The article that I wrote a couple of days ago regarding Arab and non-Arab marriages has sparked the biggest debate that my blog has ever seen. Therefore, I am getting some Arab guys writing me their view points about the subject, and asked me to publish them on my blog. I seldom ever get Arab guys writing a post for me or thinking about it. But hey, the world changed! So, the conversation is still going, and it seems to be the biggest issue within my culture and outside of it.
Mohamed G. wrote the following personal article of why he would rather stick to the same culture union,
Marriage is a serious and big step in life; therefore we must always choose the most suitable partner. In order to maximise the chances of having a stable marriage, one of the important things to consider is marrying from your own background.
I’ve been reading a lot about intercultural or interracial marriages. Based on what I’ve read from people who have experienced it or currently experiencing it, it is a difficult marriage to maintain and usually problems start not at an early stage, but later on during the marriage. It is a lot more difficult than if you get married from you own background. Based on the high rates of marital problems and divorces in intercultural marriages between Muslims, the scholars are encouraging us to get married from our own background. Now that being said, I want to get married to an Arab girl because I want to marry someone whom I can relate to at all levels and someone who’s me and I’m her. Also I have to make sure that my family and hers are compatible with one another, some people might not take it into consideration, but it’s very important. Last but not least, it is extremely important for me to marry someone who speaks and understands Arabic because not only I like to speak Arabic, but also it is the language of Islam. I don’t want to speak English to my wife and see my kids grow up and say “English is my mother tongue.†For the people who say “fallow your heart†or “If you love her then that’s all that matters.†You guys must understand that love alone is not enough to make a marriage workout, but it is important to love the person you’re marrying. You can’t just be emotional; you also have to be rational, a lot more things other than love must come into play. There is no such thing as “They fell in love, got married and lived happily ever after.†You might be able to see this in movies, but in real life it’s not the case.
There is no doubt that there are some Arab girls who are corrupt, but I’m not going to start bashing the Arab girl and say “I want to get married to a non-Arab or even a non-Muslim.†The amount of Arab girls that I have seen is an insignificant sample of a huge population, therefore I cannot generalise. Yes I know I’m talking like a statistician because I’m an actuary which qualifies me as a statistician. As for the Arab men and women who bash the Arabs because they fell in love with a non-Arab, they as well cannot generalise because a non-Arab can be better than a thousand Arabs but also an Arab can be better than a thousand non-Arabs. In other words we haven’t seen enough people to judge an entire population.
To conclude, marriage is not for fun or experience. When you choose your spouse, you must take other things than just love into serious consideration. Your goal is to minimize the probability as much as possible of having marital problems or a divorce. No matter how much I can love a non-Arab girl, I will love the Arab girl a hundred times more because I’ll have a much easier time relating to her.
What do you think? Agree or disagree?
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@Incandescent Chimera
when u truly love some1 u will have all the fun in this world that u can have some of the people here make marryage sound like a job lol is not a job its not always easy n it sometimes takes a lot of work but u do this caz u love the person n nothing else n really in the end its not alot of work caz like i say u do it caz u love the person u should enjoy doing this be happy that u r making the other person happy n that in return will make u happy or at least thats how i see it n marryage is about having fun its about being with the 1 person u love more then anything whats more fun then that
@oksana
Congratulations Oksana, Wish you guys all the best
@Charlie Hayse
Suppose you’re right. Regrettably families and culture play a huge role in marriages. I personally live in fear of the whole marriage thing… I mean, I’m born to Arab parents and the traditions, culture and religion are still there in me, but I’m not like the other Arabs… I’m sort of conservative but a little liberal (very unstable and unpredictable). I guess I just use this whole thing as a defense-mechanism because 2 years ago I was in a relationship and I had my heart broken (though my ex claims I broke his heart first). My parents loved him because he took great care of me. Back then I was young and foolish and we both knew we had no future together (because his parents are tribal and they have arranged for him to marry his cousin and he doesn’t wanna be ‘disowned’ by his father). I have Bipolar Disorder (back then I wasn’t on meds and I went off the deep end), that made our relationship harder to cope with… so it just ended and I’ve been afraid to leave my parents side ever since then. He always took great care of me and he has heart of gold… but I suppose somethings are not meant to be right? His society is tribal and mine got over tribalism centuries ago. I most certainly would NOT want him to be disowned by his parents for me. I believe in blessings from both ends. We’re both Arabs but our societies are different. Anyways, whatever is written for us is written. Allah knows best for all mankind
I hate this! I hate all of this!!
I have been reading these posts and comments and I can feel nothing but SADNESS!!
People.. People.. People.. PLEASE!!!.. WE ARE ALL SIMPLY PEOPLE!
Everything that is being said about marriage to someone of your own kind being better is one of the most disheartening things I have read in a while. These are all dogma’s that must be eliminated.
All you need for marriage to work.. for a healthy relationship to work.. is understanding and mutual respect. Many couple don’t even fall in love until later in their marriages!
We should be limited to our own kind? Perpetuating the nationalistic ferver that has so far caused thousands of years of genocide, usery, and mistrust?
There is no reason for two people who come from different parts of the world can not build a happy, healthy, successful, stable environment for themselves and their children, regardless of language. (if you believe the scriptures, we all used to speak the same language once before, we can do it again.)
These ideologies.. of individual ‘comfort’ and ‘ease of mind’, for lack of better words, is selfish and self-centered. We live in a world of six and a half billion people. If we do not, can not, break these cycles of race and creed propogation, we as humans, as creations of God, made in HIS image, will never, ever realize our true and ordained potential.
Religion (and by extension language) has nothing to do with it. These things are personal preferences at the end of the day. Like the color of your couch, or whether you have Picasso or Van Gogh posters on your wall. THEY SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW WE RELATE AND WORK WITH ONE ANOTHER! They are products of our self chosen path towards God, or whomever you may believe in.
We must abolish these ideals, ladies and gentlemen. We must remove all our previous programming and realize the only truth worth knowing. We are all the one. We should all move as one. Grow as one. Develop as one. Help and support each other as one.
In conclusion, I want each and every one of you to go out and marry someone from the furthest bloodline, race, or whatever as you can from yourselves. That is an order.
(Look on the bright side.. it’s gotta provide for more entertainment through the course of the marriage, right?)
@Ahmed Masri
Well said. Ahmed :up:
Thanks for all your kind wishes everyone
Halla Dina,
There are things that must be taken into consideration in order to make a solid study of a sample that represents a population. Now you must ask yourself how much errors can you get from the representative sample that you can deal with. In order to find how much errors you can accept, you have to select a confidence interval for your study (usually 3 percentage points), once that’s done, then you’ll choose the confidence level which is 95%, 90% or 99% (most statisticians use 95%)Once you have the confidence level, you’ll have to find the corresponding Z value. From there you’ll compute the size of the sample which will depend on the number of the population. Once you have come out with the sample size, you’ll have to do the survey. In order to have the most optimal result, the only people who should be part of the sample are ones who have long years of experience in intercultural marriages. By including newlyweds or young couples, they’ll fill up the survey with mostly if not all positive answers because they’re only emotional towards each other because the marriage is still at an early stage and they haven’t fully matured yet like old couples, so you’ll be wasting time by including young or newlyweds. Now the questions in the survey should be based on intercultural marriages and the types of questions that you’ll make up the survey with can be: filter or contingency, radio-button, dichotomous, level of measurement, rating scales and more…..cannot remember
The above paragraph should be explained in greater details, but I don’t feel like getting into it because it’s going to be too long. I hope this explains why it is not as straight forward as saying “absolvable” or “based on my personal observations”, there’s a whole lot more into it.
Based on my understanding from your argument, you cannot conclude that intercultural marriages workout better than regular marriages or vice versa based on what you’ve seen. Where you live might be an exception. You have mentioned that forced regular marriages don’t workout as well as intercultural marriages. This is an unfair comparison because forced marriages as I have mentioned before, the spouses might or will never be naturally inclined towards one another so in result they will end up divorcing.
“My insight is large and constant enough to say I believe I can say a thing or two on how I perceive the marriages I’ve been able to follow along with a bit, by close friends, more distant acquaintances, and people I did hardly or not at all know and heard about in the community centres.”
Again, personal observation, you do not have enough data to conduct a non-bias study. The population of the Muslims where you live is insignificant compared to the population of Muslims as a whole.
Dina, love is not enough to make a marriage workout, couples who get married based on love and only love will most probably face serious marital problems. The “I love you, you love me” (like what you see in movies) part of the marriage will eventually faze out because the couples will start being rational towards each other more than emotional. So when you say: “This is what makes them stronger – the love basis is strong enough to cope with much disagreement.” Believe me, this will not last forever. When we fall in love, we don’t think from our heads, but rather from our hearts. So we might not see or don’t want to see some bad characteristics to the person whom we’re in love with.
I love studying other cultures, right now I’m reading a lot on the Japanese culture. The Japanese have a very rich culture and history and I love learning about it. Does that mean that I want to live the Japanese culture? Marry a Japanese girl? Never!!! I’m not ethnocentric when I say I want to marry an Arab girl; however I respect other cultures very much.
You said: “It is a general social science fact that inner group differences are as big as inter group differences” I have never read that before, I would be interested to read about it. Can you please tell from where you got that? Again I love to read about cultures and societies. You have to understand that there are some characteristics that I must see in a girl when it comes to marriage. Religion (I would never marry a non-Muslim), language (I would never marry someone who doesn’t speak Arabic) and same background (again not because I’m ethnocentric, but because I want to marry someone whom I can relate at all levels). I can have many things in common with the non-Arab girl that I won’t have with the Arab girl, like hobbies, favourite movies, leaving the window open and so on and so forth. However, the first three priorities are religion, language and background; of course other little things as well have to be considered, things known as “fine tuning”.
There is no doubt that are parents have much greater experience than we do when it comes to marriage. Your reply to what I previously wrote was: “Yes, we are young. But life is too short to ground it on other people’s aims in life. Your parents have had their chance to make life what they wanted it to be. Now you have your shot at it. What you want to be, who you want to be with, whether you want kids, where you want them to grow..†This answer is not relevant to what I wrote, I’m sorry if I did not explain it clearly. What I meant is when we grow up we will want to go back to our roots and lean towards are people. This happens to everybody it is part of growing up, so that’s why I told you to ask your parents about it, listen to what they have to tell you, because it will happen to you, to me and everybody else. So if you didn’t talk to your parents about it I encourage you to do so, listen to what they have to say.
For me, intercultural marriages are not black and white. My arguments were not based only on either the couples are deeply in love or they want to get a divorce. Many things come in between, there is no doubt intercultural marriages are more difficult to maintain, some do workout as in they didn’t get divorced, but those people will probably go through great struggles that are not found in regular marriages. I’m sure that there are some who worked out and they live happy, but I haven’t read or seen one. Last but not least, as I mentioned before, scholars don’t talk out of nothing, so when they say intercultural marriages are more difficult and have higher risk of failures it’s for a good reason.
Salam
Hi Dina,
Arguing with you is great! I dont see this as “competition” wallahi, but rather knowledge sharing. I respect you arguments, but I cannot agree with them….
@Ahmed Masri
Why do you see this as racism?
Look it’s perfectly fine to marry from your own background, but at the same time respect people’s religions, languages and cultures. You’re not being racist, you just want to marry someone whom you can relate to…
Hi Dina,
Sorry I meant I cannot agree with some of them…..
@mohamed
You completely missed the point. This isn’t about racism. I don’t think it is racist to marry someone from the same background. I think it is lazy and it is a practice that continues social mentalities that should have long been outdated.
@mohamed
We want the world to come together, not to continue to define each other by where we come from. At the end of the day, where we come from is the same. It’s the same planet.
@Ahmed Masri
I dont understand, how is it lazy from me to marry someone who’s a Muslim knows Arabic, and someone whom I can better relate to?
People can respect one another without marriage being involved. Also you shoudn’t bash regular marriages by calling them “outdated”…
Inshallah one day, you’ll find the right person for you…
Hi dina,
I meant “observable†and not “absolvable .loool!!!
@Incandescent Chimera
salamu alaikum Incandescent Chimera,
You’re a girl?!! than why did I call you bro for?…sorry about that.
“If marriage is an institution based on lifelong commitment from both sides why would those who have been married long years (as you have given in an example above) suddenly end up divorcing? Many traditional cultures and religious doctrines promote the concept of life-partners.”
You see, when people get divorced it’s because they went through a lot, divorce for lots of people is the last resort. The divorces were not made sudden.
“Why would they have regrets for marrying outside their ethnic group? Why would it be justified on solely culture?”
Us Muslims should consider religion as the most important aspect when it comes to marriage. So a religious woman may not marry a corrupt man and vice versa. Alot of people clame that Islam is the most important and only thing to look at. Their right when they say it’s the most important, but it’s not the only thing to look at. Culture does play a role in marriages, you see intercultural marriages are fine at the beginning, but after long years of marriage people will grow older and become fully mature, and part of growing old is that we want to lean towards are people and get back to are roots. So for example if I get married to a non-arab, amd I’m still alive by then and grow old, I’ll look at my wife and wish she was Arab…Thats the absolute truth, it just that right now we’re to young to feel it, but once we grow old are way of thinking will change. As I told Dina, ask your parents and see what they have to say…
“Why should one person convert simply to please their husband/wife/spouse or their families? Doesn’t this suggest that Islam is not in their hearts?”
All the wives of my cousins and friends converted because they were convinced about Islam. However I’ve heard of some cases were a man “”converts”" just to marry a muslim girl, and that in Islam is forbidden. Some intercultural marriages do workout, but only the peole who’ve been married for long years should be considered. Early stage marriages, intercultural or regular no one can tell….Also if the scholars have encouraged us to get married from are own background, then why should I get married out of my background?… I’m getting bashed by some people here, but I dont care, I WANT TO MARRY AN ARAB GIRL!!!!
It’s this type of thinking that makes it harder to marry someone from a different “background”. Not that it’s actually harder. You can connect with someone on many levels and hardly nobody connects on all levels. That’d be a pretty boring relationship.
@Ahmed Masri
If stop defining each other from where we come from, then will just define each other from where we come from not. People have a habit of creating the “Us” vs “Them” mentality. It’s part of our nature and it’s not always bad, only when it leads to conflict instead of mutual respect.
I’d also like to add that their is a difference between culture and faith.
@BlackBarook
If we stop*
Between culture and race*
@mohamed
Thanks for the insight, Mohamed. I understand exactly what you mean. It’s very earnest of you of keen to marry an Arab girl, I wish you all the best. I personally feel the same way as you said… marrying within your own ethnic group gives you that safe sort of feeling and it feels very captivating conversing in the Arabic language as it sounds a lot better than English, though many of us are losing our Arabic roots slowly. My cousins, brother and I speak Arabic (to some) ‘critiques’ is considered quite broken, because the Arabic language was not strictly enforced on us and we communicate in a mixture of Arabic and English. Some aspects of the Arabic culture are wonderful, others are demanding and hard to meet. I suppose that is the only reason why I would be put off marrying an Arab (unless he’s an orphan, or has both his parents dead and with no in-laws… lol). I had a culture shock and suffered from many problems at young age (even though I’m approaching my twenties soon). I don’t think any Arabs would except me for my past mistake and my knowledge of religion is limited (I have a lot more to learn and I reckon some reverts have more knowledge than I do) though I’m trying to improve aside from that I’m very Arab at heart. The only option left for me is marrying a non-Arab, simply because I think he would probably be more accepting of my situation, and show more understanding as the Western culture (though I’m quite against some aspects of it) is very open especially when it comes to illnesses/medical problems.
Illnesses (whether they’re physical or psychiatric) are always looked down upon in the Arab culture, they’re language is very harsh, and they have unrealistic expectations of people. I suppose that’s the only thing that would put me off marrying an Arab. I always see the nasty they use amongst their groups and they way hurt/disregard people. I don’t want to feel inadequate, or incompetent because of someone else’s constant criticism. It’s unjust and very one-sided. I forgot to mention most illnesses are a test from Allah, and what they are doing no matter how religious they are is haram and against the teachings of Islam.
@Incandescent Chimera
“The only option left for me is marrying a non-Arab, simply because I think he would probably be more accepting of my situation”
“I don’t think any Arabs would except me for my past mistake and my knowledge of religion is limited”
Dont say that!!!
My dear Arab sister, people change, dont say because of your past!!!
Your Arabic is just rusty, beleive me all you need is to sit down for a 2 hours a week for the next few months and next thing you know you’ll be up and running. As for your religion being limited, you can learn about it. whats stopping you? Remember that Allah forgives us for all are sins.
“(unless he’s an orphan, or has both his parents dead and with no in-laws… lol” Common you know thats not always true…you think non-arab parents and in-laws are any better? There’s the good and bad everywhere.
“illnesses/medical problems” Are you ok?
Allah yeb3ed 3annik el marad..ameen
Dont loose hope sister, again you can change, wallahi I’ve seen so many people who were far from religion and they asked for forgivness from Allah and now mashallah their very good people.
Inshallah you’ll be blessed with ibn el-halal and he’ll make you happy.
@mohamed
Shukran ya Mohamed 3la al-kalam altayib, inshAllah Allah yiftahlak kol abawab al-5eer fil dunya wal akhira. Ameen. I have Manic Depression (Bipolar Disorder – Type 2), I’m constantly changing my medication and I’ve been in and out psychiatric units because of suicidal/stressed/depressed behaviour – I have low self-esteem and I’m an obsessive perfectionist. My extended family is full of criticism of every little thing we do – that’s we’re distantly talking to them. My parents have found it difficult to deal with me because of this condition and I have struggled for years without realising it. The gossip and the crap among Arab communities is almost beyond what Arabs (especially my family) can endure and because of this I’ve been involved in many suicide attempts over and over again. I’m not a very social because of all this fear and I avoid most people (Arabs especially) its defense-mechanism I guess. I’m afraid of screw ups and making mistakes, though I’m aware they’re part of life’s journey. I’ve improved a lot since before, but I always have a feeling I can fall right down again. I don’t want to be a burden on anyone so I suppose that’s why I’ve lost hope – I’m also afraid Arab in-laws will look down on my parents and assume they can’t raise when actually that isn’t the case. Al7amduliah, I’m grateful for I’ve come to be… but I suppose the last thing I need is kerosene lit on top of the fire. Wassalam wa kol 3am wa inta ib-5eer (in advance), inshAllah Allah yikhaleena taybeen.
I’m not a bad person, there are impulses I get which are beyond my control. But other than that… I have a lot of qualities from the Arab culture that are still there. My new medication is helping, I’m a very spiritual person and I believe in using the Quran for healing, I have witnessed many miracles in my life and in the lives of my parents which have occurred as a result of Allah’s love and acceptance of our prayers which is why I chose to continue following and living by the Shariah and the Islamic faith. Otherwise my life had no spirit in it, and I was constantly bordered by Atheism simply because Muslims expect MORE from those who are Arab. When in reality they don’t realise not all Arabs are religious, but generally speaking the culture is conservative. My mother grew up in an Arab-Muslim country with 97% of the population Muslim. The government is not very Islamic (religion is not taught in schools, Muslims eat during Ramadan, Most Muslims don’t pray, No religious books or religious television programming) but she was surrounded by some religious family friends who influenced her in her Mid 20′s, thus she only lived within the limitations of the Arabic conservative culture. Whereas my father grew up with a religious mother and non-religious father (both Arabs) and gradually the friends of my grandfather (allah yirhama) encouraged him to pray and practice religion. We left our home country Iraq and lived in the gulf where religion was strongly emphasized and encouraged which was then the turning point for my mother. My father has practiced Islam since he was 12, so his good faith impacted my mother. Some Muslims make Islam more difficult to practice and they try too hard to “influence” other Muslims, when actually the oppress them more with these “so called” religious teachings. Honestly speaking, the Quran is pure through so much wisdom, but if Islam was left to the modern-day “so called experts or scholars” I don’t think I could live by their rules. Moderation is the key to happiness. Al-Islam deen al-i3teidal wal tataruf min geir salih al-muslimeen. Altatruf wal-ta3sub ib ay shee iwalid junoon.
@Incandescent Chimera
u r right allah knows best 4 all of us i am a muslim but not arab n i guess i am really blessed caz my famliy just want me 2 be happy it dont matter 2 them who she is they will love her caz i love her n thats it so 4 me family dont play a big role at least not on my end anyways marryage should be simple i think even the profit might have said something like that (pbuh)all i know is i love a girl n i will do whatever it takes 2 be with her n i pray 4 this all the time so plz god make her what is best 4 me n make me what is best 4 her i guess i always belived in love n that that should really be all that matters u seem 2 be a good person n i am sorry about yr relationship i really will pray that everything works out n u will be the happest person on this earth well maybe second happyest caz if i marry this girl (plz god )i will be # 1 p.s i think i bring her up all the time lol i just love talking about her
@Incandescent Chimera
mushkoor ikteer 3ala kalamik el tayeb oo 3ala hud dou3a.
Allah yeshfiki ya okhty oo yeb3ed 3annik el marad be hul shahar el fadeel. Allah yee-subrek, “eenallaha ma3a sabereen”. Hakee in nass kateer wala yarhhum, fa La tiz3ali min calam in nass, minhom la Allah. Dullek id3ee “Al dou3a 3akel al 3ebada”. Allah yeejazeekee kol el-5eer fil dunya wal akhira. Inty ulbeck Tayeb kateer, fa tustahaleen kol al-5eer.
yin3ad 3aleki ya okhty oo inty be ulf saha oo salama.
@Charlie Hayse
Thanks! I wish you all the best! May both of you inshAllah be blessed with the best of lives you shall ever live. Ameen ya rab.
@mohamed
Shukran ya Mohamed, InshAllah itshoof kol al-5eer fil dunya wal alakhira. Inhawil inkathir fil du3aa hal akhir alawakir min hal shahar almubarak. Allah ma3ana
@Incandescent Chimera
Allah yeenowerlek tareeik oo tareek al Mooslimoon ajma3een. Allah yeehdeena ila seerat al mostakim.
Ya okhty,
If you want to get married to an Arab, never put sickness as an obstical. NEVER think negatively, always be optimistic, as are prophet (Peace and blessings be upon) said: “Be optimistic and good shall be found.â€
Allah yeebarek feeky oo tiksabee rida ahaleeky.
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