Dr Yafa Shanneik will lead the project ‘Reconsidering Muslim Marriage Practices in Europe: The Case of Iraqi and Syrian War-Widows’. It will focus on Iraqi and Syrian war-widows who have settled in the UK and Germany since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Using innovative ethnographic, legal and artistic research approaches, the project will examine how these women have developed and use new forms of Muslim marriages.

Moving away from notions of female vulnerability, it will examine how and to what extent women are negotiating and modifying marriage practices, and how unconventional marriage practices socially disdained before displacement have become reasonable options. Examples include ‘unregistered’ (‘urfi), ‘temporary’ (mut‘a) (unique to Shia Islam) and ‘visiting’ (misyar) marriages.

These alternative marriage practices contain different legal and financial obligations and entitlements for both spouses than a permanent marriage and offer more flexibility. While they can have an exploitative nature, they can also become means for women’s empowerment and secure their autonomy, independence and freedom.

Through working with the visual artist Rachel Gadsden, the project will offer women an alternative platform to articulate artistically their feelings and views of marriage practices and the challenges they face within European legal systems in recognizing these marriages.

As well as life narratives and artwork being produced by participants, the project will also analyze two recent UK and German legal case studies to further investigate the extent that these new marriages are recognized within the law. Finally, it will look at what other alternative support mechanisms, outside of secular legal systems, exist in the two countries for women to inform them of their marital rights.

Source: University of Birmingham

Dr Yafa Shanneik provides the introduction to the special issue, writing on ‘Local and transnational dimensions’ with co-authors Chris Heinhold (University of Chester) and Zahra Ali (Rutgers University).

Much of the literature on Islam or Muslims in the West focuses on the majority position of Sunnis, giving little attention to the Shia population. The special issue brings together for the first time studies by researchers working on Shia Muslim communities in a number of European countries. It maps the historical development of Shia Muslim communities and their changing demographics, as well as investigating their local- and trans-local communal and organizational connections and religious ritual practices within a European context.

The special issue grew out of a research project on “‘Karbala in London’: Transnational Shii Networks between Britain and the Middle East” funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and led by Professor Oliver Scharbrodt whilst he was at the University of Chester (he is now at Birmingham).

Professor Oliver Scharbrodt researches modern, contemporary and classical forms of Islam, employing both historical and ethnographic research methods. his interests include modern Islamic reform, Shia Islam, Sufism, Islamic messianism and as well as the historical and contemporary presence of Muslims in Europe and making current theories and methods in Religious Studies relevant to the academic study of Islam.

For more information on this special issue read here.

Source: University of Birmingham