Matrimonial Banquets

My barely fifteen year-old cousin spent the weekend of her first homecoming dance in tears. Was it because her date screwed her over? No, but her Roman Catholic parents and his Muslim ones did.

When the Arabic boy's parents found out he was taking a white girl to their school dance, they forbid him to even leave the house. My uncle spent that night yelling, very upset, that my cousin had gotten herself so attached to an Arab.

My cousin is too young to really understand why any of this is happening. She was brought up by the whitest, upper-middle class parents you can imagine and has a Walt Disney perception of race issues. "We're all the same deep down. Why can't we all just get along?" In her world, if you make any distinction between different races or cultures, you are a horrible person. But she doesn't understand the distinction between race and culture. No there is no difference between an Arab boy and a white girl, or between a black goy and a Hispanic girl. But there is a difference in their cultures, hence the conflict that occurred this past weekend.

The difference in cultures that came into play this weekend is well-represented in an article I read in the New York Times today, titled It's Muslim Boy Meets Girl, Yes, But Please Don't Call it Dating.

According to the article, "Many Amercan Muslims - or at least those bent on maintaining certain conservative traditions - equate anything labeled 'dating' with hellfire, no matter how short a time is involved." One Muslim summarizes what parents tell their Muslim children, especially males, as "Don't talk to Muslim girls, ever, but you are going to marry them. As for the non-Muslim girls, talk to them, but don't bring them home." The conservative belief that sex before marriage is the gravest of sins, perpetuates this fear of allowing adolescents to date in the sense that Americans commonly do today. Because of this belief a process was created at the largest Muslim conference in North America called Matrimonial Banquets. At these banquets kids socialize with members of the opposite sex in search of possible spouses. Their parents, usually the mothers, sit on the sidelines, barely able to keep themselves out of the process. This whole ordeal is supposed to be an improvement from the strictly parental process of arranged marriage, though in my opinion

its not much better.

On the one hand, Muslim parents want the same things for their kids as we want for ourselves. One Muslim mother describes the ideal husband for her daughter as having a good heart, being handsome, and highly educated. But I still find myself repulsed by the idea of arranged marriage

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