Appendix B

Finding a spouse: dating with a difference

The time-honored method of finding a spouse in Muslim cultures has been that one's parents, or their stand-ins, or surrogates, such as an uncle or aunt, an older brother or sister, relative or friend, or a guardian, found a spouse for one. If and when a marriage followed, it was called an arranged marriage, meaning that someone else searched for and selected a prospective spouse for one. With this purpose, some Muslim parents in North America even travel to their country of origin to find and bring from there to North America a spouse for their son or daughter. This, of course, is an expensive and even risky proposition, but this method of an arranged marriage usually works very well, especially when the individual chosen is a first cousin of the bride or groom in question. First--cousin marriages are both permitted and common, indeed preferred, in all Muslim cultures. It used to be that, unless one married a cousin, in which case one would have grown up with him or her, neither of the two intended to be married together was permitted to see the other until they were legally wedded together, so that they literally saw each other for the first time in broad daylight only on the morning after the wedding night and the consummation of their marriage.

In America, the practice of the arranged marriage is presenting some problems. Various factors are involved. For instance, there simply are not the requisite numbers of young men and young women eligible for marriage in the isolated small communities of Muslims in any one place, plus a lack of frequent and convenient contact among those who make up the community, and, maybe, even a certain amount of resistance from those who were born to immigrant Muslim parents and raised in America, some of whom may want to have a substantial say in the choice of their own spouse. Often, to facilitate the search for a spouse, an advertisement is placed by a parent or his or her surrogate in the "Matrimonial" column of a Muslim newspaper or magazine under the caption of "Seeking Husband" or "Seeking Wife," as the case may be, and providing just enough information about the seeker and his or her preferences and/or specifications for qualifications in a spouse.

I am not opposed to any method of finding a spouse in the Muslim community. What I want to write about in this appendix is to propose an alternative method for finding a spouse, viz., dating, but "dating with a difference."

"What is a date?" is not an easy question to answer.   Judith Martin, popularly called Miss Manners, says: "What constitutes a 'date' is practically a metaphysical question.   Long, long ago, when boys and girls had separate dormitories, hairdressers and attitudes, there was a social form known as the Date."    In its traditional form, according to her: "To arrange a date, a boy called a girl several days or even weeks in advance of the time he hoped to see her, and invited her for an occasion he had planned, such as dinner and a dance or, less momentously, the movies and a snack. He assumed the part of host, with such obligations as picking the girl up at her home, making arrangements, paying all bills and returning her home."   Of course, when asked for a date, the girl is free to accept or decline said date. But, having accepted, and barring an emergency, she was morally and socially bound to keep the date. Apparently, this social form is now extinct, because, reportedly, anything goes. Be that as it may, it is through dating that an American finds a spouse; the ostensible purpose of what today in America is called dating, even in its present impure form, is still the search for and finding of a spouse.

In the open and gender-integrated society of the West, traditionally the sole purpose of dating was the search for a spouse. This search could not be possible without the boys and girls meeting, interacting, talking, and socializing together with the view that this would enable them to get to know each other, take a measure of each other, and reach a decision whether the person one was dating was a promising and suitable candidate to be seriously considered as a potential spouse. With this purpose, the two met each other alone, while on a date; engaged in certain social activities; talked to each other freely, without others listening in or watching, about all sorts of things, such as their achievements in the past, present activities, future plans and prospects, and so on and so forth; and, finally, introduced each other to their parents and other members of the family and formed an estimate of each other within the family and social environment, too. As can be easily visualized, this search for a potential spouse through the mechanism of dating was probably the first serious task of either person's life. If one was at all a serious-minded person, he or she took dating with the utmost seriousness and deliberation that it deserved. Dating is called "going out" for a reason. The reason being that you and your date literally went out and conducted your date in an open and public place. There was none of the secret rendezvous about a date. For instance, when the boy came to pick up the girl at her home, he was invited in and met her parents, and maybe other members of the family if they were present, and briefly talked with them and discussed the arrangements of the date and the time he would bring her back home. If the two needed transportation to where they were going and the boy did not have a car of his own, the girl's parents, father or mother, gave them a ride to the place in question and went back at the appointed time to pick them up-- returning the boy to his home and their daughter back home.

After a date or two and with knowledge enough of one another, either the two continued to date or one of them politely declined to date further, in other words, as and when both or either one made up his or her mind that he or she was not interested in considering further the other as a potential spouse. This, then, left no reason for either one to date the other. Thus a boy or a girl of marriageable age dated more than one person. This provided a range of choice to either party. This is not very different from the parents of a boy or girl in our own culture exploring the possibilities of a marriage match for their son or daughter among a number of promising families at the same time and finally deciding the match, as and when the most suitable potential candidate for a spouse for the son or daughter was found. The only difference in this respect between finding a prospective spouse for one's son or daughter through parental search and negotiations and accomplishing the same objective through dating is that, whereas in the former case the initiative was taken by parents or their surrogates, the initiative in the latter case is taken by the son or daughter him-or-herself.  By definition, in dating one is looking for a spouse for oneself, not for another.

Whether one uses the parental search method or the dating method, it is perfectly feasible and practical to combine the chosen method with other means of searching for a spouse. Thus one can combine it with seeking the help of friends, relatives, imams, and other community leaders, people one meets at family and social gatherings and the mosque, Islamic centers, and Islamic conferences; and of professional marriage brokers and match-makers, certain men and women who somehow always know who has marriageable sons and who marriageable daughters; and putting advertisements in the matrimonial columns of newspapers and magazines. Then, of course, there are computer-dating services which maintain data banks to serve the needs of those seeking dates, relationships, and/or a spouse. Some of these are quite expensive, too.  All these sources of information and social networking can be utilized in conjunction with any method of searching for a spouse, both by parents as well as by persons directly interested in finding a spouse.  Of course, one expected meeting place for those who go to college or university is the campus of the school.

I am not interested in examining and/or establishing whether parental search or dating or any other method is a better, or the best, method for finding a spouse.  My purpose is to explore or present for critical consideration the method of dating, which some persons may find appealing or worth looking at and, maybe, even trying.  Certainly, no single method would suit all people, but perhaps dating may be a feasible method for the middle class and university-going Muslims who will eventually go into professions and whose lives or lifestyles will be those of professional people.

In the traditional Muslim society and culture, boys and girls were usually married—barring some special circumstance—by the time they reached their middle teens.  Today in America, as so many matrimonial advertisements show, those seeking a husband or wife are well past their twenties, even thirties, and who were never married.  Many of them (male and female) are university graduates, and some (male and female) with even a Ph.D. or an M.D. to their credit who hold highly responsible and well-paid jobs in their profession. In most cases, it was precisely the pursuit of higher and professional education and becoming established in one's professional career that delayed their marriage on purpose. This raises the question whether the traditional method of parentally arranging the marriages of one’s sons and daughters is at all applicable to their case. I do not think it is.  Hence the necessity of an alternative method of finding a spouse.  An illiterate Muslim girl of fourteen, for instance, in Pakistan is a species apart from a Muslim young woman of twice her age or older in America with an MS, MBA, MD or even a high school education and an independent income of her own in so far as their marriages are concerned.

The title of this appendix includes the important words "Dating with a Difference."  What amazes, frightens, and horrifies Muslims about dating in America, and well it should, is that dating might involve premarital sexual activity.  Dating does not only provide opportunities for premarital sex, it sometime also provides an opportunity for what is called date rape in which the man forces himself upon and goes into the woman even when she does not want sexual intercourse and repeatedly says "No."   Muslims honestly and seriously fear sexual abuse of girls within the context of dating.   An Indian Muslim with an international reputation writes:
 

‘Dating’ in western countries refers to the social custom of boys inviting girls to go out somewhere with them.  In this way, boys and girls become acquainted with each other before marriage.  This practice has become so common in western life that a girl who is not ‘dated’ ’by one or more boys begins to feel herself of inferior value on the marriage market.  In former times, dating, as a system of courtship, was confined to meetings during which conversation could take place.  But then morals became so lax that such meetings became occasions for sexual intimacy.  The most recent development is to ‘date’ a girl and then forcibly have sex with her—in fact rape her.

There is some truth in the above statement.  But it has to be kept in mind that people of one culture inevitably misunderstand, misperceive, and/or exaggerate customs of another culture.  This is true in case of occasional visitors and tourists.  For example, in the early 1960s when I came to America, it came as a severe "future shock" to me in an informal talk with some American professors and students at USC, a few of whom had visited Pakistan, that, because they had seen in Pakistan college students (all male) walking in downtown Karachi holding one another’s hands—which is true throughout the subcontinent—that they thought they were all gay, or homosexual.  That some might have been is anybody’s guess.  That there are incidences of homosexuality or pederasty in Pakistan, as in any society, is true.

Likewise, it is also true there are incidences of date rape in America.  But, I think, all such incidences have to be treated and dealt with as pathological and/or criminal, as all pathological and criminal activity must.  As to an American girl feeling "herself of inferior value on the marriage market" because she is not asked out on dates is no different from the situation when parents of a Pakistani girl receive no proposals of marriage and she knows that none are.  How do you think the Pakistani girl feels?  Of course, she feels "herself of inferior value."   Who wouldn’t?  In 1965 a rather good match had been found for me and my engagement to the young lady in question had virtually been agreed upon between our families.  I had also given my consent to the match and was given to understand that she had, too.  Suddenly, I was fired from my professorial job as Head of the Department of Accounting at the Institute [Graduate School] of Business Administration of the University of Karachi, whereupon the girl’s family broke off all further marriage negotiations.   How do you think I felt?  I’ll tell you: I felt as a person of "inferior value."   I am certainly not defending the indefensible, i.e., date rape.

To Muslims, even consensual sex between two adults outside marriage is unacceptable.  Then, too, are unacceptable to Muslims such things as partying, dancing, drinking, use of drugs, smoking, etc.  that might accompany dating.  Those who have lived in America for some time also know that the phenomena of premarital pregnancy and out of wedlock birth of children in America are largely due to dating.  Hence, if dating is to be at all an alternative method to be made available to our young people interested in marriage, it can be a possible alternative for us only on condition that it would have to be "Dating with a Difference," the difference being that it ought not to involve premarital sexual intimacy in any shape or form. And the same goes for everything else that Islam does not condone, such as dancing, drinking, use of drugs, partying, even smoking.  The one and only purpose of Muslim dating can be for our young people to meet and interact with persons of the opposite sex with the view and sole purpose of finding a spouse.  Dating would be altogether and entirely a conversational activity which, strictly speaking, does not even require shaking hands when or while meeting or taking leave of one another, much less holding hands, fondling, necking and petting, kissing, or a good night kiss, nor certainly not sex in any shape or form—masterbational, oral, anal, interfemoral, and/or vaginal.

Dating without an element of sexuality is really not an unknown idea in the Western culture either.  There are some Westerners who recommend dating without sex.  They keenly realize that the relaxation of the Biblical prohibition of premarital sex, i.e., fornication, during and in the course of dating has been and remains wholly morally and ethically destructive, both at the personal and societal level.  Let me cite only one testimony.  Neil Clark Warren writes: "I am deeply convinced that any two people who choose to marry need to maintain clear minds until the moment they say 'I do'.  Because of this, I believe in sexual abstinence prior to marriage.  Sexual intercourse before marriage is a clear act of commitment!  Once you have become sexually involved with a potential mate, your ability to think clearly and objectively becomes impossible."  I totally agree with this statement.  But while I do not consider premarital sex as part of dating and courtship for marriage necessary, advisable, desirable, or wise, and would recommend against it in the strongest possible terms, I would not like to see it punished with capital punishment in the form of administering eighty lashes with a whip or death by stoning, either.  Even a sinner is entitled to individual freedom and autonomy to make a personal choice, and, above all, a measure of human dignity.

I am quite certain that Muslim youth and young men and young women know the bounds of the Shariah and its forbidding of fornication and adultery.  Only on the realization, promise, and demonstrable evidence that our young men and young women, seeking a spouse, will not abuse the permission and social approval of dating, which is to say, dating with a difference, should our community permit both our male and female members of the community to avail themselves of this alternative method of finding a spouse.  In the end, it is a question of trust—whether we can trust our young men and young women with so grave a responsibility as finding a spouse for themselves.  At any rate, Muslims—that is those of the middle, educated, and professional classes and even those of the lower classes who aspire to rise into the above mentioned classes through education and professional work and considering that Muslim women are already entering the college, university, and professional schools and the world of work outside the home—must already realize that the institution and practice of arranged marriage is fast becoming outdated and irrational.  Adult Muslim sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters, must seek, find, and choose the person to marry—and only adult men and women, not boys and girls in their preteens or teens—when they have the means and wherewithal to marry.  The parental role should be only to provide counsel in the choice of a spouse.  I do not think there is a better and more effective way to help our young men and young women to be taught and to learn during their growing up period to become self-responsible adults than that they should be expected to decide themselves when to marry and whom to marry.  With such personal growth of our youth and adults will change for the better the fortunes of the Muslim society, too.  Insha Allah, if God be willing!

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