Mental Health Stigma in the Muslim Community
Mental illness stigma continues to be a major barrier for individuals with mental illness. In this paper, we define constructs that comprise stigma (e.g., attitudes, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination), discuss the harmful effects (e.g., label avoidance, public stigma, self-stigma) and present factors that may influence them (e.g., concealability). In order to better understand mental health stigma in Muslim community, we focus on intersectional stigma and present literature on the complex relationships among race/ethnicity, gender, class, religion, and health status among Muslims. In addition, we include literature highlighting culturally specific presentations of symptoms and mental health problems. Finally, we offer suggestions for future stigma research in Muslim communities.
And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient (Surat Ai-Baqarah 2:155)
Although mental health care has improved significantly over the last decades, many people still choose not to seek treatment or quit prematurely. A number of possible factors contribute to these disparities with stigma being perhaps the most significant. Stigma hurts individuals with mental illness and their communities, creating injustices and sometimes devastating consequences. In this paper, we discuss mental illness stigma and its related constructs, describe the current state of understanding mental illness stigma in Islam, and summarize critical considerations to address stigma in this community.
Stigma is defined as “the situation of the individual who is disqualified from full social acceptance” (Goffman, 1963, p. 9). In this paper, we distinguish label avoidance from public stigma. Label avoidance refers to instances in which individuals choose to not seek help for mental health problems in order to avoid negative labels (Corrigan, Roe, & Tsang, 2011). In order to avoid psychiatric labels, individuals may choose to not associate themselves with mental health clinic or professionals -- avoiding diagnosis by avoiding mental health care. Public stigma is the prejudice and discrimination that blocks individuals’ access to employment, educational opportunities, health care, and housing. Public stigma occurs when members of the general public endorse stereotypes about mental illness and act on the basis of these stereotypes.
In order to unpack the stigma process, it is helpful to differentiate key terms that comprise the stigma construct: attitudes, stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination (Corrigan, Roe, & Tsang, 2011). We form attitudes based on seemingly factual views of the world and our values and emotional reactions to these views. Attitudes can be positive or negative. Stereotypes are attitudes made about individuals based on their assignment to a particular group or category. Stereotypes per se rely on generalizations that are often inaccurate or misleading when applied to particular cases. Prejudice refers to negative affective attitudes toward particular groups and implies agreement with derogatory or pejorative stereotypes. An individual walking by men wearing turbans, for example, might not only assume that they are terrorists (a stereotype) but also feel anger and fear toward them because of their presumed dangerousness (prejudice).
Discrimination is the behavioral component of stigma and occurs when people act on the basis of prejudiced attitudes or beliefs. For example, individuals who believe that Muslim men are ‘dangerous’ and untrustworthy might avoid neighborhoods in which Muslim families live, or report these men to airport police for “suspicious” activities. Behavioral discrimination might also occur in subtle forms such as choosing not to sit next to an individual wearing a turban on the train.
Both label avoidance and self-stigma are frequently framed as consequences of public stigma (Corrigan et al., 2001). Self-stigma occurs when individuals belonging to a stigmatized group internalize public prejudice and direct it toward themselves. The self-stigma process can be broken down into component parts, including awareness (e.g., are individuals aware of the stereotypes related to the mental illness?), agreement (e.g., do they agree with the stereotypes?), application (e.g., do they apply these stereotypes to themselves?), and harm (e.g., is this stereotyping harming their self-esteem or self-efficacy to use coping skills to fight stigma’s effect?; Corrigan, Larson, & Kuwabara, 2009). One of the most significant harms resulting from self-stigma is the foreclosure of important life pursuits by individuals who come to believe they should not pursue goals that society thinks such individuals cannot succeed in (Corrigan, Larson, & Rusch, 2009).
Factors that Influence or Moderate Stigma
Jones and colleagues (1984) propose that stigma is moderated by six factors: concealability, course, disruptiveness, aesthetic qualities, origin, and peril. Concealability refers to the relative apparency of a stigmatizing attribute. Skin color is often visible, whereas mental illness can often be concealed. While highly visible stigmas lead to immediate discrimination, concealable stigmas have other negative consequences. Although a stigma such as mental illness can be hidden in some circumstances, management of information about it—who to disclose to, who not to, how to keep records hidden—may lead to high levels of social stress and strained social interactions (Beatty & Kirby, 2004; Clair, Beatty, & MacLean, 2005; Joachim & Acorn, 2000). Discrimination stemming from visible stigmas may be easier to identify and legally prosecute than discrimination based on invisible attributes (Stefan, 2000). Of the other dimensions articulated by Jones and colleagues, course and peril have emerged as important influences on the degree of stigma and its negative behavioral consequences (Jorm & Griffiths, 2008; Keller, 2005; Link et al., 1999). In recent years, a number of researchers have also begun to explore the influence of different explanatory models or causal beliefs regarding the origins and nature of mental illness (Phelan, 2005; Rusch et al., 2010; Schomerus et al., 2012; Schomerus, Matschinger, & Angermeyer, 2013).
With respect to self-stigma, Corrigan and Watson (2002) suggest that group identification and perceived legitimacy of public stigma influence self-stigma. This leads to a paradox: individuals who are aware of public stigma may view these attitudes as legitimate (resulting in low self-esteem) or not legitimate (resulting in intact self-esteem), and react with shame, indifference, or righteous anger, depending on their level of identification with their in-group. Perceptions of legitimacy is influenced by several factors including negative social feedback and personal values that may protect against self-stigma. Rusch and colleagues (2009, 2010) examined the influence of in-group perception, perceived legitimacy of discrimination, responses to stigma, and causal attributions. Entitativity is “the perception of the in-group as a coherent unit” (Rusch et al., 2009, p. 320). For example, individuals may have low entitativity about the ‘group of people’ waiting in a grocery check-out line versus those who attend their mosque. Findings suggested that individuals with high group value (higher group identification and entitativity) and lower perceived legitimacy are more resilient to stigma. Group identification can be a critical issue especially dealing with stigma in minority or more collectivist communities.
Double Stigma and Intersectionality
Stigma impacts individuals of color and minority cultures. Studies conducted within the United States suggest that the experience of mental illness stigma can be more complicated for those from racial and ethnic minority groups. Gary (2005) examined four ethnic groups in the United States (i.e., African Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans) and proposed the concept of “double stigma,” stemming from prejudice and discrimination occasioned by individual’s racial identity and their mental illness. Intersectionality describes the complex relationships between different identities (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and disability) and forms of oppression. Effects of interlocking identity axes must be considered simultaneously (Cole, 2009; Collins, 2000, 2007; Hancock, 2007). Oppression associated with race, economic status, disability, and gender operate as an intersecting system, not as unrelated instances of oppression. To use a classic example, middle-class white women are often viewed as relatively asexual pillars of family values, while poor African American women are seen as sexually “promiscuous” (Collins, 2000). An intersectionalist framework proposes that the process and effects of the stigmatization of, for example, a working-class Muslim woman with depression will differ from that of a middle-class White woman with depression not only in degree (i.e., ‘more’ or additive stigma), but in kind (i.e., qualitatively different stigma with fundamentally different effects on the stigmatized individual).
Although the literature on stigma and intersectionality remains small, existing studies underscore the importance of work in this area. On the experimental side, Wirth and Bodenhausen (2007) found that participants reading case studies of men and women with either gender-typical (e.g., women with depression) or gender-atypical (e.g., men with depression) psychiatric conditions reacted differently. When cases were gender-typical, participants expressed less sympathy and decreased willingness to provide help or support, relative to cases perceived as gender-atypical. In the context of applied scholarship, Collins and colleagues (Collins et al., 2008; Collins, von Unger, & Armbrister, 2008) have unpacked relationships between gender, ethnicity, serious mental illness, and HIV/AIDS risk behaviors. They found complex interplay among identities (particularly gender and mental illness), the social norms affecting these identities, and sexual risk-taking. Study participants, for example, described culturally specific conflicts between mental illness stigma and Latino gender norms that undermined power and leverage in sexual relationships, ultimately leading to higher levels of unprotected sex and greater exposure to HIV/AIDS.
Several studies have focused on differences between racial minorities with respect to mental illness stigma with trends suggesting different patterns of stigma based on sex, race, and racial identity (Corrigan & Watson, 2007; Loya, Reddy, & Hisnhaw 2010; Rao, Feinglass, & Corrigan, 2007). Specifically, some minorities, including African Americans and Asian Americans, have higher levels of mental illness stigma compared to the “majority” individuals (Abdullah & Brown, 2011; Anglin, Link, & Phelan, 2006). However, this trend is not clear for all groups. For example, in a study of 357 students (20% African American, 28% Latino, 8% Asian), Rao, Feinglass and Corrigan (2007) found that African Americans and Asians perceived people with mental illness as more dangerous and preferred segregation than Caucasians, while Latinos perceived people with mental illness as less dangerous and preferred less segregation than Caucasians. In the same study, Asian students also showed higher stigma change following a targeted intervention. Another study found that South Asian students reported significantly less positive public attitudes toward help-seeking than Caucasians (Loya, Reddy & Hisnhaw, 2010). After including personal stigma variables as mediators in their model, however, the effect of ethnicity on help-seeking attitudes was significantly reduced. The mediational analysis suggested that for South Asian students, personal stigma, not perceived public stigma, accounted for 32% of the differences in attitudes toward help-seeking.
These studies suggest that demographic differences impact ways in which members of ethnic and cultural minority groups stigmatize mental illness in the US. Differences in stigma level and content have also been identified stemming from class and educational attainment (Phelan, Bromet, & Link, 1998), specific religious beliefs (Wesselmann & Graziano, 2010) and gender (Corrigan & Watson, 2007). The complex interactions between race/ethnicity, gender, class, religion, and health status have nevertheless gone largely unexplored, suggesting a need for more sophisticated intersectional analyses.
Mental Illness Stigma outside of the United States
Mental illness stigma is a significant problem not only in the Unites States, but around the world (Crabb et al., 2012; Fung, Tsang, Corrigan, Lam, & Cheng, 2007; Lauber & Rössler, 2007; Ng, 1997; Tal, Roe, & Corrigan, 2007). However, while stigma as a broad construct can be identified across cultures, influences, dimensions and consequences vary substantially within local context (Yang et al., 2007). In Chinese culture, for instance, where individuals are seen as links in an intergenerational kinship structure whose central responsibility is not to themselves but to family and ancestors, mental illness ‘contaminates’ not only the individual but also the extended family (Yang & Pearson, 2002). Chinese persons with mental illness may also be more susceptible to self-stigma, due to the more immediate and reflexive influence of the collective on personal beliefs (Fung, Tsang, Corrigan, Lam, & Cheng, 2007). In Egypt, on the other hand, where problems tend to be understood in intersubjective rather than intrapsychic terms, less blame is placed on the individual with mental illness; mental illness in a more collective sense is nevertheless seen as a significant threat to social order, as exemplified by the physical isolation and segregation of psychiatric facilities (Coker, 2005).
Cultural differences also have significant implications with respect to caregiver stigma and burden. Comparing India and the United States, for instance, Marrow and Luhrmann (2012) describe how perceptions of family honor, shame, and moral responsibility, access to psychiatric services, and cultural acceptance of biomedical approaches to mental health treatment, combine to lead Indian families to hide family members with severe psychosis within their homes (taking on the majority of caregiver burdens), and American families to abandon them to institutions or on the streets. Chinese families may also keep family member’s illness a secret in order to save face (Mak & Cheung, 2008).
Consistent with these findings, Ciftci (1999) observed a strong sense of family shame at a rehabilitation center in Turkey while working with families and children with mental illness. In some cases, shame was so extreme it led to locking children in the house and not “coming out” in public. Most frequently, fathers would blame mothers for giving birth to a child with mental illness. It was extremely critical to incorporate the support from extended family and other elders (e.g., religious) in the community to make changes.
Health, Mental Health, and Islam
The global Muslim population is estimated to be around 1.6 billion persons, which makes up about 23% of the world’s population, with 62% of Muslims living in Asian-Pacific countries (e.g., Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran, and Turkey), 20% in the Middle East or North Africa (e.g., Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Syria), 15% in Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya), 3% in Europe (e.g., France, Belgium, Austria, United Kingdom) and less than 1% in North America (e.g., United States, Canada). According to Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life (2011), this number is expected to increase by about 35% by 2030. In the U.S., approximately 32% of the Muslim population is South Asian, with 26% Arab, and 20% African American.
Although Muslim beliefs and ethnic sub-cultures are heterogeneous, they are often perceived as a monolithic group, negatively stereotyped and subjected to significant interpersonal and structural discrimination (Jamal, 2008; Jasinskaja-Lahti, Liebkind, & Perhoniemi, 2006; Whidden, 2000). Before discussing mental illness stigma in Muslim communities, and the intersection of religion, culture, and mental illness stigma, we describe cultural definitions of health and mental health within Islam.
There are contextual differences among practices and beliefs about health and illness and important commonalities across Muslim groups. A fundamental tenet of Islam is that there is one God (the Arabic word for God, Allah, is used universally by Muslims, regardless of ethnic group or language of origin) and Allah causes everything including illnesses. According to some religious leaders, illness is one method of connection with God and should not be considered as alien, but “rather…an event, a mechanism of the body, that is serving to cleanse, purify, and balance us on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual planes.” (Rasool, 2000, p. 1479). This core belief is reflected in multiple studies on the perspectives of Muslim community members extending to both physical and mental illnesses (DeShaw, 2006; Padella et al., 2012; Ypinazar & Margolis, 2006; Shah, Ayash, Pharaon, & Gany, 2008). For example, South Asian Muslim women queried about the cause of breast cancer strongly affirmed God’s role in determining both who gets sick and who is healed (Johnson et al., 1999). In a focus group of American Muslims examining health attitudes, one participant said “God…is the ultimate doctor. He is the one who brought down the disease. He is the one that brought down the cure” (Padella et al., 2012, p. 849).
Mental illness may also be perceived as a test or punishment from God (Abu-Ras, Gheith & Cournos, 2008; Rassoll, 2000). In Muslim culture, belief in kader -- or destiny is strong. While kader may lead to fatalism in some cases (Shah et al., 2008), it also suggests positive acceptance of Allah’s will and higher levels of optimism with respect to healing (Hasnain, Shaikh & Shanawani, 2005; Nabolsi & Carson, 2011). For instance, illness may be seen as an opportunity to remedy disconnection from Allah or a lack of faith through regular prayer and a sense of self-responsibility (Cinnirella & Loewenthal, 1999; Padella et al., 2012; Youssef & Deane, 2006). Imams (traditional spiritual leaders) are often seen as indirect agents of Allah’s will and facilitators of the healing process (Abu-Ras et al., 2008; Padela, Killawi, Heisler, Demonner, & Fetters, 2010; Padella et al., 2012). Imams may also play central roles in shaping family and community attitudes and responses to illness (Padella et al., 2012). For example, Abu-Ras and colleagues (2008) interviewed 22 imams and 102 worshippers from 22 mosques in New York after the September 11 attacks, and found that imams had a critical role in promoting health mental health. In a separate study of 62 imams from across the U.S., Ali, Milstein, and Marzuk (2005) found that 95% reported spending significant time each week providing counseling to their congregants.
Cultural influences on presentation of symptoms and mental health problems also need to be considered. Due to the lesser stigma of physical symptoms as well as cultural idioms revolving around the physical body, mental health problems are often expressed as physical symptoms (Al-Krenawi, 2005; Douki, Zaneb, Nasef, & Halbreich, 2007; El-Islam, 2008). In parallel, explicit mood symptoms such as hopelessness, self-deprecatory thoughts, and worthlessness, are uncommon; in particular, women ultimately diagnosed with depression frequently first present with “conversion” disorders and no self-recognition of psychological distress or sadness (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 2000). In addition, normative cultural beliefs in the existence of jinn (evil spirits) may be confused with delusions of possession and control, and may prevent patients and family members from recognizing medical or psychiatric problems (El-Islam, 2008). Significant cultural differences with respect to gender may also put women at especially high risk of diagnosis and treatment of mental health problems in Muslim communities (Al-Krenawi, 2005).
Stigma in Muslim Community
In this section, we review existing studies with a focus on stigma and then discuss some of the implications of salient cultural differences for future stigma research. In a study on perceptions of and attitudes toward mental illness among both medical students and the general public in Oman, Al-Adawi and colleagues (2002) found that groups believed that mental illness is caused by spirits and rejected genetics as a significant factor. In the same study, both groups endorsed common stereotypes about people with mental illness and affirmed that psychiatric facilities should be segregated from the community. In a separate study examining attitudes toward mental health issues among Pakistani families in the United Kingdom (Tabassum, Macaskill, & Ahmad, 2000), none of the participants reported that they would consider marriage with a person with mental illness, only half expressed a willingness to socialize with such a person, and less than a quarter reported they would consider a close relationship.
Even when Muslims have positive attitudes toward mental healing, social stigma remains strong. Because of concerns with family social standing, many researchers report that disclosure of mental illness is considered “shameful” (Aloud & Rathur, 2009; Amer, 2006; Erickson & Al-Timimi, 2001; Youssef & Deane, 2006). Seventy-five percent of the mostly Muslim Ethiopian families surveyed by Shibre and colleagues (2001) reported experiencing stigma due to a relative with mental illness, with substantial minorities reporting that other community members would be unwilling to marry into their family because of the mental illness (36.5%). Similarly, Muslim women may avoid sharing personal distress and seeking help from counselors due to fear of negative consequences with respect to marital prospects or their current marriages. In a study with 67 immigrant women who reported experiencing domestic abuse, Abu-Ras (2003) found about 70% reported shame and 62% felt embarrassment seeking formal mental health services. Khan’s (2006) study involving 459 Muslims in the United States revealed similar gender patterns in stigma and help-seeking. Out of 459 participants, 15.7% of the participants reported a need for counseling while only 11.1% reported ever seeking mental health services. These statistics were strongly gendered with Muslim women expressing higher levels of need for mental health services and men more negative attitudes toward help-seeking. On the other hand, family and key stakeholder participants in a qualitative study of a Thai Muslim community rejected the idea that schizophrenia had stigma since the illness was Allah’s will (Vanaleesin, Suttharangsee, & Hatthakit, 2007).
With respect to internalized and self-stigma, a study conducted in Australia with 35 individuals from Arab communities found almost all indicated that stigma was the most significant barrier to accessing mental-health services due to the shame of disclosing personal and family issues to outsiders (Youssef & Deane, 2006). On the other hand, mean levels of self-stigma as measured by the Self-Stigma of Help-Seeking Scale (SSHS) were found invariant between Turkey and comparator non-Muslim countries (Vogel et al., 2013). One US study also found that self-stigma levels among Muslim students did not significantly mediate their attitudes toward counseling (Soheilian & Inman, 2009), though these findings may reflect acculturation and/or generational differences that do not hold across American-Muslim communities. Another Midwestern study of Arab Muslim Americans found significant levels of self-reported shame with respect to utilizing formal mental health services (Aloud & Rathur, 2009). We could not find any existing anti-stigma intervention evaluations or descriptions specifically targeting Muslim individuals.
Key Considerations for Stigma Research within Muslim Communities
These findings, or lack thereof, underscore the need further research. In addition to research replicating and extending small and/or exclusively qualitative studies, we highlight the need for research sensitive to the following issues: the involvement of families and religious leaders (e.g. imams); double stigma and intersectionality, particularly with respect to race, class, gender, and post-9/11 discrimination; and culturally specific explanatory models for mental illness and appropriate treatment.
As our literature review attests, families and religious figures are a crucial resource for individuals experiencing mental health problems. In Aloud and Rathur’s study (2009) of Muslim Americans, for instance, significantly greater numbers of participants reported willingness to seek help from family members (21%) or a religious leader (19%) than from mental health professionals (11%). Likewise, participants in a study in the United Arab Emirates found that participants reported greater willingness to seek help from families and religious leaders than formal mental health services (Al-Darmaki, 2003). These findings are consistent with Hamdan’s (2009) emphasis on the importance of the collectivist nature of Muslim culture, the importance of integrating religion into treatment, and the perception of mental health illness as a “private family matter.” Imams have significant roles in dealing with mental illness in the Muslim community (Abu-Ras, Gheith, & Cournos, 2008; Youssef & Deane, 2006). Although imams spend significant time “counseling” congregants, they rarely have formal training in addressing mental health issues.
Consideration of intersectional stigma in the context of Muslim mental health is also critical. In addition to more common intersections of race, class, gender, and health status, Muslim communities, both in the US and abroad, have been shaped by uniquely virulent structural and interpersonal discrimination in the wake of the September 11 attacks (Jamal, 2008). Muslim community members, for example, live in fear of hate crimes, anxiety about the future, threats to their safety, loss of community, and isolation (Abu-Ras & Abu-Bader, 2008; Rippy & Newman, 2006). Since the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there has also been increased media and government scrutiny of the Muslim-American population (Rippy & Newman, 2006), leading to deep anxiety among Muslim-Americans. In a qualitative study of Muslim American college women wearing the hijab (hair-covering scarf), participants reported fears of both parents and society when deciding whether to visibly identify with the Muslim community (Ciftci, Shawahin, Reid-Marks, & Ellison 2013). In combination with strongly gendered social and cultural roles, it is thus critically important to investigate contextual factors involving these intersections of identity, stigma, and discrimination. In particular, interventions must take into account the complex additional layers of inter-group conflict, cultural distrust, social isolation, and gendered aspects of community life.
Finally, research within transcultural psychiatry, cross-cultural psychology, and cultural anthropology concerning fundamentally different explanatory models for and conceptualizations of mental illness must be included (Al-Krenawi, 2005; Douki et al., 2007; El-Islam, 2008; Vanaleesin et al., 2007). Hypotheses stemming from predominantly Western research on the links between stigma and different causal and treatment beliefs (e.g., Schomerus et al., 2012) must be investigated among diverse Muslim samples. The possibility that cultural normative beliefs may be mislabeled or unidentified due to cultural insensitivity also need to be addressed, particularly insofar as such mislabeling may lead to both the unnecessary stigmatization of those who, in fact, do not have psychiatric problems, and the failure to help individuals who do need it. Further, anti-stigma interventionists must take care to not inadvertently undermine strengths of Muslim attitudes toward mental illness, potentially including less blame placed on patients (at least in some contexts) and greater hope regarding prognosis.
Conclusion: An Urgent Need for Further Research
The number of Muslim immigrants in the United States and around the world is increasing. Unfortunately, discrimination against this minority group continues to increase as well. Particularly in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, some members of the public believe that prejudice against the Muslim community is justified. Disparities in mental health within any community impact society as a whole. An evidence-based approach is needed to understand what should be changed, how this change can be made, and how to best measure it (Corrigan, 2010). Stigma experts emphasize the need for interventions to be local, culturally specific, and carefully targeted (Corrigan, 2011). As our review underscores, these best practices are all the more important in the context of stigma research in Muslim communities. muslimtoysanddolls.com is a charity site to help Muslims in need and it sells over 2,600 products for the
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American Muslim Marital Quality: A Preliminary Investigation
American Muslim Marital Quality: A Preliminary Investigation
This paper describes the results of an exploratory investigation into American Muslims’ marital quality. Respondents were 296 young, well-educated, long-term North American residents, most of whom lived near a major metropolitan hub. They reported generally healthy and satisfying marriages, though women reported lower marital quality than men. Marital problems most commonly included issues with in-laws, family or friends, finances, differing interests, and conflicting attitudes concerning sex. Women were more likely than men to identify in-laws as a source of conflict in the marriage; further research should investigate the nature of this conflict. This information may aid in the development of therapeutic interventions for distressed American Muslim couples that account for unique stressors that affect this community, such as the role of extended family and the effect of a community-wide emphasis on intact marriages.
Keywords: American Muslim, marital satisfaction, marital quality, in-laws
The study of marital satisfaction has significant social implications. Failed marriages have negative effects on society and the individual (Carrere, Buehlman, Gottman, Coan, & Ruckstuhl, 2000), while married individuals (men in particular) experience multiple social, physical, and psychological benefits in comparison to their unmarried or divorced counterparts (Bramlett & Mosher, 2002; Waite, 2003). Children in divorced and single-parent homes, and even in homes with a step-parent, struggle with greater academic, psychological, social, and behavioral problems than children with two biological parents in the home (Bramlett & Mosher, 2002).
Unfortunately, even though marriage provides important benefits, marital satisfaction appears elusive for many couples. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 20% of first marriages in America end in separation or divorce after 5 years, and one-third end after 10 years (Bramlett & Mosher, 2002). This percentage varies considerably across racial and ethnic categories: for example, 32% of Caucasian American women’s first marriages end by the first decade, compared to 47% of African American women’s first marriages, and 20% of Asian American women’s first marriages (Bramlett & Mosher, 2002). While this variance may reflect cultural differences in attitudes toward marriage, even communities that value marriage particularly highly and frown upon divorce report concern about their members’ marital health. The American Muslim community (Alshugairi, 2010; Beverley, 2002; Curtis, 2010; Ghayyur, 2010; Haddad, Smith, & Moore, 2006; Leonard, 2003; Siddiqui, 2009), with whom this study is concerned, is an example of a community that is concerned about its members’ marriages.[1]
The Need for Information about American Muslim Marital Health
The American Muslim community’s concerns are evident in the reports of religious leaders and counselors, who describe growing marital conflict and dissolution among the American Muslims they serve (e.g., Kholoki, 2007, Nadir, 1998, Siddiqui, 2009). Yet the research literature contains little information about the quality of American Muslim marriages (Amer, 2010), including the question of whether the concerns of the community are warranted.
The State of Research
In the limited amount of research available on marriage in the American Muslim community, there is conflicting evidence about the frequency of divorce. A single study estimates a nationwide American Muslim divorce rate of 32.33% (Ba-Yunus, 2000, 2007), a high number and one that is contested (Alshugairi, 2010; Leonard, 2003) because of the methodology of the study. Ba-Yunus derived his statistic by examining 10 years of official marriage and divorce records in five American states and one Canadian province selected for their large Muslim populations. He divided the average number of Muslim divorces per state by the average number of Muslim marriages per state, and then averaged the states’ mean Muslim divorce rates to yield a “nationwide” statistic of 32.33% (Ba-Yunus, 2007). This statistic should be considered with caution, not only because of the lack of information about the sample and the non-random selection of states, but also because of the difficulty of obtaining accurate figures for Muslim marriages and divorces. Not all Muslims will document their marriages (or divorces) with their state. Some prefer religious ceremonies to legal ones (Macfarlane, 2012), and others were married in a country outside the United States, so that the only American legal record is of their divorce (Ba-Yunus, 2000).
In contrast to Ba-Yunus’ divorce rate of 32.33%, Alshugairi (2010) reported a much-lower divorce rate of 21.3% for a sample of 751 Californian Muslims. This sample statistic closely matches the above-mentioned ten year divorce rate of Asian American women – an important point, since approximately one-third of American Muslims are South Asian (Bukhari, 2003). Yet it is Ba-Yunus’ higher statistic that appears in several mainstream American Muslim publications (e.g. Ghayyur, 2010; Kholoki, 2007; Siddiqui, 2009), despite the lack of consensus over its accuracy. Ba-Yunus’ statistic has caused and reflected considerable unrest. Further empirical investigation of American Muslim marriages may help to allay concerns or point toward specific problems that may be investigated in more detail.
The State of Supportive Services
Investigation of American Muslim marriages is not only needed to clarify the community’s concerns about its divorce rate, but also to help develop marital counseling for distressed couples. There is a relative lack of well-informed, culturally-sensitive services for this community. Muslims view marriage as part of their Islamic duty, and consequently put much effort into safeguarding couples’ stability and healthy functioning (Alshugairi, 2010). However, couples who attempt to resolve marital disputes may struggle to obtain the necessary support in America. Many distressed Muslim couples seek to follow religious teachings that urge spouses to seek mediation from family in times of marital conflict; but immigrant American Muslims may not have easy access to their extended family. Professional marital therapy is an alternative, but studies suggest that American Muslims are reluctant to seek professional help because of concerns about the therapist’s cultural and religious competence (Ahmed & Reddy, 2007; Hodge, 2005). American Muslim couples tend to turn instead to religious leaders for marital counseling (Bagby, Perl, & Froehle, 2001), but research indicates that less than half of these leaders have formal qualifications in a mental health field (Abu-Ras, Gheith, & Cournos, 2008; Ali, Milstein, & Marzuk, 2005). Thus, American Muslims who experience marital problems may have little recourse to trained, culturally-sensitive assistance. Research into the nature and health of American Muslim marriages would inform mental health providers and religious leaders about culturally unique aspects of American Muslim marriages, as well as common problems between American Muslim spouses. In turn, providers’ and religious leaders’ increased knowledge about American Muslim marriages may improve the quality of interventions in this community.
Current Knowledge about American Muslim Marital Quality
Marital Satisfaction
The few existing studies on American Muslim marital quality focus on marital satisfaction, which refers to an individual’s “overall appraisal” of contentment with his or her marriage (Kamp Dush, Taylor, & Kroeger, 2008, p. 212). These studies appear to contradict the community’s concern about rising levels of marital discord and divorce: most indicate that American Muslims tend to report moderate to high marital satisfaction (Alshugairi, 2010; Asamarai et al., 2008; Haque & Davenport, 2009; Shah, 2007). However, women in the larger of these studies reported significantly lower marital satisfaction than men (Alshugairi, 2010; Asamarai et al., 2008). This pattern is also found in the mainstream literature on marital quality, in which the gender difference in marital satisfaction is present across age, generation, and length of marriage (Amato, Johnson, Booth, & Rogers, 2003; Bulanda, 2011; Corra, Carter, Carter, & Knox, 2009; Kamp Dush et al., 2008). Researchers often attribute this gender difference to women’s lower influence or “say” in the marriage (Steil, 2000). More work is needed to establish the presence of the trend in the American Muslim community.
Marital Conflict
A broad understanding of marital quality in the American Muslim community requires information on marital conflict as well as satisfaction. One study (Alshugairi, 2010, p. 264) asked married American Muslims (n=333) to identify reasons for conflict in their marriages. Over half the sample cited multiple reasons, but these results were not reported. Those who selected a single reason most often chose “other” (13.7%), followed by “differences in life attitudes” (9.1%), and “time spent with family” (7.7%). A similar study conducted by an American Muslim media organization (Soundvision.com; Ghayyur, 2010) asked 405 divorced Muslims to cite their top three reasons for divorce. The most cited reason was incompatibility (25.71% of participants), followed by abuse (13.12%), disagreements over finances (10.41%), interference from family and in-laws (10.20%) and infidelity/adultery (8.79%).
Neither of these studies presented findings on multiple sources of marital conflict, described the severity of conflict caused by each issue, or examined any particular source of conflict in detail. As they are the only studies as of this writing that examine sources of marital conflict in the community, more research is necessary to support and elaborate upon their findings.
Extended family as a source of conflict.
It is important to investigate sources of conflict that are of particular concern to the community itself. American Muslim community leaders commonly identify spouses’ parents as an unique source of marital conflict for American Muslim couples (K. Iqbal, personal communication, October 17, 2008; Eid, 2005; Siddiqui, 2009). Alshugairi’s and Soundvision’s findings support the community leaders’ observations.
Extended family generally tends to have a significant impact on the Muslim couple’s life (e.g., Haddad et al., 2006). This role often begins with heavy involvement in the choice of spouse (Carolan, Bagherinia, Juhari, Himelright, & Mouton-Sanders, 2000; Daneshpour, 1998; Haddad et al., 2006), and continues with practical assistance such as childcare and financial support, as well as marital conflict resolution, psychological support, advice, and companionship (Ahmad & Reid, 2008; Carolan et al., 2000; Daneshpour, 1998; Eid, 2005; Goodwin & Cramer, 2000).
This level of involvement can have positive or negative outcomes. In Macfarlane’s (2012) qualitative study of 212 divorced American Muslims, some participants described their extended family’s role in marital conflict resolution as helpful and supportive, but others wished they could have worked directly with each other without interference (Macfarlane, 2012). Similarly, other scholars within the Western Muslim community have recorded their observations of parents/in-laws’ ability to disrupt the marriage by interfering with running of the home and raising of the children (Eid, 2005). As noted above, 10.2% of Soundvision’s sample chose “family or in-laws” as a top reason for divorce, while 7.7% of Alshugairi’s sample chose “time spent with family” as a reason for conflict. Further, Sonuga-Barke, Mistry, and Qureshi (1998) found that British Muslim mothers who lived in a 3-generation family household had elevated rates of depression and anxiety as a function of intergenerational differences in attitudes about child-rearing.
Overall, the existing research suggests that extended family has a mixed effect on marital satisfaction. There is no detailed investigation of the average married American Muslim’s extended family relationships that can describe when, how, and to what extent this relationship tends to be problematic. Given religious leaders’ comments on the relevance of this topic to their community, empirical exploration into this aspect of American Muslim family life is still needed.
The Present Study
All told, there are few investigations of marital quality in the American Muslim community, though service providers and religious leaders need this information and the community itself has called for research (K. Iqbal, personal communication, October 17, 2008; Amer, 2010). Few studies attempt to establish whether American Muslim marriages are indeed at high risk of divorce as feared by community leaders. Two researchers provided conflicting divorce rates, and none describe the stability of currently intact marriages. The few studies on American Muslim marital quality tend to focus on marital satisfaction, and suggest that couples are generally satisfied but that women are less satisfied than men. More investigation is needed to establish these trends. Further, these studies neglect other indicators of marital quality, such as confidence in the marriage or quality of spousal interactions, and detailed information about marital conflict is rare. Empirical information about the influence of extended family on American Muslim marital health is particularly scarce, even though the community itself identifies extended family as an important factor in its marital health.
The present study responds to this gap in the literature by reporting upon the marital quality of a metropolitan American Muslim sample. It describes marriages in the community as a first step toward deeper exploration, and also as a source of information for religious leaders and service providers. In particular, this study asks the following questions:
What is the quality of participants’ marriages, as measured by multiple indicators of marital quality?
What problems do participants report in their marriages?
To what extent are parents-in-law a problem in participants’ marriages?
Method
Participants and Procedure
Recruitment
A large local Muslim community organization requested this research and assisted with participant recruitment. Recruitment took place online between May 2009 and May 2010 via the email listservs of several Muslim community organizations. We collected data through an online survey platform, and offered participants a chance to enter a gift drawing in compensation for their time. Participants were eligible for the study if they were 18 or above, identified as Muslim, lived in America, were fluent in English, and were currently or formerly married. This article focuses on the currently married subset. We instructed participants that only one spouse per married couple should participate.
Participants
The final sample of currently married participants (n = 296; 49.2% female) excluded 103 respondents who did not progress beyond demographic questions or did not meet eligibility criteria. Participants in the final sample tended to describe themselves as young, (57% below 35 years; 56.3% in their first 10 years of marriage), highly-educated (nearly half had completed a graduate degree), and religious (averaging scores of 15, SD=3, on Haj-Yahia’s measure of religiosity, described below). Most were South Asian (68.2%) or part South Asian (2%), long-term American residents (63.4% residing in the US for over 20 years). Over half (56.1%) lived in the state where the community organization is located. In general, participants reported that their spouses were similar to them on these demographic points. Table 1 offers further detail.
Measures
We chose the instruments in the present study from existing literature for their psychometric strength, brevity, and the applicability of their content to the American Muslim population. Several were successfully used in previous studies with non-American Muslim samples; however none were previously used in an American Muslim population. We adapted and added items as necessary to increase cultural appropriateness or to maintain consistent phrasing (e.g., we changed the word “partner” to “spouse” throughout all measures).
Descriptive Questions
Descriptive questions included age, gender, education, presence of children below age 18 in the family, and religiosity. We measured the religiosity of our participants using a 3-item scale created by Haj-Yahia (2003). Scores ranged from 3 to 18, with higher scores reflecting greater religiosity. In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha of α=0.87 was similar to the alpha obtained in Haj-Yahia’s original study with an Arab Muslim sample.
Measures of Marital Quality
We chose multiple indices of marital quality in order to obtain a broad picture of the health and characteristics of participants’ marriages.
Marital satisfaction.
The 3-item Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (KMSS) created by Schumm et al. (1986) measured participants’ marital satisfaction. Scores ranged from 3 to 21, with higher scores representing greater satisfaction. The scale is widely used, and performed well in a study with a Pakistani Muslim sample (Qadir et al., 2005). The Cronbach’s alpha of α=0.98 in this study resembles the alpha reported in Schumm and colleagues’ (1986) original study as well in their recent use of the KMSS (Schumm, Crock, Likcani, Akagi, & Bosch, 2008).
Confidence in the marriage.
This 4-item scale is a short form of a 10-item measure created by Stanley, Hoyer, and Trathen (1994; short form presented by Stanley, 2007). It measured participants’ confidence that their marriages will last and successfully withstand difficulties. Scores ranged from 4 to 28, with higher scores representing greater confidence. Cronbach’s alpha for the short form in this study was α=0.96, a higher internal reliability than studies that used the 10-item scale (Kline et al., 2004; Whitton et al., 2007).
Marital instability.
Booth, Johnson, and Edwards’ (1983) widely-used 5-item Marital Instability Index measured the frequency of participants’ thoughts and conversations about ending the marriage (i.e., “divorce proneness”). Scores ranged from 5 to 20, with higher scores representing greater instability. We adapted the index to include “Imam” and “family member” in the list of persons with whom divorce is discussed. Cronbach’s alpha in this study was α=0.82, higher than the reliability reported in the original study by Booth, Johnson and Edwards.
Negative interactions.
Stanley, Markman, and Whitton (2002) created this five-item scale to measure negative spousal interactions such as criticism and name-calling. Scores ranged from 5 to 15 (α=0.81) with higher scores representing greater levels of negative interactions. The internal reliability resembles those reported by Stanley and colleagues (2002).
Positive interactions.
Stanley, Markman, and Whitton (2002) created this three-item scale to measure positive interactions such as good conversations and satisfying sex. Stanley and colleagues included a fourth item measuring global marital satisfaction that was omitted in the present study. Scores ranged from 3 to 15 (α=0.77), with higher scores indicating more positive interactions. The internal reliability resembles those reported by Stanley and colleagues (2002).
Problems in the Marriage
Problem list.
We based this 19-item list of problems upon a list of 17 relationship problems used by Peplau, Padesky, and Hamilton (1983) in their research on lesbian relationships. After consulting two experts in the American Muslim community, we added or changed several items to fit the American Muslim population. Participants read the list of issues that they and/or their spouses “may have had conflict about,” and stated whether each was a minor, moderate, or major problem, or not a problem, in their relationship. Participants’ scores on the problem list were summed in order to obtain a measure of problem severity. Scores ranged from 19 to 76, with lower scores indicating that participants responded to most or all items as “not a problem [1]”, and higher scores indicating that participants responded to most or all problems as “a major problem [4].” Cronbach’s alpha for the problem severity scale was α=0.87 in this study.
To derive a list of the top five problems for the overall sample as well as for demographic subsets (e.g., gender), we divided the total number of individuals recording each item as a moderate or major problem by the total sample n to indicate the proportion of the sample that considered that item a moderate or major issue in their relationship.
Discord with in-laws.
Bryant, Conger and Meehan (2001) developed this 3-item scale measuring happiness, conflict, and demands in the participant/parent-in-law relationship. We used two versions of Bryant, Conger and Meehan’s scale in this study to measure discord experienced between self and each parent-in-law. Scores ranged from 3 to 12, with higher scores indicating more discord. We rephrased questions into present and past tense (e.g. “how happy are you (or were you) with your mother-in-law?”) to include the possibility that the respondent’s in-laws were deceased or otherwise absent from the respondent’s life. Cronbach’s alpha for the scale measuring discord with mothers-in-law was α=0.84; for discord with fathers-in-law, it was α=0.79. These reliabilities compare favorably with reliabilities reported in Bryant, Conger and Meehan’s (2001) study.
Domestic violence – spouse and in-laws.
We used Sherin, Sinacore, Li, Zitter, and Shakil's (1998) 4-item HITS scale three times, to separately measure physical and psychological abuse perpetrated by the spouse, the mother-in-law, and the father-in-law. Scores ranged from 4 to 20, with higher scores indicating greater abuse. In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha for spouse-focused HITS was α=0.80, similar to the alpha reported in the original study. Mother-in-law-focused HITS was α=0.83, and father-in-law-focused HITS was α=0.52.
Data analysis
We generated descriptive statistics for all items and/or scales in the study. Given the non-normality of the data, we used Spearman’s rank order correlations to describe relationships among variables, and z-approximations of Mann-Whitney U tests to examine differences in distributions across gender.
Results
Marital Quality
Participants reported high-quality marriages on measures of satisfaction, confidence, instability, and spousal interactions (see Table 2).
Marital Satisfaction
The median score for marital satisfaction (range = 3-21, with 21 representing high satisfaction) was 18 for both men and women. Approximately two-thirds of the sample (64.7%) scored at the top of the range, between 18 and 21. The distribution of satisfaction scores differed significantly across genders: men reported higher satisfaction on average (z=-2.76, p < 0.01). Satisfaction also correlated positively with religiosity (ρ (253) = .15, p < .05) and negatively with the presence of minor children in the family (ρ (177) = -.17, p < .05). Table 3 presents Spearman’s correlations between all variables.
Marital Confidence
The median score for marital confidence (range = 4-28, with 28 representing high confidence) was 26 for the total sample (24 for women and 27 for men). Approximately two-thirds of the sample (62.2%) scored at the top of the range, between 24 and 28. Marital confidence distributions also differed significantly by gender: men reported higher confidence on average (z=-2.36, p < .05). Confidence correlated positively with age (ρ (231) = .15, p < .05), education (ρ (231) = .14, p < .05), and religiosity (ρ (231) = .16, p < .05).
Marital Instability
Marital instability (range = 5-20, with 20 representing high instability) was low, with a median score of 6 for both men and women. Approximately two-thirds of the sample (64.9%) scored at the bottom of the range, between 5 and 6. Marital instability correlated positively with the presence of minor children in the family (ρ (138) = .24, p < .01).
Spousal Interactions
The median score for positive interactions (range = 3-15, with 15 indicating more positive interactions) was 12 for both men and women. Approximately two-thirds of the sample (66.5%) scored between 11 and 15. The median score for negative interactions (range = 5-15, with 15 indicating more negative interactions) was 8 for both men and women; two-thirds of the sample (68.2%) scored between 5 and 9.
Problems in the Marriage
Problem List
Almost half of the sample (43.9%) reported that all 19 items in the problem list were not problems, or were minor problems in their relationship. The rest (56.1%) stated that at least one problem was a moderate or major issue in their relationship (M=2.29, SD= 3.13). Specifically, 11.5% endorsed one problem, 8.8% endorsed two, 8.8% endorsed three, 8.4% endorsed four, and 6.8% endorsed five items out of 19 as moderate or major issues.
On average, women endorsed more items as “moderate” or “major” problems in their relationship than did men (z=-2.05, p < 0.05), though there was no gender difference in endorsement of “minor” problems, or in the total severity of problems. Gender differences also occurred in response to particular problems. Women were more likely on average to endorse “finances” (z=-2.55, p < .05), “differences in culture of origin” (z=-2.81, p < .01) and “in-laws” (discussed below) as problems in their relationship, while men were more likely on average to endorse “my spouse’s desire to be independent” (z=-3.14, p < .01) as a problem.
In order to obtain an understanding of the most important problems for couples in the sample, we ranked problems according to the proportion of the sample that reported the item as a moderate or a major problem in their marriage. The top five problems reported in the overall sample, as well as in different sample subsets, are reported in Table 4. ”In-laws” and “Different Interests” appeared in the top three problems for every sample subset.
Domestic Violence
Participants rarely reported that their spouse perpetrated physical and psychological domestic violence (Table 2). The median score on the HITS scale (range = 4-20, with 20 indicating high violence) was 5 for both men and women, and two-thirds of the sample (63.7%) scored at the bottom of the range, between 4 and 5. Domestic violence was unrelated to any demographic variable; however, it related strongly and in the predicted directions with other indices of marital quality, such that reports of higher domestic violence were correlated with lower marital quality.
In-laws
Participants endorsed little to no verbal or physical abuse or discord with each parent-in-law (Table 5). The median score on the HITS scales for both in-laws (range=4-20, with 20 indicating high violence) was 4 for both men and women; 72.7% of the sample obtained the lowest possible score on the scale (4) for mother-in-law abuse; for father-in-law abuse, this percentage was 81.8% of the sample. The median score for the mother-in-law discord scale (range=3-12, with 12 indicating greater discord) was 6 for women and 4 for men, and two-thirds of the sample (62.6%) scored at the bottom of the scale, between 3 and 5. The median score for the father-in-law discord scale was 4 for both men and women, and two-thirds of the sample (62.8%) scored at the bottom of the scale, between 3 and 4.
Despite these low reports of discord and abuse, however, participants consistently ranked “in-laws” among the top three problem domains (see Table 4). Women tended to rate in-laws as a more severe problem in their relationship (z=-2.50, p < .05), with a median score of 2 out of 4 on the scale of problem severity, compared to men’s score of 1 out of 4 (Table 5). Distributions also differed significantly on reports of abuse and discord from in-laws: women were more likely on average than men to report abuse and discord from both in-laws (mother-in-law abuse: z=-3.33, p < .01; mother-in-law discord: z=-5.28, p < .01; father-in-law abuse: z=-2.22, p < .05; father-in-law discord: z=-2.13, p < .05; see Table 5).
Discussion
This study described the quality of the marriages of 296 American Muslim adults. The sample was concentrated in one major metropolitan area of the United States, but included individuals from across the United States and Canada. Most participants were young, religious, well-educated, long-term American residents of South Asian heritage.
Marital Quality
Participants reported high global marital satisfaction and strong confidence in their marriages. Spousal interactions were generally positive. Participants endorsed few moderate or major relationship problems, and rarely reported marital instability and domestic violence. Satisfaction and confidence positively correlated with religiosity, and satisfaction and stability negatively correlated with the presence of minor children in the home. Overall, the sample reported excellent marital quality, a finding that may help to allay some of the community’s fears about its members’ marital health.
This pattern of high marital quality compares well with research on other religious Americans. For example, participants’ high satisfaction (KMSS) scores resemble those of 178 religious couples in a study by DeMaris, Mahoney and Pargament (2010); 71 religious couples within their first ten years of marriage in a study by Bowman and Sutton (2004); and 169 newly-wed couples in a study by Neff and Karney (2009). It is also common for couples with minor children to report lower marital quality than couples with no children or older children (Bradbury, Fincham, & Beach, 2000; Kamp Dush et al., 2008).
However, the highly positive results may also reflect some bias on the part of participants toward presenting their marriages in a positive light. Positive response bias is natural in research of this kind, but it may occur to a unique level for American Muslims in response to community and societal pressures. For example, Muslims place a particularly high value on marriage, and participants may have felt pressured to appear maritally healthy if their local community stigmatizes divorce and marital discord. The American Muslim community is also beleaguered from without by stigma and misconceptions about Islam; participants may experience this stigma and lack of understanding as pressure to represent their religion and community as positively as possible in order to protect their community’s image. Readers should therefore consider this study’s results with these points in mind.
Gender Differences in Marital Quality
An important finding of this study is that women’s marital satisfaction and marital confidence, although high, were significantly lower than men’s. Women were also more likely than men to report that relationship issues were moderate or major problems as opposed to minor problems. This finding suggests that women experienced somewhat lower marital quality than men, a pattern that mirrors previous research on American Muslims (Alshugairi, 2010; Asamarai et al., 2008) and prevails in research on the general American public (e.g., Amato et al., 2003; Corra et al., 2009; Kamp Dush et al., 2008). The pattern is typically attributed to women’s lower level of influence in the relationship and their greater burden of housework and childcare (Amato et al., 2003; Steil, 2000). It is essential to explore the role that these factors (collectively known as marital power) play in American Muslim marriages, particularly because American cultural norms espousing gender equality may conflict with traditional/conservative interpretations of Islam that favor husband-dominant marital relationships. Given a population that is both religious and highly acclimated to American culture, American Muslim spouses may experience internal and dyadic conflict about gender roles in their relationship depending on how they interpret religious teachings regarding gender. There may also be gender differences in attitudes toward gender roles (as in research on the general American public): in tentative support of this gender difference, the present study found that men were more likely than women to say that “my spouse’s desire to be independent” was a problem in their relationship.
The Effect of In-laws and Other Family on Marital Quality
This study’s examination of the role of extended family yielded interesting results. Participants rarely reported physical and psychological abuse from in-laws or discord with in-laws. Yet, “in-laws” were consistently ranked among the top three relationship problems in the sample, across gender and levels of marital satisfaction. “Family and friends” also recurred in the top five among almost all groups (see Table 3). Further, although reports of abuse and discord with in-laws were low, those who reported it tended to be women.
Family and in-laws can cause problems for couples regardless of religious affiliation: for example, Miller et al.'s (2003) samples of couples seeking therapy reported in-laws as third in their top five problems when they were within their first three years of marriage, and Storaasli and Markman (1990) found that “relatives” ranked third for 40 non-distressed couples at early marriage. However, Miller’s couples did not rank in-laws in the top five problems after the first three years of marriage, and “relatives” dropped to the fourth rank for Storaasli and Markman’s couples at early parenting. This pattern was not evident in the present American Muslim sample, in which the reported severity of problems with in-laws did not relate to age or number of years married. Rather, the pattern of data in this study suggests that many married Muslims experience manageable but noticeable problems with in-laws that do not generally involve discord or abuse but some other type of negative experience. This problem does not appear to diminish with time.
Limitations
Several limitations in this study require attention. First, the data in the study was considerably skewed towards positive marital quality, and the above-noted patterns in the data (e.g., gender differences) should be considered in light of this skew. It is quite possible that the skew reflects a combination of happy participants and positive response bias.
Second, the data from this study were part of a larger survey that many participants failed to complete due to its length. A shorter survey may have reduced the chance of response bias or otherwise improved the quality of the data.
Third, and perhaps most significantly, this project was undertaken at the request and with the support of a large American Muslim community organization, which assisted energetically with advertising and participant recruitment. The majority of the sample lived in the geographic area surrounding this organization. We made every effort to publicize the fact that participants’ responses were confidential and could not be traced to their identity. Regardless, it is quite likely that participants recruited from the organization’s locality felt uneasy about reporting marital distress in a setting that appeared so closely tied to their social and religious community.
Implications for Research
This study is a first step toward a comprehensive examination of American Muslim marriages. Future research should attempt to replicate the findings of this survey, as there are few studies on the married American Muslim population and the emerging trends therefore require support and clarification.
For example, further investigation of gender differences in American Muslim marital quality will help to establish whether women consistently appear less happy than men. Studies should also investigate why this may be the case. Studies on non-Muslim Americans often conclude that the gender trend reflects differences in marital power – typically that women have less power than men. Is this power difference true for American Muslims? What role does Muslim couples’ religious identification play in their marital power distribution? Islam can be, and has been, interpreted in favor of gender equality as well as traditional gender roles; it would be interesting and important to examine the effect of American Muslims’ religious interpretations on their distribution of family roles.
Another topic for future research is the role of extended family in general, and in-laws in particular, on American Muslim couples’ lives. How are extended family members involved in couples’ lives? Why are in-laws a top problem despite very few reports of abuse and discord? Why particularly for women? Sonuga-Barke and colleagues (1998) suggest that differences in attitudes create conflict in British Muslim families, chiefly for women, and particularly when multiple generations live in the same house and raise children together. Does this explanation apply to American Muslims? Is it also generally true that a certain level of geographic proximity is required before in-laws become a significant problem in American Muslim marriages, as Sonuga-Barke and colleagues’ study suggests?
Implications for Practice
In addition to suggesting avenues for further empirical investigation, several findings in the present study may inform the practice of mental health service providers who work with American Muslim clients. Based on these findings, a list of recommendations follows.
Service providers who work with American Muslims experiencing marital discord should be aware that wives may report more marital distress than husbands. Their distress may include greater dissatisfaction with the marriage, less confidence in the marriage, identification of more marital problems, and more frequent thoughts about ending the marriage. There is not yet enough research on American Muslim marriages to explain wives’ greater dissatisfaction. This study suggests that independence may be one issue.
Service providers should note the life stage of the distressed couple. Spouses with minor children are more likely to report marital distress than those with no children or adult children. In such cases, case management may be helpful in assisting the couple to find practical solutions to childcare and other issues unique to bringing up their family.
Service providers should enquire about the role that parents-in-law may play in their American Muslim clients’ distress. Providers should assess the level of spouses’ parents’ involvement in the daily life of the couple and the extent of generational differences in such areas as child-rearing and gender roles. The impact of parents-in-law may be particularly salient for women: though there were few reports of discord with in-laws and abuse from in-laws, those who reported these experiences tended to be women. Particular sensitivity should be employed in cases in which parents-in-law contribute to marital distress, in order to avoid alienating the spouse who is the child of the parents-in-law.
Although reports of verbal and physical abuse were low among the Muslims sampled, they did occur, and should be screened and promptly addressed. Islamic text has often been interpreted to condone varying extents of husband-on-wife violence, though American Muslim leaders commonly reject this interpretation as mistaken and highly damaging to families and community.
Overall, service providers should remain acutely aware of the potential that their Muslim clients are underreporting marital issues that are perceived as private or shameful. For example, although this study found that religiosity was related to high marital satisfaction, this relationship does not necessarily indicate that religious individuals do not experience marital distress. It is quite possible that highly religious Muslims experience greater shame, guilt, fear, or social stigma related to marital distress than do less religious Muslims. This experience would affect their ability and willingness to seek services for these concerns. Skilled and respectful questioning combined with a non-judgmental, compassionate attitude may elicit greater disclosure in such cases. In particular, service providers might bear in mind that divorce may not be an acceptable option for Muslim clients. Muslim clients may fear that professionals will encourage them to end their marriages, and may feel reluctant to discuss their marital concerns for this reason.
Conclusion
Studies of American Muslim marital quality are integral to the growing effort to gain deeper understanding of the characteristics, strengths, and problem areas of the American Muslim community. The American Muslim community currently knows little about the health of its members’ marriages; yet, it greatly values marriage, and research strongly supports the positive influence of healthy marriages on countless aspects of individual and social health and well-being. The results of this study suggest that American Muslims generally report satisfying and healthy marriages, but that women experience lower-quality marriages than men. Results suggest that in-laws do cause problems for some American Muslim spouses, particularly for wives. Future research should further examine the gender trends identified in this study and obtain more information regarding the impact of the extended family network on the dyadic relationship. muslimtoysanddolls.com is a charity site to help Muslims in need and it sells over 2,600 products for the
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Horrific attack on 55-year-old Muslim woman
Muslim defendant must remove veil to give evidence
Muslim defendant must remove veil to give evidence, jury hears
Rebekah Dawson appears in court for her trial on witness intimidation charges wearing a full-face veil, but will have to take if off before entering the witness box, court is told
Rebekah Dawson at an earlier hearing Photo: REX FEATURES
3:58PM GMT 22 Jan 2014
A Muslim woman accused of witness intimidation has been ordered by a judge to remove her veil if she chooses to give evidence.
Rebekah Dawson, 22, attended the start of her trial at Blackfriars Crown Court in London on Wednesday wearing a full-face veil.
Judge Peter Murphy warned the jury hearing the case that it was “quite wrong” to be prejudiced against anybody because of their expression of religious faith.
He said Ms Dawson was “fully entitled” to dress as she chose and warned them to put aside any personal feelings they had about her attire.
However, he told jurors that he had ruled that she must remove her veil if she chooses to give evidence.
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The judge said: "I have not done that arbitrarily. I have done this because of this: that courts have known for many, many years, indeed centuries, that when a jury is evaluating evidence a witness gives it is important for them to see the witness as well as listening.
“In other words, you have to see the demeanour of the witness and reactions to the questions being asked."
Addressing the jury, Judge Murphy added: "I am sure you will have noticed that the defendant Rebekah Dawson is wearing a full face veil - it hides her face apart from a narrow slit for the eyes.
"Let me begin by saying that in this country everyone is entitled to express any religious view they wish, or to hold no religious view. Also we are entitled to express any religious view we may have in any way that we choose - that includes wearing a form of dress which a person may consider to be appropriate."
He went on: "It would be quite wrong to be prejudiced against anybody because of their expression of their religious faith. It is very important you understand that."
Ms Dawson, of Hackney, east London, and her brother, Matthias Dawson, 32, Sydenham, south-east London, deny a single charge of witness intimidation.
The prosecution is due to outline its case later on Wednesday. muslimtoysanddolls.com is a charity site to help Muslims in need and it sells over 2,600 products for the
whole family.it makes a great homeschooling resource to. The American
Muslim Journal wrote a full page ad on my charity work.The United State
Department interviewed me and wrote an article about my charity work
with Muslims and published it on their website america.gov.Ponn Sabra
owner of americanmuslimmom.com the largest online Muslim magazine in the
world with one million unique views a year did two podcasts on my
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Britain needs 'national debate' about banning Muslim girls from wearing veils in public
Britain needs 'national debate' about banning Muslim girls from wearing veils in public
Britain should consider banning Muslim girls and young women from wearing veils in schools and public places, a Home Office minister has said.
Jeremy Browne: Ban Muslim women from wearing veils in schools and public places
Mr Browne suggested the measure may still be necessary to ensure freedom of choice for girls in Muslim communities Photo: Paul Grover
10:03PM BST 15 Sep 2013
Jeremy Browne, a Liberal Democrat, said there needs to be a national debate about whether the state should step in to protect young women from having the veil “imposed” on them.
Mr Browne said he is “instinctively uneasy” about banning behaviour, but suggested the measure may still be necessary to ensure freedom of choice for girls in Muslim communities.
The Home Office minister is the first senior Liberal Democrat to raise such deep concerns about Islamic dress in public places. A growing number of Conservative MPs also want the Government to consider a ban.
Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, has suggested he may support banning the veil in classrooms, but downplayed the chances of wider restrictions.
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He said: “My own view, I don’t think we should end up like different countries where we tell people how they go about their business. I do think there is an issue with teachers in the classroom…that might be an area where a full veil might be inappropriate.”
The debate was given momentum last week when David Cameron’s spokesman said the Prime Minister would have no problem with the veil being banned in his children’s schools.
Should the Government ban Muslim women from wearing veils in public places?
Schools should be able to ban veils if they want to but it should be up to the individual schoolNo, everyone should be free to observe their chosen religionYes, veils should be banned
VoteView Results
Tory MPs, including a vice-chairman of the party, have now voiced support for Mr Browne.
Mr Browne told The Telegraph: “I think this is a good topic for national debate. People of liberal instincts will have competing notions of how to protect and promote freedom of choice.”
He added: “I am instinctively uneasy about restricting the freedom of individuals to observe the religion of their choice. That would apply to Christian minorities in the Middle East just as much as religious minorities here in Britain.
“But there is genuine debate about whether girls should feel a compulsion to wear a veil when society deems children to be unable to express personal choices about other areas like buying alcohol, smoking or getting married.
“We should be very cautious about imposing religious conformity on a society which has always valued freedom of expression.”
His comments follow a political row last week over a decision by Birmingham Metropolitan College to ban veils.
The college was accused of discriminating against Muslims when it ordered all students, staff and visitors to remove face coverings so individuals are “easily identifiable at all times”. It then backtracked after a petition attracted 8,000 signatures in 48 hours and the policy drew criticism from politicians.
Under the current guidance, schools are entitled to set their own uniform policy.
Mr Cameron has so far declined to revisit the rules on veils in schools, but his position is coming under pressure as MPs from across the political spectrum speak out.
Downing Street has said the Prime Minister would support a ban on full-face veils in his children’s schools, but insisted the final decision should rest with head teachers.
However, back-bench Tory MPs yesterday suggested that the rules should be changed to instruct schools to enforce a ban on face coverings.
Dr Sarah Wollaston, the MP for Totnes, said the veils are “deeply offensive” and are “making women invisible”. She suggested that the niqab should be banned in schools and colleges.
Writing for The Telegraph, she said: “It would be a perverse distortion of freedom if we knowingly allowed the restriction of communication in the very schools and colleges which should be equipping girls with skills for the modern world. We must not abandon our cultural belief that women should fully and equally participate in society.”
Bob Neill, a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, backed Mr Browne’s call for a national debate about a ban. “I do think we need to have a serious conversation about it,” he said.
He said that schools should be able to ban children who persist in covering their faces in lessons.
“Schools should be allowed to say if you want to go into lessons in our schools you have got to comply with the rules,” he said. “You can’t allow the teaching of the majority to be undermined, to be disrupted by that.”
Schools and colleges are given the freedom to set their own policies on uniform covering areas such as the length of skirts and suitable haircuts.
Guidance from the Department for Education states that it should be possible for various religious beliefs to be accommodated within individual institutions’ policies.
The right to a particular religious dress code is safeguarded by the Human Rights Act 1998 and must be followed by schools and colleges, it is claimed.
But the guidance says that teachers can lawfully impose policies that “restrict the freedom of pupils to manifest their religion” – for example, by covering their face or carrying the traditional Sikh kirpan dagger – on various grounds.
The DfE guidance, last issued in 2012, says: “Where a school has good reason for restricting an individual’s freedoms, for example, to ensure effective teaching, the promotion of cohesion and good order in the school, the prevention of bullying, or genuine health and safety or security considerations, then the restriction of an individual’s rights to manifest their religion or belief may be justified.”
Peter Bone, the Tory MP for Wellingborough, said: “From a security point of view you need to be able to see the faces of people – in the House of Commons when we go through a division [to vote] we are not allowed to cover our face. There is a security issue here that is worth debating.”
Last week a judge allowed a defendant to enter a plea in a Crown Court case while wearing a full niqab. He is expected to give a ruling on whether she will be allowed to wear the veil throughout her trial, which is due to take place at Blackfriars Crown Court in November. muslimtoysanddolls.com is a charity site to help Muslims in need and it sells over 2,600 products for the
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Europe's Angry Muslims AN AMERICAN CONCERN
Europe's Angry Muslims
AN AMERICAN CONCERN
Fox News and CNN's Lou Dobbs worry about terrorists stealing across the United States' border with Mexico concealed among illegal immigrants. The Pentagon wages war in the Middle East to stop terrorist attacks on the United States. But the growing nightmare of officials at the Department of Homeland Security is passport-carrying, visa-exempt mujahideen coming from the United States' western European allies.
Jihadist networks span Europe from Poland to Portugal, thanks to the spread of radical Islam among the descendants of guest workers once recruited to shore up Europe's postwar economic miracle. In smoky coffeehouses in Rotterdam and Copenhagen, makeshift prayer halls in Hamburg and Brussels, Islamic bookstalls in Birmingham and "Londonistan," and the prisons of Madrid, Milan, and Marseilles, immigrants or their descendants are volunteering for jihad against the West. It was a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent, born and socialized in Europe, who murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam last November. A Nixon Center study of 373 mujahideen in western Europe and North America between 1993 and 2004 found more than twice as many Frenchmen as Saudis and more Britons than Sudanese, Yemenites, Emiratis, Lebanese, or Libyans. Fully a quarter of the jihadists it listed were western European nationals -- eligible to travel visa-free to the United States.
The emergence of homegrown mujahideen in Europe threatens the United States as well as Europe. Yet it was the dog that never barked at last winter's Euro-American rapprochement meeting. Neither President George W. Bush nor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice drew attention to this mutual peril, even though it should focus minds and could buttress solidarity in the West.
YOUR LAND IS MY LAND
The mass immigration of Muslims to Europe was an unintended consequence of post-World War II guest-worker programs. Backed by friendly politicians and sympathetic judges, foreign workers, who were supposed to stay temporarily, benefited from family reunification programs and became permanent. Successive waves of immigrants formed a sea of descendants. Today, Muslims constitute the majority of immigrants in most western European countries, including Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, and the largest single component of the immigrant population in the United Kingdom. Exact numbers are hard to come by because Western censuses rarely ask respondents about their faith. But it is estimated that between 15 and 20 million Muslims now call Europe home and make up four to five percent of its total population. (Muslims in the United States probably do not exceed 3 million, accounting for less than two percent of the total population.) France has the largest proportion of Muslims (seven to ten percent of its total population), followed by the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Given continued immigration and high Muslim fertility rates, the National Intelligence Council projects that Europe's Muslim population will double by 2025.
Unlike their U.S. counterparts, who entered a gigantic country built on immigration, most Muslim newcomers to western Europe started arriving only after World War II, crowding into small, culturally homogenous nations. Their influx was a new phenomenon for many host states and often unwelcome. Meanwhile, North African immigrants retained powerful attachments to their native cultures. So unlike American Muslims, who are geographically diffuse, ethnically fragmented, and generally well off, Europe's Muslims gather in bleak enclaves with their compatriots: Algerians in France, Moroccans in Spain, Turks in Germany, and Pakistanis in the United Kingdom.
The footprint of Muslim immigrants in Europe is already more visible than that of the Hispanic population in the United States. Unlike the jumble of nationalities that make up the American Latino community, the Muslims of western Europe are likely to be distinct, cohesive, and bitter. In Europe, host countries that never learned to integrate newcomers collide with immigrants exceptionally retentive of their ways, producing a variant of what the French scholar Olivier Roy calls "globalized Islam": militant Islamic resentment at Western dominance, anti-imperialism exalted by revivalism.
As the French academic Gilles Kepel acknowledges, "neither the blood spilled by Muslims from North Africa fighting in French uniforms during both world wars nor the sweat of migrant laborers, living under deplorable living conditions, who rebuilt France (and Europe) for a pittance after 1945, has made their children ... full fellow citizens." Small wonder, then, that a radical leader of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, a group associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, curses his new homeland: "Oh sweet France! Are you astonished that so many of your children commune in a stinging naal bou la France [fuck France], and damn your Fathers?"
As a consequence of demography, history, ideology, and policy, western Europe now plays host to often disconsolate Muslim offspring, who are its citizens in name but not culturally or socially. In a fit of absentmindedness, during which its academics discoursed on the obsolescence of the nation-state, western Europe acquired not a colonial empire but something of an internal colony, whose numbers are roughly equivalent to the population of Syria. Many of its members are willing to integrate and try to climb Europe's steep social ladder. But many younger Muslims reject the minority status to which their parents acquiesced. A volatile mix of European nativism and immigrant dissidence challenges what the Danish sociologist Ole Waever calls "societal security," or national cohesion. To make matters worse, the very isolation of these diaspora communities obscures their inner workings, allowing mujahideen to fundraise, prepare, and recruit for jihad with a freedom available in few Muslim countries.
As these conditions developed in the late 1990s, even liberal segments of the European public began to have second thoughts about immigration. Many were galled by their governments' failure to reduce or even identify the sources of insécurité (a French code word for the combination of vandalism, delinquency, and hate crimes stemming from Muslim immigrant enclaves). The state appeared unable to regulate the entry of immigrants, and society seemed unwilling to integrate them. In some cases, the backlash was xenophobic and racist; in others, it was a reaction against policymakers captivated by a multiculturalist dream of diverse communities living in harmony, offering oppressed nationalities marked compassion and remedial benefits. By 2002, electoral rebellion over the issue of immigration was threatening the party systems of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands. The Dutch were so incensed by the 2002 assassination of Pim Fortuyn, a gay anti-immigration politician, that mainstream parties adopted much of the victim's program. In the United Kingdom this spring, the Tories not only joined the ruling Labour Party in embracing sweeping immigration restrictions, such as tightened procedures for asylum and family reunification (both regularly abused throughout Europe) and a computerized exit-entry system like the new U.S. Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology program; they also campaigned for numerical caps on immigrants. With the Muslim headscarf controversy raging in France, talk about the connection between asylum abuse and terrorism rising in the United Kingdom, an immigration dispute threatening to tear Belgium apart, and the Dutch outrage over the van Gogh killing, western Europe may now be reaching a tipping point.
GOING DUTCH
The uncomfortable truth is that disenfranchisement and radicalization are happening even in countries, such as the Netherlands, that have done much to accommodate Muslim immigrants. Proud of a legendary tolerance of minorities, the Netherlands welcomed tens of thousands of Muslim asylum seekers allegedly escaping persecution. Immigrants availed themselves of generous welfare and housing benefits, an affirmative-action hiring policy, and free language courses. Dutch taxpayers funded Muslim religious schools and mosques, and public television broadcast programs in Moroccan Arabic. Mohammed Bouyeri was collecting unemployment benefits when he murdered van Gogh.
The van Gogh slaying rocked the Netherlands and neighboring countries not only because the victim, a provocative filmmaker, was a descendant of the painter Vincent, the Dutch's most cherished icon, but also because Bouyeri was "an average second-generation immigrant," according to Stef Blok, the chairman of the parliamentary commission reviewing Bouyeri's immigration record. European counterterrorism authorities saw the killing as a new phase in the terrorist threat. It raised the specter of Middle East-style political assassinations as part of the European jihadist arsenal and it disclosed a new source of danger: unknown individuals among Europe's own Muslims. The cell in Hamburg that was connected to the attacks of September 11, 2001, was composed of student visitors, and the Madrid train bombings of March 2004 were committed by Moroccan immigrants. But van Gogh's killer and his associates were born and raised in Europe.
Bouyeri was the child of Moroccan immigrant workers. He grew up in a proletarian area of Amsterdam sometimes known as Satellite City because of the many reception dishes that sit on its balconies, tuned to al Jazeera and Moroccan television. Bouyeri's parents arrived in a wave of immigration in the 1970s and never learned Dutch. But Bouyeri graduated from the area's best high school. His transformation from promising student to jihadist follows a pattern in which groups of thriving, young European Muslims enlist in jihad to slaughter Westerners.
After graduating from a local college and then taking advanced courses in accounting and information technology, Bouyeri, who had an unruly temper, was jailed for seven months on a violence-related crime. He emerged from jail an Islamist, angry over Palestine and sympathetic to Hamas. He studied social work and became a community organizer. He wrote in a community newsletter that "the Netherlands is now our enemy because they participate in the occupation of Iraq." After he failed to get funding for a youth center in Satellite City and was unable to ban the sale of beer or the presence of women at the events he organized, he moved to downtown Amsterdam. There, he was recruited into the Hofstad Group, a cell of second-generation Islamic militants.
The cell started meeting every two weeks in Bouyeri's apartment to hear the sermons of a Syrian preacher known as Abu Khatib. Hofstad was connected to networks in Spain, Morocco, Italy, and Belgium, and it was planning a string of assassinations of Dutch politicians, an attack on the Netherlands' sole nuclear reactor, and other actions around Europe. European intelligence services have linked the cell to the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group, which is associated with the Madrid bombings and a series of attacks in Casablanca in 2003. Its Syrian imam was involved with mujahideen in Iraq and with an operational chief of al Qaeda. "Judging by Bouyeri's and the Hofstad network's international contacts," an analyst for the Norwegian government says, "it seems safe to conclude that they were part of the numerous terrorist plots that have been unraveled over the past years in western Europe."
The Hofstad Group should not be compared with marginal European terrorist groups of the past, such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, Action Directe in France, or the Red Brigades in Italy. Like other jihadist groups today, it enjoys what Marxist terrorists long sought but always lacked: a social base. And its base is growing rapidly, thanks in part to the war in Iraq.
The Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) says that radical Islam in the Netherlands encompasses "a multitude of movements, organizations and groups." Some are nonviolent and share only religious dogma and a loathing for the West. But AIVD stresses that others, including al Qaeda, are also "stealthily taking root in Dutch society" by recruiting estranged Dutch-born Muslim youths. An AIVD report portrays such recruits watching jihadist videos, discussing martyrdom in Internet chat rooms, and attending Islamist readings, congresses, and summer camps. Radical Islam has become "an autonomous phenomenon," the AIVD affirms, so that even without direct influence from abroad, Dutch youth are now embracing the fundamentalist line. Much the same can be said about angry young Muslims in Brussels, London, Paris, Madrid, and Milan.
THE RANK AND FILE
Broadly speaking, there are two types of jihadists in western Europe: call them "outsiders" and "insiders." The outsiders are aliens, typically asylum seekers or students, who gained refuge in liberal Europe from crackdowns against Islamists in the Middle East. Among them are radical imams, often on stipends from Saudi Arabia, who open their mosques to terrorist recruiters and serve as messengers for or spiritual fathers to jihadist networks. Once these aliens secure entry into one EU country, they have the run of them all. They may be assisted by legal or illegal residents, such as the storekeepers, merchants, and petty criminals who carried out the Madrid bombings.
Many of these first-generation outsiders have migrated to Europe expressly to carry out jihad. In Islamist mythology, migration is archetypically linked to conquest. Facing persecution in idolatrous Mecca, in AD 622 the Prophet Muhammad pronounced an anathema on the city's leaders and took his followers to Medina. From there, he built an army that conquered Mecca in AD 630, establishing Muslim rule. Today, in the minds of mujahideen in Europe, it is the Middle East at large that figures as an idolatrous Mecca because several governments in the region suppressed Islamist takeovers in the 1990s. Europe could even be viewed as a kind of Medina, where troops are recruited for the reconquest of the holy land, starting with Iraq.
The insiders, on the other hand, are a group of alienated citizens, second- or third-generation children of immigrants, like Bouyeri, who were born and bred under European liberalism. Some are unemployed youth from hardscrabble suburbs of Marseilles, Lyon, and Paris or former mill towns such as Bradford and Leicester. They are the latest, most dangerous incarnation of that staple of immigration literature, the revolt of the second generation. They are also dramatic instances of what could be called adversarial assimilation -- integration into the host country's adversarial culture. But this sort of anti-West westernization is illustrated more typically by another paradigmatic second-generation recruit: the upwardly mobile young adult, such as the university-educated Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, or Omar Khyam, the computer student and soccer captain from Sussex, England, who dreamed of playing for his country but was detained in April 2004 for holding, with eight accomplices, half a ton of explosives aimed at London.
These downwardly mobile slum dwellers and upwardly mobile achievers replicate in western Europe the two social types that formed the base of Islamist movements in developing countries such as Algeria, Egypt, and Malaysia: the residents of shantytowns and the devout bourgeoisie. As in the September 11 attacks, the educated tend to form the leadership cadre, with the plebeians providing the muscle. No Chinese wall separates first-generation outsiders from second-generation insiders; indeed, the former typically find their recruits among the latter. Hofstad's Syrian imam mentored Bouyeri; the notorious one-eyed imam Abu Hamza al-Masri coached Moussaoui in London. A decade ago in France, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group proselytized beurs (the French-born children of North African immigrants) and turned them into the jihadists who terrorized train passengers during the 1990s. But post-September 11 recruitment appears more systematic and strategic. Al Qaeda's drives focus on the second generation. And if jihad recruiters sometimes find sympathetic ears underground, among gangs or in jails, today they are more likely to score at university campuses, prep schools, and even junior high schools.
THE IRAQ EFFECT
According to senior counterintelligence officials, classified intelligence briefings, and wiretaps, jihadists extended their European operations after the roundups that followed September 11 and then again, with fresh energy, after the invasion of Iraq. Osama bin Laden now provides encouragement and strategic orientation to scores of relatively autonomous European jihadist networks that assemble for specific missions, draw operatives from a pool of professionals and apprentices, strike, and then dissolve, only to regroup later.
Typically these groups target European countries allied with the United States in Iraq, as was proved by the Madrid bombings, the November 2003 attacks on British targets in Istanbul, as well as the lion's share of some 30 spectacular terrorist plots that have failed since September 11. In March 2004, within days of the London police chief's pronouncement that a local terrorist attack was "inevitable," his officers uncovered a plot involving nine British nationals of Pakistani origin and seized the largest cache of potential bomb-making material since the heyday of the Irish Republican Army. A few months later, Scotland Yard charged eight second-generation South Asian immigrants, reportedly trained in al Qaeda camps, with assembling a dirty bomb. Three of them had reconnaissance plans showing the layout of financial institutions in three U.S. cities.
Several hundred European militants -- including dozens of second-generation Dutch immigrants "wrestling with their identity," according to the Dutch intelligence service -- have also struck out for Iraq's Sunni Triangle. In turn, western Europe serves as a way station for mujahideen wounded in Iraq. The Iraq network belongs to an extensive structure developed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, now formally bin Laden's sworn ally and the "emir" of al Qaeda in Iraq. Recently unsealed Spanish court documents suggest that at a meeting in Istanbul in February 2002, Zarqawi, anticipating a protracted war in Iraq, began to lay plans for a two-way underground railway to send European recruits to Iraq and Middle Eastern recruiters, as well as illegal aliens, to Europe. Zarqawi also activated sleeper cells established in European cities during the Bosnian conflict.
A chief terrorism investigator in Milan, Armando Spataro, says that "almost all European countries have been touched by [Iraq] recruiting," including, improbably, Norway, Switzerland, Poland, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic. The recruitment methods of the Iraq network, which procures weapons in Germany from Balkan gangs, parallels those for the conflicts in Chechnya and Kashmir. Thanks to its state-of-the-art document-forging industry, Italy has become a base for dispatching volunteers. And Spain forms a trunk line with North Africa as well as a staging area for attacks in "al Andalus," the erstwhile Muslim Spanish caliphate.
LAX POPULI
Although for some Europeans the Madrid bombings were a watershed event comparable to the September 11 attacks in the United States, these Europeans form a minority, especially among politicians. Yet what Americans perceive as European complacency is easy to fathom. The September 11 attacks did not happen in Europe, and for a long time the continent's experience with terrorism mainly took the form of car bombs and booby-trapped trash cans. Terrorism is still seen as a crime problem, not an occasion for war. Moreover, some European officials believe that acquiescent policies toward the Middle East can offer protection. In fact, while bin Laden has selectively attacked the United States' allies in the Iraq war, he has offered a truce to those European states that have stayed out of the conflict.
With a few exceptions, European authorities shrink from the relatively stout legislative and security measures adopted in the United States. They prefer criminal surveillance and traditional prosecutions to launching a U.S.-style "war on terrorism" and mobilizing the military, establishing detention centers, enhancing border security, requiring machine-readable passports, expelling hate preachers, and lengthening notoriously light sentences for convicted terrorists. Germany's failure to convict conspirators in the September 11 attacks suggests that the European public, outside of France and now perhaps the Netherlands, is not ready for a war on terrorism.
Contrary to what many Americans concluded during Washington's dispute with Paris in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, France is the exception to general European complacency. Well before September 11, France had deployed the most robust counterterrorism regime of any Western country. Irish terrorism may have diverted British attention from jihad, as has Basque terrorism in Spain, but Algerian terrorism worked the opposite effect in France.
To prevent proselytizing among its mostly North African Muslim community, during the 1990s the energetic French state denied asylum to radical Islamists even while they were being welcomed by its neighbors. Fearing, as Kepel puts it, that contagion would turn "the social malaise felt by Muslims in the suburbs of major cities" into extremism and terrorism, the French government cracked down on jihadists, detaining suspects for as long as four days without charging them or allowing them access to a lawyer. Today no place of worship is off limits to the police in secular France. Hate speech is rewarded with a visit from the police, blacklisting, and the prospect of deportation. These practices are consistent with the strict Gallic assimilationist model that bars religion from the public sphere (hence the headscarf dispute).
Contrast the French approach to the United Kingdom's separatist form of multiculturalism, which offered radical Arab Islamists refuge and the opportunity to preach openly, while stepping up surveillance of them. French youth could still tune into jihadist messages on satellite television and the Internet, but in the United Kingdom open radical preaching spawned terrorist cells. Most of the rest of Europe adopted the relaxed British approach, but with less surveillance.
Now, the Madrid bombings and the van Gogh killing have strengthened the hand of engaged politicians, such as Germany's Social Democratic interior minister, Otto Schily, and the former French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who leads the governing Union for a Popular Movement. They have also prompted Brussels, London, Madrid, Paris, and The Hague to increase resources and personnel devoted to terrorism.
In general, European politicians with security responsibilities, not to mention intelligence and security officials who get daily intelligence reports, take the harder U.S. line. Schily has called for Europe-wide "computer-aided profiling" to identify mujahideen. The emergence of holy warriors in Europe and the meiosis of radical groups once connected to al Qaeda have prompted several European capitals to increase cooperation on counterterrorism as well as their counterterrorism resources and personnel.
Yet a jihadist can cross Europe with little scrutiny. Even if noticed, he can change his name or glide across a border, relying on long-standing bureaucratic and legal stovepipes. After the Madrid bombings, a midlevel European official was appointed to coordinate European counterterrorist statutes and harmonize EU security arrangements. But he often serves simply as a broker amid the gallimaufry of the 25 member states' legal codes.
Since the Madrid bombings, the Spanish Interior Ministry has tripled to 450 the number of full-time antiterrorism operatives, and the Spanish national police are assigning a similar number of additional agents to mujahideen intelligence. Spanish law enforcement established a task force combining police and intelligence specialists to keep tabs on Muslim neighborhoods and prison mosques. Similarly, special police cells are being organized in each of France's 22 regions, stepping up the surveillance of mosques, Islamic bookshops, long-distance phone facilities, and halal butchers and restaurants.
The 25 EU members have also put into effect a European arrest warrant allowing police to avoid lengthy extradition procedures. Despite widespread concerns about possible privacy abuses, several EU countries have lowered barriers between intelligence and police agencies since the van Gogh murder. Germany aims to place its 16 police forces under one umbrella. In France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, intelligence and police officers meet with officials in state-of-the-art communications centers, or "war rooms," to share information about interrogations, informant reports, live wiretaps, and video or satellite pictures.
Still, counterterrorism agencies remain reluctant to share sensitive information or cooperate on prosecutions. Measures proposed in the wake of the Madrid attacks, such as a Europe-wide fingerprint and DNA database and biometric passports, remain only that -- proposals. Fragmentation and rivalry among Europe's security systems and other institutions continue to hamper counterterrorism efforts. For nearly a decade, France has sought the extradition of the organizer of several bombings in the Paris metro in the 1990s, but his case languishes in the British courts to the anguish of the Home Office as well as Paris.
The new mujahideen are not only testing traditional counterterrorist practices; their emergence is also challenging the mentality prevailing in western Europe since the end of World War II. Revulsion against Nazism and colonialism translated into compassion toward religious minorities, of whatever stripe. At first, Muslim guest workers were welcomed in Europe by a liberal orthodoxy that generally regarded them as victims lacking rights. In some countries, such as the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, that perspective spawned a comprehensive form of multiculturalism. London's version verged on separatism. While stepping up surveillance, the British authorities allowed Islamists refuge and an opportunity to preach openly and disseminate rabid propaganda. Multiculturalism had a dual appeal: it allowed these states to seem tolerant by showering minorities with rights while segregating them from, rather than absorbing them into, the rest of society. Multiculturalism dovetailed with a diminished Western ethos that suited libertarians as well as liberals.
But now many Europeans have come to see that permissiveness as excessive, even dangerous. A version of religious tolerance allowed the Hamburg cell to flourish and rendered German universities hospitable to radical Islam. Now Europeans are asking Muslims to practice religious tolerance themselves and adjust to the values of their host countries. Tony Blair's government requires that would-be citizens master "Britishness." Likewise, "Dutch values" are central to The Hague's new approach, and similar proposals are being put forward in Berlin, Brussels, and Copenhagen. Patrick Weil, the immigration guru of the French Socialist Party, sees a continental trend in which immigrant "responsibilities" balance immigrant "rights."
The Dutch reaction to van Gogh's assassination, the British reaction to jihadist abuse of political asylum, and the French reaction to the wearing of the headscarf suggest that Europe's multiculturalism has begun to collide with its liberalism, privacy rights with national security. Multiculturalism was once a hallmark of Europe's cultural liberalism, which the British columnist John O'Sullivan defined as "free[dom] from irksome traditional moral customs and cultural restraints." But when multiculturalism is perceived to coddle terrorism, liberalism parts company. The gap between the two is opening in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and to some extent even in Germany, where liberalism stretched a form of religious tolerance so much so that it allowed the Hamburg cell to turn prayer rooms into war rooms with cocky immunity from the German police.
Yet it is far from clear whether top-down policies will work without bottom-up adjustments in social attitudes. Can Muslims become Europeans without Europe opening its social and political circles to them? So far, it appears that absolute assimilationism has failed in France, but so has segregation in Germany and multiculturalism in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Could there be another way? The French ban the headscarf in public schools; the Germans ban it among public employees. The British celebrate it. The Americans tolerate it. Given the United States' comparatively happier record of integrating immigrants, one may wonder whether the mixed U.S. approach -- separating religion from politics without placing a wall between them, helping immigrants slowly adapt but allowing them relative cultural autonomy -- could inspire Europeans to chart a new course between an increasingly hazardous multiculturalism and a naked secularism that estranges Muslims and other believers. One thing is certain: if only for the sake of counterterrorism, Europe needs to develop an integration policy that works. But that will not happen overnight.
Indeed, the fissure between liberalism and multiculturalism is opening just as the continent undergoes its most momentous population shift since Asian tribes pushed westward in the first Christian millennium. Immigration obviously hits a national security nerve, but it also raises economic and demographic questions: how to cope with a demonstrably aging population; how to maintain social cohesion as Christianity declines and both secularism and Islam climb; whether the EU should exercise sovereignty over borders and citizenship; and what the accession of Turkey, with its 70 million Muslims, would mean for the EU. Moreover, European mujahideen do not threaten only the Old World; they also pose an immediate danger to the United States.
A FINER SIEVE
The United States' relative success in assimilating its own Muslim immigrants means that its border security must be more vigilant. To strike at the United States, al Qaeda counts less on domestic sleeper cells than on foreign infiltration. As a 9/11 Commission staff report put it, al Qaeda faces "a travel problem": How can it move its mujahideen from hatchery to target? Europe's mujahideen may represent a solution.
The New York Times has reported that bin Laden has outsourced planning for the next spectacular attack on the United States to an "external planning node." Chances are it is based in Europe and will deploy European citizens. European countries generally accord citizenship to immigrants born on their soil, and so potential European jihadists are entitled to European passports, allowing them visa-free travel to the United States and entry without an interview. The members of the Hamburg cell that captained the September 11 attacks came by air from Europe and were treated by the State Department as travelers on the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), just like Moussaoui and Richard Reid, the shoe bomber.
Does that mean the VWP should be scrapped altogether, as some members of Congress are asking? By no means. The State Department is already straining to enforce stricter post-September 11 visa-screening measures, which involve longer interviews, more staff, and more delays. Terminating the VWP would exact steep bureaucratic and diplomatic costs, and rile the United States' remaining European friends. Instead, the United States should update the criteria used in the periodic reviews of VWP countries, taking into account terrorist recruiting and evaluating passport procedures. These reviews could utilize task forces set up in collaboration with the Europeans. Together, U.S. and European authorities should insist that the airlines require U.S.-bound transatlantic travelers to submit passport information when purchasing tickets. Such a measure would give the new U.S. National Targeting Center time to check potential entrants without delaying flight departures. And officers should be stationed at check-in counters to weed out suspects.
Europe's emerging mujahideen endanger the entire Western world. Collaboration in taming Muslim rancor or at least in keeping European jihadists off U.S.-bound airplanes could help reconcile estranged allies. A shared threat and a mutual interest should engage media, policymakers, and the public on both sides of the Atlantic. To concentrate their minds on common dangers and solutions might come as a bittersweet relief to Europeans and Americans after their recent disagreements.
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