I will come up with more later. As long as I am single, I will come up with so much crap, it’s not even funny!

Haha I’m SO guilty of that too!!!
It’s not just Ukrainians we give a headache, my Kurdish partner a couple of years ago when I was making a fuzz out of something not that important (how unimportant it was is shown by the fact I could not even under torture recall what it was ) just laughed and said:
“Uff, you are SO complicated!” and just left the room giggling.

That took my anger away like nothing before.
I probably looked like this:

Well I like to think I have bettered since then!
But, yes, being complicated must be in the genes and culture!

“It’s funny because sometimes guys raised in the West end up being more strict than the guys from belad a’Sham.”
That is because the people in the diaspora, especially the guys, are socialized with the “lost paradise” myth. Everything is better back home. Everything is deteriorating and decaying in the West. Society, morals, women, and also the Arab enclaves and Arab women there (hmm I could think of quite a few of these young hunks who are “deteriorating” way more, morally, than the girls, but that is another issue..).
Hence why many of them will get a “pure” girl from back home. From a village if possible. No wild ideas in her head, no independence (at least that is what they think).

Now why I say myth: These people migrated to Western countries decades ago. In the meantime the women in the Mideast have changed quite a bit, depending on the country. Especially education and independence-wise. So these families and guys are chasing after ideals that do not exist anymore back home. Yet in the here and now, every human being not reaching the (often doubtful) ideal is considered unworthy.

@Ahmed: Not caring? Hmm maybe I attracted the creepy “no hostages” type of guys! I don’t know why. And thank you

@Wilmaryad: “When met with resistance, they throw a tantrum and storm out of the 2-day-old “serious relationship” they had worked so hard to build.”
EXACTLY. that is the mentality I was talking about! The sense for melodramatic scenes after a 2 day “relationship” (aka email contact).

As for the gold diggers: Well have you guys not heard a million times how it is gossipped about how so-and-so married a doctor,and how this is presented as if she won the Nobel Prize? It’s a relic of older traditions that women (and their families) still measure success by how rich they marry off the girls. This is a measure of how beautiful and well-mannered she is. A reward for the family for having brought up a real asset. I am not saying this is what people rationalize when they gossip like this, but it is lying at the root of this behavior. Somehow the mindset has not arrived in the 21st century where a family’s success in bringing up a daughter can be that she BECOMES a doctor herself.

(and maybe actually wins the Nobel Prize)

Have you guys heard the talk about Nancy Aajram’s wedding? there was talk all over the place she (a very successful pop singer for many years now, for the non-Arabs) had such a great success in marrying a wealthy doctor. How she made such a good choice, it could only be a good choice because…. well, you guess it, how can it not be good if he is a wealthy doctor! And this for a woman who must be ridiculously rich herself through her singing career. But the mentality of marrying rich = marrying good breaks through even for such extremely successful celebrities.
So I agree you cannot only blame the girl or her family – it is the entire society who will not change the rules so far.

And just a note on the jewellery to be given to the bride after engagement – well, at the root this is not a “greedy” tradition. The bride and her parents (mostly the father) can demand what jewellery he wants the daughter to receive at the wedding. Now this is less selling the daughter off as one might perceive it without knowing the reason. The “mahr” in Islamic tradition is the wife’s insurance. As divorce is legal, and very easy for men, the husband can at any time leave her. Now imagine a woman after a couple of years of marriage, maybe she’s had kids – of course she will not find a new husband as easily as she can as a younger single woman. In the old traditional thinking, a woman cannot earn money and provide for herself. So the jewellery which she can keep at the event of her husband’s death or divorce are her “minimum property” she can take to live off for at least some time.

Now of course in modern days and times when women have a career this is stripped of much of its sense (unless, of course, you take into account that in women’s reality they often take time off and forego career and earning opportunities to take care of children). It is still very meaningful I think for those imported brides. Those country girls with no knowledge of English, and very little education taken to Canada, the US, Europe… In the event of divorce, what are they to do? They still need this insurance. (I have heard stories of the in-laws taking away the jewellery after the marriage! Can you think of that! So there is not only women’s greed in our society. And of course it is completely haram to take the mahr from the wife – what do you guys think? I personally believe when living still in a Muslim society, they could not do this. They only dare doing so precisely in the Western diaspora – or am I wrong?)

Umm.. there is the answer for anyone else that wants to know!