similar path to you then, you know, you complement each other - well, we believe that after a nikah Allah will put love between the partners anyway…
.”
Dealing with Separation and Divorce - Nasreen on her family and her in-laws
When was I was in my husband’s house I was made to feel that I wasn’t feeding the baby properly, I wasn’t changing the baby properly, I wasn’t bathing him properly, you know. I would wake up in the morning, I would go to the bathroom and find my baby not in his crib, and my mother-in-law has come in and taken him, changed him and fed him, done everything for him. And you don’t do that. Like in my house, when my baby’s sleeping, my sister would ask me if she can pick him up. That’s etiquette, that’s adab. It’s so Islamic to do that, to come and ask. My mum would even ask me, you know, ‘Shall I take him?’, to feed him, yeah? And I’ll say, ‘Ok, Mum’. Nobody enters our room – my Dad would never enter our room without asking our permission.
Nasreen contd S: Your parents are educated people? N: They’re not, but they’re people with adab, they
have a lot of Islamic adab. When we have guests walking into the house, you know, we don’t turn around, bad-mouth someone’s mother in front of them, we don’t do that. My sister-in-law would say to me, ‘Your mother can’t cook, your mother doesn’t do this,’ you know. I’d say to myself, this kind of behaviour would never happen in my family.
OK, so my sisters don’t dress in the conservative way that you’d expect them to dress, but, they have a lot of etiquette about them, they have a lot of adab about them.
Nasreen contd
My sister [an architect] travels round the world, is that Islamic? But you know, because she’s travelling the world, she’s a lot more culturally aware and sensitive towards each individual’s needs, so she’s more of a better human being than my sister-in-law who’s never travelled and lives in a cocooned house.
Nasreen on Aisha and Khadija
Look at Aisha, look at her role, what a significant role she played, she had a family and home going, but she also played a significant role out in the community, … Khadija, the Prophet’s first wife, she was a businesswoman… Significantly older than him, and she married him, married a younger man, can you imagine in our community a 25-year old getting married to a 45-year old now? It’s incomprehensible – and this is a young man who married his boss – how modern and forward thinking is that?
Nasreen on being an independent woman My Dad would often say, if a woman can’t
cook she’s not a woman. I say, How the hell is that Islamic? I mean, what defines a woman? In Islam a woman is not defined by her motherhood, she isn’t defined if she’s a wife, she’s defined by her relationship with God, and that’s how her womanhood is defined, her womanhood is not defined by motherhood and wifehood and all of that kind of stuff.
Polygamy
More positive discussion of polygamy than I expected
The (male) leaders of Islamic Circles suggest that polygamy may be a solution to the problem of large numbers of divorced and widowed women
Polygamy “What is polygamy and can it really address the issue of
spinsters and divorced women, particularly those with children, who are finding it extremely difficult to get married and settle down in a stable relationship? Are there enough suitable men who would be able to fulfil their responsibilities in a polygamous marriage? Is there a problem with the mentality of men which needs to be addressed? What about the legal implications associated with polygamy? Would nikah alone suffice without the need for registration? Why has polygamy gained such a bad reputation over the last few decades?”
Islamic Circles e-mail bulletin, June 2007
Polygamy Shaukat suggested that professional women might find
this a particularly attractive option:
“They could carry on with their Islamic activities, learning; they could carry on with their professions or businesses and they could carry on with their children, at the same time they could have companionship and have relationships with their husbands and that will be on a part time basis. So they will see their husbands twice and thrice a week, and the rest of the time they will spend with their kids and their business. For them it suited the modern day work patterns.”
Polygamy
In practice, polygamy in the UK seems more likely to be a man wanting to marry a second, younger wife than a community solution for surplus older women
My female informants produced justifications for polygamy (war-widows etc) but with one possible exception they showed no interest in polygamy as an option for themselves
Perhaps the discourse on polygamy is best understood as a defence of Islam against Western attack.
Conclusions
In closing, I would like to emphasise the open, creative and experimental character of these young peoples’ involvement with Islam
Organisations such as Islamic Circles and Hijaz Community are also part of this creative response to the contemporary situation
Love, marriage and the family are clearly revealing topics to study, and they are showing us aspects of the religious life of young Bangladeshis that have perhaps received little attention in previous studies.
Our research is still at an early stage, but we are optimistic that it will provide valuable insights into contemporary British Islam.
