Sad, beautiful piece on arranged marriage.... ======================= Women like myself live like strangers in our homes. We spend our lives trying to balance between what our family wants and what we need. We pray for the day we get married because we aren’t allowed to live alone—we only gain our independence after we marry. So we pray to marry someone like us, although deep down we know our parents won’t approve of someone like us. They want someone like them. But, we pray anyway. We grew up watching Disney movies. We were programmed to think we should follow our hearts and everything will magically work out. They never told us how horribly scary taking a risk was, because the risks in the Disney universe always, always paid off. We. Just. Don’t. Disobey. Our. Parents. And these parents — for whom cultural and societal traditions trump religion — then use religion to manipulate you. I fell in love with a good man. Because of my education, I was willing to compromise on social standing, which Islam never dictated as a criterion anyway. Islam said he must have good character and faith, and the couple must be compatible. He did and we were. My parents did not approve. In their version of Islam, if parents do not approve of your choice, you cannot marry him. I want to be a good Muslim. . . . They slowly broke me down. But that voice inside of me still said: it’s MY life. I turned to my faith, which preaches patience. It tells us that we never know where goodness lies. “You may hate something and it is good for you.” We are to trust in a grander wisdom than our own. If something is not destined, it will never be. That isn’t the only reason I caved. The reason I eventually gave in? Other women. Women, who, like me, were in love but had disapproving parents. Women, like me, who eventually married men their parents approved of. You listen to them and hold on to their stories like a life raft. They did what their parents wanted and still managed to live normal lives. Surely if it was so horrible they would tell me not to repeat their mistakes, right? The tragic part is I know that if they were still the same women they were before caving, they would never advise me to go through with it. They advise me to cave because caving changed them. They hated themselves and the world when they caved; when they married a man while wanting another with every fiber of their being. They thought they could never reach such a low, but they did. ================ loveinshallah/2013/06/05/arranged-marriage ~Saf
Posted on: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 22:12:54 +0000
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