HomeIslam and The West

30% Muslim Women Marry Non-Muslim Men

Star Wars anger Turkish Muslims
British Muslims to Establish First Free Islamic School
CAIR Welcomes AP Stylebook Revision of ‘Islamist’

Canada

Vancouver (Canada) : Multifaith Metro Vancouver is a place of high rates of intermarriage and inter-ethnic dating. Islam, now the  second largest religion in Canada, teaches that it is sinful for Muslim women, but not Muslim men, to marry outside the faith. Professor  Yvonne Haddad, a prominent Islamic scholar at the University of Massachussets, says that Canadian census figures, which are far  more detailed than U.S. census data, reveal the extent of the marriage threat to North America’s roughly two million Muslim women.  Statistics Canada census data shows that roughly 30 % of Canadian Muslim women marry non-Muslim men, says Haddad. Children are  the crux of the Muslim law against women marrying outside the faith. Islam teaches that Muslim identity is transferred through the father. That makes it all right for Muslim men to marry non-Muslim women, because they don’t pass on the faith. “There is a lot of  heartache if a Muslim woman marries a non- Muslim,” says Fehmida Khan, president of the Canadian Muslim Women’s Association.  She explains that Muslim imams and other religious officials won’t talk to non-Muslims about difficulties followers have with marriage. Only about four per cent of foreign-born Muslim women in Canada will intermarry, says Hassan Hamdani, a Muslim researcher who  studies Muslim demographics through his job with Statistics Canada in Ottawa. But evidence of second-generation Muslims embracing  Canadians’ openness to intermarriage is strong, Hamdani says. Almost 40 per cent of Canadian-born Muslim families consist of a Muslim wife and non-Muslim husband. (Source: Vancouver Sun, June 5, 2012)

COMMENTS

WORDPRESS: 0