Islamic marriage: A haven in an uncertain world

Abstract

The article derives from a recent three-year research project on young Bangladeshis, Islam, love and marriage, in Bangladesh and in the UK. We found that many young Bangladeshis in Bangladesh and in the diaspora are concerned about the instability and insecurity of marriage today, and that they see marriage to a partner who shares their Islamic commitment as more likely to endure. In a society where neither their parents' values, nor those of the wider culture around them, seem to offer stability and security, contemporary Islamic movements can provide both an ideology that offers a more convincing answer, and a community of people with shared values among whom both friendship and an enduring marital relationship can hopefully be found. The interviews also provided evidence of the ongoing transformation of Bangladeshi marriage away from the hierarchical model of the extended family towards a more ‘companionate’ and nuclear family-centred model, a transformation that was often articulated in Islamic terms.

Keywords:

• Islam
• young
• Bangladesh
• patriarchal family
• British
• insecurity
• companionate marriage

Acknowledgements

The research was supported by a three-year grant by the UK Economic and Research Council, ‘The Challenge of Islam: Young Bangladeshis, Marriage and Family in Bangladesh and the UK’ (RES-062-23-0616), 2008–2011. The project team was directed by Santi Rozario. Other members were Geoffrey Samuel (co-investigator) and Bulbul Ashraf Siddiqi (research assistant). All three are members of the Research Group on the Body, Health and Religion (BAHAR) in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University. I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments made when an earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference at Cardiff in November 2010, particularly those of Ann Whitehead, the discussant of the paper, and Shelley Feldman, in her summing-up at the end of the conference, and Caroline Osella.

Notes

1. Recent changes in marriage practices, more generally in South Asian societies, are well known (Donner 2002; Uberoi 2006; Fuller and Narasimhan 2008; Osella 2012, this issue). Typically, these involve a shift from ‘arranged marriage’ by parents to a situation where young, educated and middle-class people are exercising more agencies and being allowed a degree of individual choice and veto power. In general, the system is becoming more fluid. In this article, I focus specifically on how ‘new’ Islam allows young Bangladeshis in Bangladesh and in the UK a certain amount of individual choice and freedom in choosing marriage partners while continuing to reject in their marital practices what they perceive to be immoral, secular, western values.

2. The Muslim profession of faith in Allah and his Prophet (shahada); prayer (salat); fasting; alms-giving (zakat); pilgrimage (hajj).

3. All names are pseudonyms.

4. As Feldman points out, in factories and other urban locations, even when not actually related, village women and their families recast strangers as kin (Feldman 2001).

5. One crore (10 million) taka is approximately £80,000 (August 2011 exchange rates).

6. See, for example, Shaw 2001, 2009; Werbner 2002; Charsley 2005 for marriages between Pakistan-born men and British-born Pakistani women.