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Boy Meets Girl
Looking for love in the Muslim world
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"In Islam, the reputation of the girl is perhaps her most important commodity," he says. And that leaves no room for sex, particularly for women.
"It's not really to be draconian like, 'I want a virgin,'" says von Briesen. "It's that it's your religion and if you violated that sanctity that dramatically, then what does that say for the rest of your life together if you are serving God? It's not unlike you are in SPCA and you donate money to SPCA and you volunteer with SPCA and you meet someone who kicked a dog to death.
"That person may have changed their ways and may now be volunteering with the SPCA, too, but it just doesn't line up right," says von Briesen. His friend Ali agrees. Ali, a devout Muslim, says he hasn't slept around, and he wants a woman who hasn't, either.
In the marriage process among devout Muslims, the concept of Western-style love takes a backseat to compatibility, in particular religious compatibility. If the couple falls in love before the marriage, that's a bonus. But the belief is that Allah will grow love in the hearts of husbands and wives for each other over time, so having it up front is not that important.
Charlotte's Muslim leaders don't just defend the courtship process. They claim the Islamic way of doing things is better.
"If dating was to work, I think our rate of divorce would not be as great as it is in this country," says Shamudeen. "If dating were the solution to lasting marriage, perhaps we would not have as much divorce. We date a lot and we divorce a lot, so it shows that the two are not necessarily mutually inclusive. What is lacking is respect. If you go back to the 1940s when women came out in large forces, I bet things were different back then, the whole dating process, marriage and divorce."
Shamudeen believes that Western women would feel more honored if men did things the way they do in his religion.
"Wouldn't a girl feel honored and dignified for a man to show real interest in marrying her, not wanting to mess with her for a period of time, satisfy himself and then go on to graze somewhere else?" Shamudeen says. "That to me is an excellent thing."
To Shamudeen, a network engineer who lives in Charlotte, this isn't just theory. He actually tried it out on a non-Muslim American woman in 1990 after he met her and decided he wanted to marry her.
"I got to know her a little bit and when I proposed to her, her parents and grandparents were just blown," he says. "They didn't understand. You are asking for a girl when you haven't done what everybody normally does? How can you want to marry her? I said, 'There is no way it can happen except by marriage.'"
She eventually converted to Islam, Shamudeen says, and they are still married today, happily he claims.
"It's a shock for this culture, but I think girls, they feel honored," says Shamudeen.
But no one is making any claims that it's easy. Sex is everywhere in American culture, and so is Western-style romantic love -- the eye-locking, heart-pounding stuff of romance novels and movies that is foreign to many Islamic cultures.
"Sometimes it's hard not to go with your feelings," says Suzanne Hamid, 18, a recent graduate of East Mecklenburg High School and a student at UNCC. Hamid's parents, who are of South American and Palestinian origin, gave Hamid a choice growing up. She didn't have to wear the veil, didn't even have to embrace Islam. But she chose to wear the hijab anyway, even though she was the only kid in her middle school who did.
All around Hamid, her college peers are dating. It's a dimension of Western culture that's almost entirely absent from her day-to-day life, though she's a second generation American. For others, a football game means a good time and maybe a chance to meet someone. But because she doesn't plan to marry for a few more years, perhaps after college, men aren't on her radar screen.
"A lot of people aren't looking because they know when the time is right, someone will be there," says Hamid of her Muslim friends. "They aren't actively looking for wives or husbands because everyone else is looking for them and there is not a need. There is so much less stress about that."
She has both Muslim and non-Muslim friends, she says, and when her non-Muslim friends talk about their boyfriends, she just doesn't say anything. Her Muslim friends are critical to keeping her committed to her way of life, she says.
Hamid hopes to find love in her marriage relationship one day, but for her it's not a deal-breaker.
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