Relationships

Relationships

Communicating with parents across the cultural divide

Communicating with parents during the process of seeking a spouse is a delicate issue, especially when their outlooks are so different from our own. Some may keep parents at a distance, causing long-term tension, while others give in to their parents’ traditional demands, which may not be in their best interest. How do we find common ground that balances our independence with parental involvement? Our contributors discuss how we can more honestly communicate and compromise with parents, and the benefits that this openness brings.

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Children, Relationships

How best to teach American Muslim youth about sexuality?

Umm Reem, the author of the article “The Reality of Sex Education in Public Schools,” contends that Muslim parents should be wary of the sex education curriculum in the American public school system, and claims that it is not merely biology lessons, but rather, a value-laden program correlated with an increase in promiscuity, teen pregnancies and STIs, and homosexuality in society. She contends that sex-ed curricula in the US are based on three organizations: Advocates for Youth, SIECUS, and Planned Parenthood.

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altMen, Courtship, Family, Marriage, Relationships

Response to Sajid Hassan: Are Muslim men scared of professional single Muslim women in their thirties?

A recent article on altmuslimah.com entitled “Searching for Khadijah: A boy’s perspective” by Sajid Hassan garnered quite a bit of attention as evidenced by the long string of passionate comments it received, far more than most other articles on Altmuslimah. The article described the pressure that professional Muslim American women face from their families and their social circles to get married in their early twenties, because it becomes much more difficult to find a partner once they hit their thirties.

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Relationships

The love story begins at the wedding

The idea that the reason to get married is to express your love for each other – or worse still to have a good knees-up with your friends – is a modern nonsense. Love is an important part of marriage for sure, but it is not a mandatory prerequisite. After all, real-life marriage is not a Hollywood movie, nor a Cinderella-esque fairytale where the love story ends at the wedding. We’ve got it backwards: the love story begins at the wedding and ought to grow. And it’s here that we seem to have got mixed up as a modern society.

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Books, Relationships

Another look at an important book

One of the many issues Altmuslimah covers is the Muslim marriage crisis—not just the difficulty many Muslim women encounter when trying to find suitable matches but also the rising divorce rate in the Muslim American community. Altmuslimah has featured several commentaries on these and related topics. In her article, When I Think About Marrying, Zeba Iqbal explored the sheer irony of being told throughout her life that one’s level of education and professional success defines success, only to later be labeled a failure because she hadn’t also been able to secure a husband.

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Relationships

The exoticization of a desert romance

“I got married secretly in a mosque,” says Elisabeth Elhazza. Her words are the title of an article in Tara, a Swedish women’s magazine, which gives an account of Elisabeth’s marriage to “seven years younger Khairi Elhazza from Libya,” how he proposed, and how “Elisabeth said yes without hesitation and stepped into what was, for her, an unfamiliar and strange culture. ‘Now I am one hundred percent Libyan,’ she says.”

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Relationships

Let’s talk about dating

Altmuslimah’s October roundtable, “Relationships and Dating in the Muslim Community,” sparked a fascinating discussion on the very use of the term “dating” to describe courtship among Muslims. In this article, contributor Munira Lekovic Ezzeldine explores the issue in detail.

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Relationships

Shamed

(Based on a true story) Several years ago, Miriam called her cousin Donia for advice. Miriam was newly married and the blissful honeymoon with her husband Mahmoud was not so blissful. Donia’s parents had immigrated to the United States before she was born and it made Donia the world’s authority on most anything related to relationships. Well, so her family thought. Donia spoke with Miriam quietly. She didn’t want her parents hearing the conversation she was having with her cousin. Families speak, sometimes quite suspiciously, about the wrong subject.

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Relationships

Are we ready for marriage?

Finding a life partner is often a confusing and uncertain process, particularly for Muslim Americans. We have few models to follow, since many of our parents married under vastly different circumstances, and our values regarding courtship differ from those of our larger society. One of the many symptoms of our struggle is the growing instances of young Muslims divorcing within a year or even within months of getting married. How do we find the balance between knowing someone well enough and staying true to our personal values and boundaries?

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