zyxwv Museum Tusculanum Press :: University of Copenhagen :: www.mtp.dk :: info@mtp.dk Comment THE CHOICES WE MAKE Marriage among Muslims in a Global Age Garbi Schmidt, Roskilde University In the mid-1990s, I carried out an extensive field- work-based study of immigrant Muslims in Chicago (Schmidt 2004). As a young Ph.D. student, one of the social arenas that I visited was the local chapters of the MSA (the Muslim Student Association). One of the young women that I remember best was Noor, a charismatic young woman of upper middle-class background, who gained her authority within the group not least via an uncompromising and devoted practice of Islam. Just as some of the young Muslims in Pia Karlsson Minganti’s article in this special is- sue, Noor saw the main purpose of dunya (this life) as gaining access to jannah (paradise) in the afterlife (akhira). An important tool for obtaining Allah’s mercy was the intimate relationship between man and woman through marriage. Marriage was not to be based on romantic love and desire, but rather a conscious scrutiny of the religious merits of the po- tential partner. To Noor, building her marriage on such expectations of piety was a religious obligation – and an individual choice. Before meeting the man of her life, Noor’s parents had invited a number of possible marriage candidates home for an interview, but she had declined each time. The men were either too boring, too polite, or too easy for her to control. Yet finally she was invited for an interview with a young man in a Dunkin’ Donuts’ restaurant. The couple was not alone but chaperoned by members of their families. Noor was not impressed to start with, but suddenly she noticed something about the young man that caught her attention: he wore white socks in his sandals. This small mark of difference opened up a lively conversation that lasted for several hours. Since the young man lived in another state of the USA, they continued building their relationship via telephone – and email. After some time, Noor told me, the couple had to decide whether they should continue their relationship: there were limits to how close they could be as an unmarried couple. They chose to marry. Noor’s husband-to-be flew to Chi- cago and they met at the airport. On the following day they went to the courthouse to get their mar- riage license. As Noor remarked, after receiving the marriage license, they shook hands: the first time ever the couple touched each other. Transnational Connections In the weeks and months following Noor’s and her husband ’s initial meeting, they communicated over the phone and by email. Using emails as a means of communication was fairly new in those days (only in 1995, the year before my inter view with Noor, the US Federal Networking Council passed a resolution defi ning the term “Internet”; see Leiner et al. 2009: 30). As several articles in this special issue show, the commodification of Internet and telecommunica- tion has decisively affected the processes leading to romantic love and marriage. Young people now meet each other on social media and online dating sites (with or without their parents’ and families’ knowl- edge), whereas earlier generations used telephones, postal letters and face-to-face rendezvous. For young people of the twenty-first centur y there is not nec- essarily a difference between social life off- and ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 4 6 :1 Garbi Schmidt 2016: The Choices We Make. Marriage among Muslims in a Global Age. Ethnologia Europaea 46:1, 91-96. © Museum Tusculanum Press. Ethnoologia Europaea :: Journal of European Ethnology 46:1 E-journal Copyright © 2016 Ethnologia Europaea, Copenhagen :: ISBN 987 87 635 4507 5 :: ISSN 1604 3030 http://www.mtp.dk/details.asp?eln=300378 91