WHAT IS THE ISMS PROJECT?
I have spent the last few years exploring the illusive world of Muslim dating (or courtship). The good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ve shared what I’ve learned and encountered through my writing. The written word, while powerful, did not fully capture the carnage left by the Muslim Marriage Crisis. Living during a digital, hyper-visual time, I believed the best way to showcase the struggle, the pain, and frustration of single Muslim women searching for marriage, was through a photo series.
In hopes of humanizing this issue, I found four women to represent four of the isms I believe are at the heart of the crisis: sexism, ageism, racism and colorism. While this is by no means an exclusive list of the isms and other causes of the marriage crisis, I thought it was a good starting point to illustrate some of the barriers to marriage.
The photos depict two versions of the women: one photo depicts her battle with the ism, and the second symbolizes her freedom from it. I wanted the dual photos to present the problem, and not necessarily the resolution, but the defiance of the Muslim woman who continues to seek love and marriage despite the ism(s) that challenge and deter her.
SEXISM
AGEISM
RACISM & COLORISM
CREATIVE TEAM
In January of 2021, I assembled a creative team. My core team was composed of only Muslim women, married and single: Photographer Qamara El-Amin, Videographer/PR Hauwa Abbas, Costume designer Laterry Mohsin, and Design Artist/Stylist Nebia Zeroual. Each team member had recognized, witnessed or experienced the effect of the isms firsthand, and were eager to take action to combat them. We came together on the second weekend of July in Oakland, CA to do a photo shoot. We shot the photos in three days in three locations: downtown San Francisco, Fort Funston Beach in Daly City, and Reinhardt Redwood Park in Oakland. During that weekend, we bonded, sharing experiences about dating, love, and marriage, fostering friendship and cultivating a sisterhood that inshaAllah lasts a lifetime.
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Design Artist/Stylist: Nebia Zeroual
is an architect based in New York City. She has a love for design and fashion.
CONSULTANTS
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Creative strategist: Kendal Burkins
is a designer and strategist from Houston, TX. He sees design and communication as tools to build new world, and works with Black folks to create relaties that see and value them.
THE ISMs PROJECT
A Photo Series Addressing the Marriage Crisis in the Muslim Community
American Muslims are facing a major crisis. Not only are our youth distancing themselves from religion due to the pressures from anti-Muslim hate, and enduring high suicide rates, but we are witnessing a destabilization of the family unit: a marriage crisis.
On the one hand, Muslims who have never been in a relationship before, and have been ill-equipped with pre-marital education are entering into marriage at a young age, and getting divorced. Abusive relationships are swept under the rug, and divorcees (particularly women) find it challenging to get re-married.
While our divorce rate continues to increase, the more concerning trend is the number of never married, single Muslims.
The marriage crisis, as it’s been unofficially deemed by American Muslims, remains unexamined by Western sociologists and journalists alike. Yet, in mosques across the country, Imams (and other community leaders) are frantically fielding calls from anxious parents asking why their high-achieving, successful and religious daughters can’t meet a Muslim man to marry.
After recovering from my own series of failed relationships, I sought answers to the question: why is it so hard to get married?
In my quest, I dove into what I call the “Single Ladies Literature,” and found books like Jon Birger’s Dateonomics (which combines demographics, statistics, and game theory to explain why college-educated women can’t find a good guy), Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s Why There Are No Good Men Left, and Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance. I also attended Islamic lectures by prominent American Muslim scholars like Dr. Suzy Ismail, Dr. Omar Sulieman, and Shaykh Yasir Fahmy, about the decline of marriage in our community.
Then, I began asking Muslim women across the U.S, focusing on those between the ages 25 to 35, about the problems they’ve encountered in pursuit of marriage. From those conversations, I encountered the same themes and eventually grouped them into three categories: sexism, ageism, and racism.
With this photo series, I hope to increase conversation in the Muslim community (and beyond) about how these isms prevent relationships and marriages, and how with time we can overcome them. I believe these isms are not permanent features of our society, and are certainly not part of Islamic tradition.
Non-Traditional Dresses for the Non-Traditional Bride
Photo by Kenneth Purdom
Part of Ayana Ife's Bridal Collection
A few years ago, a close friend bought a wedding dress. She fell in love with it at first sight. It was on sale and the last one in her size. So she bought it. The only problem was, she wasn’t engaged! She bought the wedding dress with no engagement or wedding plans, and absolutely no man in sight. When I asked her why she did it, she said it wasn’t fair that the only time you get to wear a big, princess dress is when you get married. I agreed.
Her decision (or rather, her impulse buy) inspired the costumes for this photo shoot. I wanted the models who were all single women, to get the chance to feel as special as a bride in a custom made, modest wedding gown.
I knew the dresses had to be different. The American Muslim bride usually chooses to wear a traditional American white dress in addition to whatever gown her culture dictates. But I didn’t want my models in the traditional, puffy, white dress. The dresses I imagined in my head were avant-garde, bold, and non-traditional. I needed to find non-traditional wedding dresses for the non-traditional bride. And I say “non-traditional” because society says that her education level, her age, and her skin color, race or ethnicity set her apart from what a bride or a wife ought to look like.
After hours of google searches and cold-emailing, I found two Muslim designers who create custom modest wedding dresses and were willing to lend us their bridal creations for the photo shoot. Laterry Mohsin, owner of Sew Modest Studio in Detroit, and Ayana Ife, a Project Runway star based in NY, both understood the difficulties of the Muslim marriage crisis, and wanted to do their part in helping to tackle the isms.
Laterry Abdulnoor Yaseen Mohsin, is an internationally-trained Fashion and Jewelry Designer, having studied Fashion Design and Photography in London, England. She is also Lead Instructor and Founding Director of Sew Modest Studio whose mission is to empower and enable women and girls to design and create their own clothes.
Ayana Ife is a contemporary modest fashion designer with over fifteen years of experience dressing women of all sizes. Whether they need a stunning gown to turn heads, high-quality performance wear for hitting the gym, or a perfectly tailored power-suit, a woman’s clothing tells a very personal story about who she is. Ayana Ife brings their stories to life with thoughtful designs.
Because modest fashion lovers are often underserved in mainstream clothing stores, Ife will offer a more inclusive atmosphere empowering women with unique styles that represent their values. The right outfit will boost a woman’s confidence and put an extra spring in her step.
“This collection is the manifestation of a prayer I’ve been saying constantly as I’ve been on this journey of healing myself and strengthening my relationships with the people I love the most... Ya Allah, give me the courage to love with an open heart. Grief, trauma, loss, disappointment, heartache all teach us that it’s safer to be guarded. The more I dig down into these barriers that I’ve built, the more I realize that love requires risk, vulnerability and openness.
For this collection I allowed myself to go into the depths of the most romantic, unguarded feminine energy. What I found there was an explosion of color and texture and ruffles and a sense of softness and femininity that doesn’t require us to lose our voice or modesty.”
SEXISM
Contrary to public opinion, Islamic tradition encourages women to seek knowledge. This is evident in the high number of educated Muslim women in the U.S. According to a Gallup Poll in 2009, American Muslim women were 42% more likely to have college degrees than American Muslim men and other American women (29%). Following in the footsteps of important figures like the Prophet Muhammad’s first wife, Khadijah (R.A), Muslim women in America have successful careers. We are engineers, doctors, lawyers, college professors, and take up space in so many other sectors.
After speaking to Muslim women in different parts of the country about their dating-to-marry experiences, I learned that the misogyny buried in South Asian, Arab, and African cultures which make up the majority of the U.S Muslim diaspora, has created a negative stereotype that labels Muslim women who are “too educated,” or “too successful” in their careers as less attractive options for marriage.
Unfortunately, cultural baggage has overshadowed the teachings and role models of Islamic tradition, casting a negative light on women with high professions or advanced degrees who also seek to become wives. In the purview of some (the matchmakers, mothers and the men), educated or career driven women have become lesser candidates in the marriage market.
Regardless of whether the men we meet are educated or successful in their careers, it appears that Muslim women who have multiple degrees or ambitious careers with higher salaries are less qualified to become good wives. Is it due to a perception that she will be less attentive to her family or unwilling to compromise her career when it comes to starting a family?
Buried within this ism is of course a toxic masculinity and misogynistic view that pigeon holes women. Either she gets married very young, sometimes delaying finishing her education or achieving her career goals, OR she achieves her education or career goals and then is deemed “too educated” or “opinionated” or “too controlling” to be a suitable wife. All of these perceptions come from a warped understanding of a woman’s role in Islam.
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32 years old. Latina-American. B.A. in Marketing. Boston, MA.
“There’s all these expectations from the men and the community as a whole. If a woman is well educated or has a good career she’s seen as a threat. Too educated, too opinionated, too intimidating. People seem to believe that an ambitious, career savvy or even intelligent woman somehow doesn’t translate into being a successful wife.
I’ve personally encountered one too many men who incorrectly use religion to define what makes a good wife. They call me a feminist because I talk about women’s rights in Islam. I don’t do labels, but if defending women’s rights through an Islamic lens is feminism, I’ll take it.” - BM
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“We, as one ummah, must confront sexism and the misogyny that attempts to dictate what a good Muslim wife looks like. I used to care a lot about fitting into the mold-- someone else’s idea of what would make me ‘marriage material.’ Now, I focus on compatibility, and finding someone who understands women’s rights through the viewpoint of Islam.” - BM
Explanation of Photos:
BM, the woman who represents sexism, is 32 years old. She’s a Latina-American Muslima who works in Special Education and in her spare time volunteers as a graphic designer for various Muslim organizations. She converted to Islam several years ago and takes Islamic classes to learn about women’s rights in Islam. She serves as a vocal advocate for Muslim women (particularly converts) encouraging them to educate themselves about the rights Islam affords to women in marriage.
In the first photo, the ism photo, she juggles a teapot and a briefcase symbolizing the false binary women in our community are presented with: either focus on your education/career or choose wifedom. The goal of this photo is not to shun or trivialize domestic responsibilities, or to promote careerism, but rather to showcase that Islamic law and tradition calls for more autonomy for women than cultural practices have allowed for. One example in our tradition, is our Prophet Muhammad’s first wife, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. She was both a wife and mother, as well as a wealthy business woman. She is just one of many famous Muslim women who exemplified the dynamic roles women hold in Islamic society.
In the second photo, the female empowerment photo, BM sits comfortably without the ism props weighing her down. She frees herself from the pressures that society has placed on her, and embracing a more optimistic outlook, having educated herself on the foundations of her religion, finds peace and encouragement to continue in her pursuit of love and marriage.
AGEISM
Age discrimination in the context of marriage is based on the idea that a woman is most valued for her fertility and her beauty. There’s this antiquated attitude in our community that a woman becomes “expired” when she turns 25. For women who wait until graduation (or a few years past) to find a husband, they are dubbed as “too old.”
The prioritization of a woman’s fertility and beauty, which is sometimes more pronounced in Eastern cultures, is compounded by the issue of careerism which is pervasive in the West, therefore leaving many highly educated, over-25 American Muslim women at the bottom of the dating pool.
During my conversations with other Muslim women, I was told stories about mothers who got married young and moved with their husbands to the States and started having babies. Those matriarchs never had the opportunity to find fulfilling professions, and establish a name for themselves other than “Ammi,” and so they coaxed and primed their American born daughters to do more, see more, and be more.
Even though the boys were also encouraged to focus on education and careers to make something of themselves, therefore delaying marriage, it appears that men do not have clear expiration marks like women. It seems that only the women in our community bear the consequences of falling too deep into careerism, by losing their marriage value if they delay marriage for too long. While concerns about fertility are part of the equation, I argue the concern for a woman’s age is deeper than that given the unsaid expiration mark for Muslim women begins around 25.
When men in our community finally get around to settling down (in their thirties), they aim to marry young. If a man is 30, he’s looking for women between the ages of 20 to 29. If he’s in his late 30s to early 40s, he is still looking pretty exclusively at women in her 20’s.
So what? Aren’t the men just keeping in sync with cultural phenomena (both Western and elsewhere) that has always prioritized a woman’s body over her mind? Perhaps. But such thinking is NOT in line with Islamic tradition.
Our Prophet Muhammad (peace & blessings be upon him) advised his followers, “A woman may be married for four things: her wealth, her lineage, her beauty and her religious commitment. Seek the one who is religiously-committed, may your hands be rubbed with dust (i.e., may you prosper).” Al-Bukhari (4802). Despite Islam’s attempts to elevate a woman for more than just her appearance or her age, American Muslim women are left to battle both western markers that prioritize beauty, and individual cultural standards that cling to the value of a woman’s youth.
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34 years old. Egyptian Canadian. PhD. San Diego, CA.
“The older I get, the harder it is to find a good guy who would consider someone in her thirties. I can’t forget this one guy on the Muslim dating apps. He was kind, fun, and respectful. We went to dinner. Towards the end of the night, the conversation turned to birthdays. He said ‘you’re 31 right?’ And I said no, I just turned 32, and his reaction was as if I slapped him. He was shocked because he was 31 and turns out he didn’t want to be with someone even one year older than him.
The problem is, it’s not just this one ageist guy-- it’s the entire community. Other women, matchmakers, aunties, they think once you cross the 30-year threshold, you’re not suitable to be a bride.” - N.E.
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“Where in Islam does it say that a woman becomes expired every year she remains umarried? Didn’t our Prophet Muhammad marry an older woman? Why is our community so ageist when it comes to marriage? I’m done trying to run through options trying to beat time. If God has the perfect spouse for me, age won’t be a factor.” - N.E.
Explanation of Photos:
NE, the woman who represents ageism, felt the burden of her age as she searched for a husband. Once she acquired her PhD at age 32. NE was shocked to discover that she waited “too long” to look for a husband. In the first photo, ageism is represented by the clock she holds. While traditionally a woman holding a clock has been symbolic of the ticking time bomb she feels with waning fertility, the clock here is more representative of the expiration period that those in the community have placed on women to get married at a younger age. Whether those reasons are rooted in concern for fertility, or an emphasis on beauty found in a woman’s youth, the pressure to get married before one “expires” is ever present.
The second photo showcases a woman free from that pressure. She is no longer concerned about society’s deadline. NE strives to live carefree. She hasn’t given up on love and marriage. She’s just confident that if she’s meant to find her mate, her age won’t be a problem.
RACISM & COLORISM
Racism and colorism, two sides of the same coin, run rampant in our community. While research has found American Muslims to be one of the most diverse groups, we still remain segregated along ethnic and racial lines. Racism (as well as ethnocentrism and tribalism) as it relates to marriage, remains the elephant in the room. Amongst the long list of preferences for a potential spouse, you’ll see preference for a particular race or ethnicity, at the top of the list. These ugly isms appear most often in situations when parents reject their child’s potential spouse with vague reasoning, normally not pertaining to matters of compatibility or religiosity.
Likewise, colorism dominates largely in South Asian communities, as women (and men) are rated as “fair” on their bio-datas. The fairest of them all being the more likely to get married.
Because of the ethnic enclaves that exist in our mosques and neighborhoods, many cultural beliefs rooted in ethnocentrism, colorism and racism that were brought with previous generations when they immigrated to the U.S remain intact and are perpetuating the marriage crisis.
I’ve heard countless Romeo & Juliet-esque stories of young Muslim couples being denied their parents’ blessings because they weren’t of the same ethnic origin, or really were just “too black.” In my own experience as a Black and Latina American Muslim, I’ve noticed that matchmakers, or those in my social circles with ties to eligible bachelors are hesitant to place me because they know I don’t fit the initial criteria listed by the men, or worse, their mothers.
And yet, such actions contrast with the beauty of our tradition. One of the most notable verses to exemplify God’s command for us to embrace the diversity of mankind is, “O mankind! We created you from a single [pair] of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other [49:13].” Why do so many people overlook such verses when it comes to marriage?
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Why Can’t They See Us?
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25 years old. Ghanaian-American. Marketing Professional. Dallas, TX.
“We were just friends at first. Both in the same place at the same time. It was easy to be together. We each felt comfortable being our true selves. We didn’t pay attention to the differences. But his parents did. He was Arab, and I’m from Ghana. When he introduced me to his parents, they weren’t having it. I could tell from the disappointed look on their faces that they weren’t happy. Soon after that meeting, he ended it. The worst part is he could never gave me the decency of spelling it out. The “it’s just not going to work” really translated to ‘you’re not good enough because of what you look like and where you’re from.” - HN
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22 years old. Indian-American. B.S in Clinical Psychology. Santa Clara, CA.
“I didn’t know how big of a problem racism and colorism was in the South Asian community until my older sister brought home a black man. I was only 16 at the time, but I watched in disbelief as my family picked him apart as a prospective husband. Years later, when I decided I was ready to get married, I learned about the rating system for brides based on skin color. I guess I should have known after a childhood filled with face whitening creams and constant scolding when I wore dark colors. On the bio-datas my relatives pass around on my behalf, they write “fair” so that I can have a real chance at success.” - SS
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Skin color, race, and ethnicity should play no factor in who we love and marry. Islam doesn’t set those parameters, so why are you?
Explanation of Photos:
It’s hard to think of physical representations for racism and colorism. It is our photographer who had the idea to use mirrors to represent these isms. With these photos we want to demonstrate society’s failure to see past color or ethnicity or race. Society fails to see the beauty in the woman whose skin is darker. The models stand with their backs turned to each other, both experiencing two sides of the same coin. One comes from the South Asian community and battles colorism, the other has roots in Africa and her mahogany skin has placed her at arms length in the marriage market.
As the two models stand facing the mirrors, experiencing similar isms, yet apart in two separate worlds, both ponder the question: why can’t they see us?
The second photo of the women with heads joined together, and eyes shut, symbolizes female solidarity, and a focus on inner-strength and resilience. No longer cognizant of the outside world, these women will continue their journey to find love and marriage focused on their connection with God, and the other women in the community.
Shunning the Isms:
Focusing on Islamic Principles for Marriage
There is a way to move past the isms. There is a way we can work towards solving the marriage crisis. I believe the answer lies in increased dialogue about the discrimination that occurs in our community, particularly in regards to women. These conversations should be initiated by our religious leaders. Our imams and scholars must step-up in educating not only young Muslims looking to get married, but also their parents, about the best practices to select a spouse, with a focus on discouraging ageism, sexism, racism and colorism.
We, as a community, must get specific about these experiences. We must shine a light on the ugliness of the isms and the cultural beliefs that perpetuate them. We need frank conversations and increased premarital workshops aimed at prioritizing Islam before culture.
By sharing stories about the types of women (widowed, divorced, working, older) that the Prophet and the Companions married, we can show how Islam elevates women and promotes diversity. We can dispel the notion that there are expiration dates for women. We can show that there is kheir (goodness) in intercultural marriages. We can also teach people that Islam is flexible and while it does delegate specific rights and responsibilities to men and women separately, it does not clearly define how educated or career-oriented a woman should or shouldn’t be in order to be a good wife.
If we continue to shy away from these conversations, I fear that the marriage crisis will only continue to worsen. However, if we come together and confront these isms head first, we have the potential to see a resurgence of healthy, Muslim marriages. InshaAllah.
What’s Next?
The isms discussed in the series are not the only isms I’ve encountered in my research on the Muslim marriage crisis. I also see issues caused due to sizeism, ableism, and the stigma of divorce. We have hopes of getting funding to do a second series aimed at discussing these issues.
I also hope to find a research partner or institution that will help me to get the statistics on the number of single Muslims to further evaluate the barriers to marriage in the American Muslim community. I want to lead funded studies where I am able to interview Muslim women in the hundreds to support my qualitative conclusions.
Interested in supporting the second edition to the series or becoming a research partner? Write to me @ nailahdean92@gmail.com