interesting read, since this is always a hot topic…
New Jersey Weekly Desk; SECT14NJ
For Muslim Women, Marriage’s Delicate Dance
By CANDY J. COOPER; Moniza Khokhar contributed to this article.
2428 words
8 January 2006
The New York Times
Late Edition - Final
1
English
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
PATERSON – IT is not so much the eyes of God that Jan Zacharia, a
Syrian-America, fears in raising her daughter Valentina, it is the
unforgiving gaze of her tightly knit Muslim community. She knows the
slightest falsehood could damage her daughter’s marriage prospects as
easily as any truth.
Once rumors spread – about a young woman’s immodest dress,
flirtations with men or even late hours with friends – they can wash
through the community ‘‘like a flood all over New Jersey,’’ Mrs.
Zacharia said, leaving the family dishonored and cast out, their
daughter never to marry.
For her part, Valentina Zacharia, 19, who was born in Syria and moved
to the United States at age 2, feels split in half. The two worlds,
defined at once by American values and her parents’ protective
culture, shift within her like tectonic plates.
‘‘It’s kind of sad, but if I make the slightest mistake, I’m ruined
for life,’’ said Ms. Zacharia, a sophomore at Passaic County Community
College who lives in Prospect Park with her parents and a younger
brother and sister. ‘‘I’m like a piece of glass that can’t even get a
smudge.’’
When the thousands of Muslim women who live in New Jersey reach their
late teenage years and early 20’s – and about 40 percent of Muslims
in America are under the age of 29, according to a 2002 Cornell
University study – a figurative siren sounds, and it is time to find
a husband. Whether it is a cousin to whom the young woman has been
matched since birth or a non-Muslim American they have chosen, the
women are reinventing courtship and marriage and provoking a
revolution.
In New Jersey’s Muslim immigrant population – from Arab-Americans in
Bergen, Passaic and Hudson Counties to American-born sons and
daughters of affluent South Asians in the middle and western parts of
the state – the dramas unfolding among this group of about 400,000
people, the fourth-largest concentration of Muslims in the United
States, offer a classic tale about reconciling the old world with the
new.
One Islamic feminist from Somerset County who graduated from Drew
University last year ticks off her partner preferences as if ordering
lunch: I’ll have an entrepreneur with confidence and maturity.
A Georgetown University graduate from Basking Ridge recounts her
awkward arranged dates as if they are ‘‘Saturday Night Live’’ skits. A
Rutgers freshman from Bedminster enjoys wearing the hijab, or head
scarf, while speeding to punk-rock concerts with male friends.
Muslim-style marriage today reveals the complexities of the modern age
for a generation growing up in the shadow of the World Trade Center
attacks and the United States war on terror. Through it all, the next
generation of young adults is embracing Islam.
‘‘It’s common that the kids are more religious than their parents,’’
said Miral Sattar, a 26-year-old computer engineer and magazine editor
from Piscataway whose faith was fortified after the Sept. 11 attacks.
‘‘Before, in college, I questioned my own beliefs. Now everyone else
is saying, ‘Why are you a Muslim?’ I need to explain who I am, where I
come from, what’s wrong with the world. It’s deepened my
understanding.’’
Forward Thinking, Veiled or Not
Young, affluent, educated Muslim women are participating in what has
been called a gender jihad by Middle East scholars, a movement that
finds within Islam liberation from paternalistic and even misogynistic
cultural traditions. Contrary to the stereotype, the result is a
generation of forward-thinking women, veiled or not, with advanced
degrees in medicine, law and computer programming who sit demurely in
modest clothing in their living rooms as their families size up
potential suitors.
‘‘You want to go through the arranged marriage process,’’ said Nadia
Roumani, 28, a Syrian-American who has traveled around the country
working on a research project for a University of Southern California
on Muslim-Americans in their 20’s and their relationship to faith.
‘‘But there’s a disconnect between that process and the way we were
raised.’’
Ms. Roumani said that among her circle of well-educated American-born
Muslim women in their late 20’s, many are single, in part because they
are regarded as too old, intimidating because of their achievements,
or just ‘‘really strong women,’’ perhaps too strong for American-born
Muslim men.
On a recent Friday night in Paterson, about 40 Muslim women 13 and
older gathered at the Islamic Center of Passaic County to hear Madiha
Katao, a special education teacher in the Paterson public schools.
On this night, Ms. Katao, who was born in Syria and came to the United
States 19 years ago, addressed the role of women in marriage, and
distinguished between Islam and a seemingly infinite number of local
customs, ‘‘a million cultures, a different culture from each corner of
the village,’’ each imposing their own courtship and marriage rituals
in the United States.
Under Islam, she says, ‘‘there is no compulsion, no coercion, no one
can force me to marry someone I don’t want to marry.’’
And while it is true that Western-style dating is discouraged under
Islam, that unmarried men and women should be chaperoned, and that it
is best for parents to authorize marriage, each partner must be a
willing participant. It may not be quite falling in love, but at least
love comes – after marriage if not before.
As 16-year-old Jasmine Bayramoglu of Clifton, who was among the group
at the Islamic center, said, ‘‘That thing of being in love, it’s like
your brain is not functioning and you can’t make good decisions.’’
In this world of mixed identities and uncertainty, three women
demonstrate the varied Muslim American experience: one highly
westernized, another deeply religious, and the third a blend of
cultures.
Valentina Zacharia – Val to her friends – sits at the edge of the
group of young women at the center, her first visit in a long time.
She is quizzical: How does Islam square with her dream of romantic
love?
Ms. Zacharia was 9 and living in Hawthorne when she first decided to
don a head scarf. From that day on, she said she covered her head each
morning before going to public school. The ritual seemed as ordinary
as wearing socks until middle school, where she said non-Muslim boys
made fun of her and said she covered her head because she was bald,
ugly or ill.
By the end of middle school, the harassment had grown so bad that her
family moved to Prospect Park, north of Paterson, so that she could
attend Manchester Regional High School, where today Muslim students
number more than 30 percent.
Her crucial high school years there would determine her future – down
to the faith and culture of any future husband --according to the
findings of a study involving 27 Muslim-American women in Sugarland,
Tex., which was recently published in ‘‘The Muslim World,’’ an
academic journal.
Despite the taunting in middle school, in high school Ms. Zacharia
became intrigued by her non-Muslim classmates’ immersion in makeup,
hairstyles and boys. They invited her to the beach, to the mall, or to
socialize into the evenings – though her parents limited those
outings.
She became a cheerleader, but wore a long-sleeved top under her
cheerleading uniform and dance pants instead of a short skirt to
maintain a modesty dictated by her religion. Across the field was a
football player, a non-Muslim youth, and one day she removed her veil,
letting her dark curls fall down her back. ‘‘I wanted to look
pretty,’’ she said. ‘‘He was great looking. I wanted people to look at
me and say, ‘Oh, she’s pretty, too.’ My popularity picked up, and
being unveiled helped a lot.’’
Her friendship with the young man grew until a friend told Ms.
Zacharia’s mother, and the friendship eventually ended.
‘‘If you knew the amount of stress and hurt and heartache,’’ she said.
‘‘I had no one to share it with. That’s when you need your mom the
most.’’
Now she lives at home, attends community college and works as a
medical receptionist for an Egyptian doctor. She is contemplating a
career in psychology as a way of helping the Arab-American community.
A Background Check of Sorts
These days, her identity is in flux, though she appears to be drifting
toward family. A young Muslim man recently approached Ms. Zacharia and
wanted to speak with her. She said she would ask her mother. ‘‘He’s
cute,’’ she told her mother. ‘‘He’s hot.’’
Her mother consulted her father, who made inquiries with the boy’s
father, a friend. In all honesty, the boy’s father said, his son was
lazy and jobless, slept until afternoon and recently failed to repay a
large debt. This would not do, the Zacharias all agreed.
About 45 miles to the south, at a mosque in Piscataway, one of more
than 30 in New Jersey, Sana Khan, 23, who teaches at an Islamic
school, is more resolute in her faith. Covered in a black and white
veil, she describes an arranged marriage.
Ms. Khan, a Rutgers graduate, learned of her future husband through a
matchmaker. Two meetings between the families took place, and she
spent three months communicating with the man through e-mail.
‘‘I wanted someone with the same religious fervor I had,’’ said Ms.
Khan, who teaches English at An-Noor Academy, a grade school
associated with the Muslim Center of Middlesex County. ‘‘I wanted
someone who was on the same platform, who would give back to the
community, who would understand my passion toward a cause. On that
platform, we saw eye to eye.’’
In addition to a secular marriage, the two were wed under Islamic law,
with a signed contract that, like a prenuptial agreement, determined
the financial terms, even in the event of divorce. And in the
contract, Ms. Khan agreed to live with her husband’s family in the
South.
After earning a degree in journalism, she moved in with her in-laws,
only to encounter several cultural clashes. She knew that under Islam,
her responsibility was to care for her husband, and his to take care
of her. But Ms. Khan had never cooked, cleaned or done laundry. ‘‘I
did my best,’’ she said.
Instead of feeling like a newlywed in her home, she said she felt like
a houseguest in the long-settled dominion of her in-laws. Ms. Khan was
unable to adjust, and within six months the marriage was over.
She is open to another arrangement, although she says she will look
more closely at family culture. ''I don’t want it to be, ‘I cook, you
eat,’ she said. ‘‘I want to learn together in everything. That shows
compromise, that you’re giving up your time and energy, you’re
starting a new life together.’’
It is a short trip east from the Middlesex County mosque to ‘‘Little
India,’’ a three-block-square area of ethnic cafes, bridal shops,
jewelry and electronics stores in Iselin. Ms. Sattar, the 26-year-old
computer programmer and founder of an online magazine, awaits her
first encounter with a likely Mr. Wrong.
In terms of East meets West, Ms. Sattar, whose parents came to this
country from Pakistan, has blended religion, family heritage and
American culture. Still, that is no assurance that life will be
easier.
She says her upbringing in Piscataway, which was largely non-Muslim,
gave her a feeling of ‘‘otherness,’’ one that pushed her toward Islam.
She said she also identified strongly with young South Asian women in
the United States, and created an online magazine, Divanee, whose
title derives from a Hindi word meaning crazy or passionate, to help
enrich that identity.
‘‘From the time you’re a little kid, you’re brainwashed into thinking
your purpose in life is to find a good husband,’’ said Ms. Sattar,
wearing blue jeans and a modest long-sleeved shirt and sipping spiced
tea at a Pakistani cafe.
‘‘You hear, ‘Don’t play outside, you’ll get dark,’ because
fair-skinned girls are preferred,’’ she said. ‘‘Every Pakistani girl I
know has been on a diet since age 10. And you are socialized not to
talk to Muslim men. I feel like there’s this black box for Muslim
women and they can’t get out of it.’’
Marital Clock Is Ticking
Today, Ms. Sattar, who was born in Karachi and moved to the United
States a few months later, is both outside and inside of the box. She
has the glamour, layered intelligence and social ease of a very
eligible partner – and in Western terms, plenty of time before she
settles down.
But in Punjabi arranged marriage years, she is working against the
clock, and she says her parents talk about marriage every day –
networking with friends and family from Piscataway to Karachi.
She is highly accomplished, yet she says she also hears her father’s
dating tips: don’t speak of politics, your magazine, feminism or
Pakistan. And remember: everyone settles. Not Ms. Sattar. She is
looking for love.
So today’s arranged date sounds unpromising. He is Muslim, a highly
educated and successful Pakistani. Their fathers are longtime friends.
But she said he drew low marks when he pronounced ‘‘Pakistan’’ like an
American with no inflection, and sounded shallow when he asked whether
she exercised at a gym. And it seemed presumptuous when he wondered
whether she would ever move to his home, three states away.
Perhaps we should meet first, Ms. Sattar said she suggested. Hours
later they met in her family’s living room, where Ms. Sattar watched
her suitor talk with her parents. Her mother nudged her to get up and
clean something, anything. Her daughter might be a Columbia graduate,
computer engineer, editor and fan of Dostoyevsky, but she must
demonstrate her skill in the domestic arts.
Ms. Sattar heeded her mother, but she also knew one thing for sure:
she will not settle.
Photos: Miral Sattar, left, is single and says her parents talk about
marriage every day. (Photo by Jill C. Becker for The New York
Times)(pg. 1); Miral Sattar, 26, says she is looking for love and will
not just settle for a husband. (Photo by Jill C. Becker for The New
York Times)(pg. 7)
And noone mentioned anything about boyfriends, it was late night with friends.. last time i checked latenight with friends didnt mean you were out sleeping with some guy 