Category Archives: Islamic culture

Love and Loving in Middle-Class Pakistan

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The article by Ammara Maqsood, Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at University College London, tells us the modern story of love in Pakistan and how modern urban women manage their desire for love in Pakistan.

Traditional marriages in Pakistan are arranged marriages. However, I previously talked about how love coexists with modern arranged marriages in Pakistan. I also explained the controversies surrounding love marriage in Pakistan.

Modern transformations in the notions of love, romantic love, intimacy, and conjugal relationships occur in Pakistan as well as in South Asia overall. The author challenges the traditional depiction of the transitional processes of love transformation in Pakistani culture as a straight lineal transition from the cultural values of ‘traditional’ (collective) obligations to the values of individual desires in modern individualistic societies.

Taking these ideas as a starting point, the author of this article examines how different types of intimacy coexist in a middle-class urban setting in Pakistan. The author does this by concentrating on the emotional experiences and modern relationships of young mobile women of the middle class in Lahore and Karachi, the two major cities in Pakistan.

“Within these families, like elsewhere in Pakistan in other South Asian contexts, arranged marriages are the norm, both in prevalence and in social approval. However, love unions, in the form of love-cum-arranged marriages – where partners engage in a pre-marital romance but then seek parental approval and follow typical marriage proceedings – and elopements that are on the rise.”

(Maqsood, 2021, p. 3).

How Different Ideas of Love in Pakistan Coexist

The article highlights the ways in which different ideals of love and intimacy coexist, the ways in which they are entangled in everyday practices, and the places, situations, and spaces in which they separate.

Young women, who live mostly in joint-family arrangements, need to negotiate between two values in their lives. On the one hand, they value their private desires for a life within a nuclear family and the associated forms of consumption. On the other hand, they respect the economic pressures and emotional obligations that necessitate their collective living in the nuclear family.

They live in a persistent presence of liminality, the psychological process of transitioning across the boundaries and borders of these two groups of values. In these conditions and contexts of their lives, the women make it possible for these competing desires to be experienced and managed in a certain way.

Love in Liminality

In this cultural context, their understanding of liminality opens their doors to experimentation and potentiality and provides a space in which they experience novel desires and behaviors.

However, at the same time, their “emotion work” to manage these situations and controversies bends and brings these new emotional paths into line with the moral codes that are culturally common in Pakistani society.

One young woman, who had married against her family’s wishes, commented on the hurt that she experienced when

“none of the women in the family did come to her wedding. Her husband’s family organised a small event, to mark the marriage, and invited her family members, in a bid to normalise relations. In response, her two brothers came but left without eating. She said, ‘more than anything, I felt bad .. still feel sad … that my younger sister in law did not come. My mother, I can understand, she was forbidden but she loves me, but my sister in law, she could have convinced my brother [her husband]’

(Maqsood, 2021, p. 7).

Professor Ammara Maqsood also tells in her article other dramatic stories of love and marriage in modern Pakistani urban cultures.

As the author concludes, these individual experiences are not gradual transformations from collective to individualistic ties and persona values. These young women do not disrupt pre-existing ethical codes. These emotional practices are rather the management of differing demands and desires that constitute ‘feeling’ middle-class.

Surprising Findings on How Religions Affect the Expression of Emotions

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Religious teachings give their followers lessons about the world, life, the mind, emotions, and behaviors. Among other important things in human life, religions teach believers the proper ways to experience and express emotions (for a review, see Karandashev, 2021a). In another article, I talked about emotional experiences. Here I’ll talk about expressions of emotions in accordance with religious cultural lessons.

As I commented elsewhere, many religious cultures teach people moderation in emotional experiences and expressions. The question remains how believers do this. Do they suppress their emotions?

Religious Cultures of Emotional Moderation

Many religious cultures believe that very strong positive and negative emotions are distracting to people and their behaviors. They especially discourage the expression of socially disruptive emotions. This is why many religions teach emotional moderation.

Religions offer spiritual justifications and techniques for coping with the disruptive nature of emotions such as guilt, despair, and anger. For example, Christian and Jewish teachings have been around for a long time telling people how to control bad feelings like anger, pride, and envy (Schimmel, 1997).

Suppression of Emotions and Sublimation in Religion

According to classical Freudian psychoanalysis, religions teach them to suppress their emotions. Religious sublimation is a defense mechanism when a person re-channels his or her unacceptable emotional urges, transforming them into productive aspirations and divine religious beliefs. Researchers looked at how people’s suppression of anger may affect the sublimation of their emotions in experimental situations (Kim, Zeppenfeld, & Cohen, 2013; Tsai & Clobert, 2019). I just want to remind readers that sublimation is a psychological defense mechanism when a person unconsciously suppresses their socially unacceptable desires, transforming their energy into socially acceptable actions or creative behaviors.

Studies of Sublimation among Christian People

For example, Kim and co-authors conducted an original experimental study, inducing in participants certain kinds of suppressed emotional experiences and measuring their creativity in the following tasks they needed to perform.

To induce the emotional experiences, they asked Protestants, Catholics, and Jewish people to relive their past emotional experiences by thinking about certain emotional events in their lives. Specifically, researchers asked participants of these three kinds of religious beliefs to experience (1) an anger-provoking incident by suppressing their thinking about it; (2) an anger-provoking incident by suppressing thinking about a neutral topic; or (3) recall a neutral event and suppress thinking about a neutral topic (Kim, Zeppenfeld, & Cohen, 2013).

Then, researchers gave those Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant participants creative assignments, such as making a sculpture, creating captions for cartoons, or making a collage. They were interested in knowing how different types of emotional suppression affect the participants’ sublimation expressed in their creativity. Expert judges of the creative assignments assessed the productivity of completed products such as sculptures, collages, or captions for cartoons.

The results of this experimental study demonstrated that emotional suppression affected the creativity of participants in certain conditions, thus demonstrating a sublimation effect. However, the specific effects and creativity of the products that people completed under suppressed emotions varied across religious denominations. The suppression of anger had little effect on creativity among Jewish and Catholic participants. Yet, the suppression of an anger-provoking emotional experience among Protestants motivated more creative and angry products of art. Thus, the effects of sublimation by emotional suppression were partially established but to a different extent by religious denomination.

The Role of Religious Values in the Suppression of Emotions among Religious People

It is widely known that Christian and Islamic beliefs affect experiences and expressions of emotions differently. Muslims tend to be more reserved and suppressed in their emotions compared to Christians. For instance, it was a cultural premise that “countries with more Protestants show lower levels of positive emotions” (van Hemert et al., 2007, p.918). Another cultural assumption was that “countries with a higher percentage of Muslims show lower levels of general emotional expression” (van Hemert et al., 2007, p.918).

However, empirical studies found no support for these cultural beliefs associated with different religious groups. They showed different cultural tendencies (e.g., van Hemert et al., 2007; Veenhoven, 1994). Contrary to theoretical expectations, a meta-analysis of many cross-cultural studies discovered that people in countries with a higher proportion of Protestants report more positive emotions (van Hemert et al., 2007, p.918). Also, contrary to the researchers’ expectations, meta-analysis found that people in countries with a higher or lower percentage of Muslims do not significantly differ in emotional expressivity (van Hemert et al., 2007, p.918).

Higher orthodoxy in religion also makes many people reserved and suppressed in their expressions of emotions. Several studies have shown the importance of religious values in emotional experience and expression (Karandashev, 2021a). However, the meta-analysis of many cross-cultural studies did not support the hypothetical expectation that “countries with higher levels of religiosity may be more restrictive in their expression of emotions” (van Hemert et al., 2007, p.918). Contrary to some previous opinions, the findings of meta-analysis demonstrated that “expression of emotions and particularly positive emotions, was higher in more religious countries” (van Hemert et al., 2007, p.933). Based on these controversial results, more studies are needed to investigate the effect of religions on emotional expressivity of people.

Several Fascinating Facts about Emotional Experiences in Religious Cultures

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Religious cultures teach their followers about various aspects of the world and life. Religious teachings also educate people about the human mind, emotions, and behavior, among other important things in their lives.

So, believers’ emotional experiences, expressions, and even their overall emotional well-being have always been heavily influenced by the religious cultures and communities in which they were raised and lived (e.g., Saroglou, 2010; 2011; Tsai et al., 2013; for a review, see Karandashev, 2021a).

Desirable and Undesirable Emotions in Religious Cultures

Cross-cultural researchers explored the desirability of happiness, pride, love, gratitude, and jealousy; and sadness, shame, guilt, and anger. Some emotions are of special interest to us in this context. Researchers discovered that Christians more often than Buddhists and Muslims prefer to experience love ideally. At the same time, Christians tend to experience love in real life more frequently than people of the other two religious groups.

On the other hand, Muslims tend to consider sadness and shame more normative in daily life compared to Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus. Muslims also tend to experience these two emotions more frequently in their real lives than Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus.

Another interesting finding is that Buddhists experience fewer dips or peaks in any emotion in comparison with the emotional experiences of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Buddhism teaches people that life is full of suffering, sorrow, and grief. And to achieve the state of “enlightenment” is the best way to end this suffering in our daily lives (Kim-Prieto & Diener, 2009; Smith, 1991).

What Religion Tells Us About Gratitude in Life

According to many religious cultural norms and practices, experiences and expressions of gratitude are possibly the most valuable elements of a person’s daily emotional life.

A cross-cultural study found that religious people tend to have a grateful attitude in their lives. This is how they perceive themselves and how their peers perceive them. Religiously spiritual people feel more thankful in their daily dispositions and moods than others.

For instance, Christians believe that expressions of thankful joy, gratitude, and love toward God are indications of people’s sincere emotional experiences. (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002; McCullough et al., 2002). From a small study of Catholic priests and nuns, it was found that gratitude and love are the two feelings that people have toward God the most (Samuels & Lester, 1985).

The religious cultures of Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam also greatly praise the values of emotional gratitude. For them, it is among the important and desired emotional attitudes for people to live a good life (Emmons & Crumpler, 2000; Kim-Prieto & Diener, 2009).

What Religion Tells Us About Forgiveness in Life

Religious culture also teaches people about other desirable prosocial emotions. For example, people who are religious place a higher value on being forgiving than people who are not religious (Rokeach, 1973). It is important for us to keep in mind that the concept of forgiveness might have different connotations depending on the religious culture (Cohen et al., 2006).

What Religion Tells Us about Values of Negative and Positive Emotions in Life

Cultural attitudes toward experience and expression of guilt and anxiety vary within Christianity. It would appear that those who adhere to Catholicism are more motivated by emotions of guilt and anxiety than those who follow Protestantism (Hutchin­son, Patock-Peckham, Cheong, & Nagoshi, 1998).

When compared to Catholics in Europe, Protestants in the United States of America have more emotionally positive personality traits, such as high extraversion and low neuroticism. They feel less discomfort encountering new challenges, and they are more open to new experiences in their lives. This is in contrast to Catholics in Europe (Saroglou, 2010).

Here are the three summaries of other interesting findings: Dispositional attributions are more common among Protestants than Catholics in situations they encounter and emotions they experience. They are more likely to attribute their experiences to their own internal and personal qualities than to external circumstances (Li et al., 2012). This can explain why, in the case of marital divorce, Protestants experience fewer and less extensive negative emotional effects than Catholics (Clark & Lelkes, 2005).

Protestants in Germany experience deeper and more frequent trust in other people in various circumstances of life than Catholics. And both Protestants and Catholics have more trust in others than non-religious people (Traunmiiller, 2011). Christians and Buddhists are similar in some respects, while they are different in others. People who identify themselves with Christian or Buddhist religious culture value the positive emotions of low arousal and intensity. In addition, there are some religious and cultural differences. Christians are more inclined than Buddhists to support high-arousal positive states. Christians are also less likely than Buddhists to support low arousal positive states (Tsai, Miao, Seppala, 2007).

Being in Love Is the Love Madness of the Human Mind

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As I noted elsewhere, the Fulbe people of West Africa believe that love is a defiant emotion that should be avoided, suppressed, or at least not expressed. And this negative view of love is cross-culturally present in many other societies as well. Besides the Fulbe culture, this belief about love madness is shared by other Muslim societies in the world (Regis, 1995).

The Mysterious and Malicious Power of the “Ishq”

The Arabic word “ishq” has been widely used in other languages of the Muslim world, referring to passionate love. Old medical textbooks of the Islamic world portrayed “ishq” as a mixture of psychic and physical illnesses. Here is an example of how the medieval Islamic medical thought described this state of mind and soul:

“It exceeds the limit of mere inclination and [normal] love and, by possessing the reason, causes its victim to act unwisely. It is blameworthy and ought to be avoided by the prudent”

(Dols, 1992, p.319).

Islamic theology is deeply entwined with the idea that madness results from ardent love. This idea affects how folk tales portray characters. Like Romeo and Juliet in Europe, the tale of Qays and Lila and their tragic love has become a classic story in Islamic literature.

While both tales depict star-crossed lovers, the Islamic one depicts Qays as a “majnun,” or a lunatic (Dols, 1992, p. 332). The madness evolving from the experience of passionate love is a pan-Islamic theme.

When He or She Is Madly in Love

Because of these traditional myths, the Fulbe cultural views toward the experience and expression of love as love-madness look like traditional Islamic thought on “ishq” (passionate love). Full engagement in the feelings of grief, pain, wrath, happiness, or love is like possession with no reason or sense. Many people of Islamic faith think the same way as the Fulbe, with suspicions about passionate and romantic feelings.

Here is another example. The Muslim Tuareg people of Niger, a Berber ethnic group that lives in the Sahara, share the same cultural beliefs about love as the love-madness. “Tuareg cultural values… discourage revealing personal sentiments directly, in particular love preference.”

These cultural attitudes are particularly strongly attributed to Muslim women. Because of these gender stereotypes of inequality, women suffer more than men from tamazai, “an illness of the heart and soul.”

The ailment of tamazai is culturally attributed to a person’s possession by a spirit due to a “hidden love” or not acting on desires. A woman or a man suffering from the malady of tamazai feels withdrawn from people (Rasmussen, 1992, p. 339).

Smadar Lavie, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, documented the similar cultural beliefs about passionate love feelings among the Mzeina Bedouin of South Sinai (Lavie, 1990).

The Surprising Cross-Cultural Views on Love as Madness

The Islamic religious beliefs explain the cultural similarities in the attitudes toward love of the Fulbe, Tuareg, and Mzeina people (Lavie, 1990; Rasmussen, 1992; Regis, 1995; Riesman, 1971).

It is interesting, however, that the same cultural beliefs and comments about passionate love are present in Africa among the Christian ethnic groups of the Igbo people in Cameroon, Gabon, Nigeria, and Equatorial Guinea, as well as the Ijaw people in southeastern Nigeria.

The Cultural Value of Moderation in Love

According to the cultural beliefs of these Muslim and Christian societies in Africa, any emotion is acceptable in moderation. Therefore, an experience of extreme love is insane. The passionate insanity of love can be caused by a love potion or by an excessively strong personal will.

According to their cultural views, men and women in a state of love are affected by forces that are beyond their conscious control. The “love syndrome” is more about exaggeration in the perception and behavior of a lover than about deviation. These are inherent symptoms of passionate love. The overwhelming power of love can be conceived as an external or internal force. Anyway, they limit people’s ability to perceive and behave appropriately (Rasmussen, 1992; Regis, 1995).

One can see the parallels between the social restrictions that these societies place on expressing anger, pain, grief, and affection for children and the cultural constraints on romantic and passionate love. Both groups of feelings are normal emotional experiences when they are in moderation.

When People Indulge Emotions Excessively and Obsessively

Otherwise, when men and women indulge in emotions excessively and act compulsively, the tyranny of emotion can cause a psychological disturbance in both men and women. This internal imbalance prevents them from fully participating in the daily lives of their family and community.

The Muted Love of the Fulbe People

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The Fulbe, also called Fulani, are a large group of people who live in several countries in West Africa and the north of Central Africa. Many of them live in communities of herders and nomads. They speak the Fula language and share some cultural traditions and practices. Almost all of them are Muslims. Their mindset and emotional lives are significantly impacted by their Islamic religious culture.

Let’s look at the Fulbe culture of interpersonal relations in Africa. In their field studies in Burkina Faso and North Cameroon in the 1970s and 1990s, Paul Riesman, an anthropologist from Carleton College, and Helen Regis, an anthropologist from Louisiana State University, observed their social life and relations (Regis, 1995; Riesman, 1971).

What did the Fulbe people think, feel, and how did they express their emotions in the context of interpersonal relationships? (see more in Karandashev, 2017).

Communal Interdependence in Fulbe Social Relations

The traditional culture of the Fulbe people is of a collectivistic, communal type, with strong ties of interdependence in tribes and families.

The Fulbe interpersonal relationships with the community emphasize that one should be available to fellow villagers. He or she should respect other people’s status and power and show reverence through formal greetings, body postures, and gestures. People demonstrate their deference to elders in many other Fulbe cultural norms and practices of interpersonal relations. They strive to maintain both the egalitarian and the hierarchical tenets of the social order.

Love Seems Culturally Unsuitable in Fulbe Relations

In the context of such social interdependence between people, an individual’s passionate relationships in a dyad put them at risk of disrupting the social structure of their community. Strong relationships in a couple compete with many other relationships in the community. When a man or woman is in love with someone, this amorous relationship detaches them from the community’s power. Their passionate emotions and societal obligations have a fundamentally antagonistic relationship. Because of this, the family and other people publicly deprecate men and women who fall in love.

Hidden Love of the Fulbe Men and Women

In the Fulbe culture, love is viewed as a defiant emotion. Regis (1995) frequently overheard remarks made about couples who publicly showed their affection for each other in their romantic or marital relationships. Criticism was largely directed at those who behaved inappropriately.

For instance, a man was supposed to avoid spending too much time around or at a woman’s home throughout the day. He was instead expected to spend that time out in the community mingling with other men

If a woman was emotionally attached to her husband, she usually denied these feelings in her daily conversations with their neighbors. Their relations with other female relatives in the family were more important.

Couples in the Fulbe community who were in love but behaved properly were not the targets of nasty rumors. People did not gossip and did not scold those couples who were cautious and did not express their affectionate feelings openly in public.

What Would Happen if the Fulbe Love Was Too Passionate?

Other men and women who couldn’t hide their feelings were called sick or socially inept. They were told they loved their partner too much.

For instance, a man who loves his wife often stays home in the afternoon or evening, even though he is supposed to meet his friends. This goes against the cultural rule that men should be open to their peers and neighbors.

When a woman is in love, she doesn’t care what her parents say about who she should marry. She is very jealous. She pays less attention to her work.

If a woman in love is already married, she might be tempted by infidelity to her husband in the limited social space of the village. This kind of situation can be hard and risky.

In Conclusion

In short, in the Fulbe culture, men and women should not take their feelings and emotions passionately and obsessively. There is no way for strong emotions and passions to take over a person’s personality. Love is among those dangerous passions that must be repressed by a man or a woman.

The Fulbe Culture of Emotional Moderation

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The Fulbe (or Fulani) people are a large ethnic group living in several countries in West Africa and the northern part of Central Africa. Many of them live in pastoral and nomadic communities. They speak their own Fula language and follow their cultural traditions and practices. They are mostly Muslims. The Islamic religious culture substantially affects their way of life, thoughts, and emotions.

This article is about the Fulbe of North Cameroon. Let us look at cultural ideas and social expectations about emotions that were prevalent in the 1990s among the Fulbe people. We’ll learn what Fulbe people think about and how they express their emotions and love in particular (see more in Karandashev, 2017).

In the early 1990s, Helen Regis, an anthropologist from Louisiana State University, wrote about her anthropological observations carried out in a Fulbe community of sedentary people in the Extreme North Province of Cameroon (Regis, 1995, p. 141).

How the Fulbe Experience and Express Emotions

The Fulbe’s cultural emphasis on restraint and self-control in their daily lives has a significant impact on their feelings and expressions of love. The Fulbe tend to control their emotions. They adhere to their norms for when and how to display emotions. They highly value the ability to be reserved.

The Fulbe believe that pain, anger, grief, and other emotions are natural parts of human existence everywhere. They try to conceal their experiences and expressions of emotions. The culture teaches children and adults to suppress these feelings. Young Fulbe boys and girls are socialized to hide their emotions. They learn from their parents to keep the injuries, pain, and suffering to themselves. They know that they must control their anger and pain. As children grow, they strive to internalize their emotional experiences.

The Fulbe people in their community naturally accept

“that one is in control of normal human emotions and above human needs is constantly taking place in [Fulani] formal behavior”

(Riesman 1975, p. 63).

Shame and fear, on the other hand, are culturally acceptable. The emotions of “semteende” (shame) are supposed to affect public behavior. The main connotations of the semteende in Fulbe culture are reverence and respect for the social group. The Fulbe men and women, anticipating the feeling of shame and the fear of being called shameless, deter them­ from the public display of romantic love.

Everything in Fulbe Life Must Be in Moderation

People do not express excessive parental love. They cannot express their grief over the death of a child beyond culturally prescribed norms. Otherwise, relatives and kin scold them.

People frowned upon excessive happiness and joy exhibited in laughter or abandoned dancing. It is thought to be a denial of death.

People also frown upon excessive passion. A person who commits a crime in the heat of passion is punished especially harshly. Loss of temper, rather than being viewed as “mitigating circumstances,” embarrasses the accused. That person is judged as mentally unstable.

The Fulbe cultural norms suggest that people should not be obsessed with any emotion. In other words, the personality should succumb to the tyranny of passionate feelings of any kind.

And love is no exception in this way. In the Fulbe culture, love is viewed as a defiant emotion.

What Is Love for the Fulbe People?

Helen Regis noticed that Cameroonians express their love in a different way than Americans.

For most Americans, love is one of the highest cultural ideals. Being in love, they enjoy their emotional experience and express their feelings openly and explicitly.

The Fulbe culture does not acknowledge love as an ideal state of being. Romantic love is not suitable for the community’s social life. In the Fulbe, men and women experience emotional states such as love. However, they prefer to avoid expressing genuine emotions in inappropriate situations. The Fulbe have a reason not to fall in love and keep their heads on straight, but sometimes they still do (Regis, 1995, p. 141).

The Changing Views on Divorce in Pakistan

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For generations, Pakistani families and marriages have been endogamous. Their parents or other family elders arranged their children’s marriages. These were the “arranged marriages.” Currently, marriage is still a family affair in Pakistan. Despite modernization, arranged marriages are still widespread. Parents and other elderly people are involved in their married children’s future. However, the views on divorce in Pakistan are changing nowadays.

Divorce is frowned upon in Pakistani Islamic culture. Even discussing the potential for divorce in their extended families has been forbidden. However, the culture in Pakistan has been changing over recent years. Nowadays, the notion of divorce is not taboo anymore (Ahmed, 2021).

Cultural attitudes have shifted in many traditional societies around the world, including Pakistan, over the last few decades.

Cultural Evolution of Arranged Marriages

The idea that married couples should be in tune with their emotions and wellbeing is more culturally accepted now than before. People recognize that sometimes it is better to let go of something than to hang on to it. “Gone are the days when partners, especially women, could just stick with an abusive spouse because of the “What will people say syndrome.” (Sheraz, 2019).

Awareness and acceptance of gender equality, in some respects, are increasing in many countries, including Pakistan. In Pakistani society, education has played a significant role in the evolution of marriage. Modern women are more educated, so the concern about who will look after them has faded. Women today are more aware of their rights and choices. They have a better understanding of their rights and are aware that they can use their rights to achieve happiness. They understand that they have the freedom to walk away if they so choose.

As a result of changing cultural views, divorce rates are rising in Pakistan. Some can attribute the rise in divorce rates to the decline in arranged marriages and the rise in love marriages. This new social trend, however, may be caused by more people realizing that women and men have the right to choose who they want to marry and how they want to live their lives (Sheraz, 2019).

The Modern Right to Choose a Partner for Marriage and Divorce in Pakistan

In the end, men and women choose their own happiness over the happiness of their parents. Although this may appear cruel, it is critical for youngsters to consider their own destiny. Parents have already accepted their decisions, and it is now up to the children to make their own choices (Ahmed, 2021).

A divorce can be no bad thing at all, if it paves the way for a better life and the wellbeing of the people. Instead of enforced interdependence, which keeps a man and a woman together in an unhappy relationship, they get independence, which gives them the possibility of a better relationship. Arranged marriages have been based on economic and social needs for survival. Nowadays, many societies free people from the need for survival. As a result, the modernization of their culture provides the opportunity to pursue a happy relationship.

How are Pakistanis finding their partners these days? According to one of the recent Gallup polls conducted in Pakistan, only 5% of Pakistanis said they had a love marriage, while 85% of Pakistanis met their spouse through parents or close relatives (Sheraz, 2019).

Modernization in Pakistani Culture and Divorce in Pakistan

With the passage of time, better education, women’s empowerment, and western influence have changed Pakistani culture and people’s mindsets. Regardless of the modern shift in cultural attitudes, men and women may still face criticism if they come forward with a partner they wish to marry. Unfortunately, offensive actions against those who seek to express their freedom continue to occur in Pakistan and in the Pakistani diaspora abroad (Ahmed, 2021).

Assimilation of immigrants from Pakistani culture into other societies occurs slowly. It is likely that the second generation of Pakistanis will be able to better adopt new perspectives. And the cultural evolution of Pakistani marriages towards positive acceptance of love marriages will continue.

Social transformation from collectivistic societies of interpersonal interdependence to individualistic societies of interpersonal independence is the modern tendency of cultural evolution. People need to acknowledge that cultural evolution from arranged marriages to love marriages is inevitable. It just takes time.

What Pakistani Women and Men Think About Divorce

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Some modern Pakistani women and men sometimes think about divorce, despite the culturally negative attitudes toward divorce. Traditional Pakistani family relationships and marriages have been endogamous for centuries. How does it look in Pakistan?

The boys’ and girls’ marriages were all arranged by their parents or other family elders. They found a suitable mate for their adult child, planned their wedding, and wished them well. That’s why these methods of family arrangement are dubbed “arranged marriages.”

These days, marriage is still a family matter in Pakistan. Parents and other elderly people feel responsible for their children’s future. Therefore, they are used to being active in their future marriage arrangements. Arranged marriages are still common despite their modern transformation.

The Pakistani Traditional Culture of Marriage

These marriage traditions have been related to the Pakistani communal and cooperative cultures of the past. Familial bonds are the basic means of community life. In Pakistan, the extended family is valued more than the nuclear family.

The extended family system is interwoven and intertwined. In many cases, spousal ties are weaker than other family obligations. Marital love and happiness are of lower importance. Parents are heavily involved in their children’s new families since they planned and organized their marriages. They perceive their son’s or daughter’s families as part of their large extended family. They can even intervene in situations when their son or daughter no longer wishes to remain married.

All these social and economic factors of Pakistani traditional life influence people’s cultural attitudes toward the idea of divorce. This is why Pakistani women and men rarely think about divorce.

These cultural factors also affect what men and women think and feel when, in the case of turbulent marital relationships, they try to contemplate the possibility of divorce. Let us consider the challenges that women and men encounter in such circumstances.

The Economic Challenges of Divorce for Pakistani Women

For women, for example, economic reasons have been the main reason for staying with their husbands. Who would support them if they left? Therefore, women are told to compromise on any issues in their relationship with their husbands for the sake of their security and subsistence. A woman would not have the resources to support herself once she was divorced:

“Divorce is a “nightmare” for her, affecting her financially, socially, and psychologically”

(Qamar & Faizan, 2021, p. 352).

“Her decision to stay in the marriage made it possible for her to practice choices regarding her employment and public mobility as well as decisions regarding her”

(Khurshid, 2020, p. 103)

Parental Families Are Unwelcoming for Divorced Women

A common perception of Pakistani marriages as stable can be deceptive and misleading. Such marriage “stability” can conceal the hidden problems of family relationships, making them invisible to outsiders. In traditional Pakistani culture, the return of married adult children to their different family homes is frequently frowned upon by their parents. Many parents never open their doors to their divorced children when they return home (Ahmed, 2021).

Therefore, rather than returning to their parental home and being confined to the rules of their house, women find more freedom in remaining in their marriage. They remain in marriages even though they are unhappy.

Here is an example of how a woman in the interview stated her reason to stay:

“She realised that returning to her parents’ home would invite ridicule and blaming from the community members and even from some members of her own family. She would not be seen as a ‘wise’ woman for leaving a man who did not have any extreme flaws”

(Khurshid, 2020, p.103)

Many women act wisely in marriage relationships. Instead of wasting time and ruminating on their unhappiness, they find satisfaction and settle into other things. Many of them find contentment in their children and relationships with other women in their extended family (Ahmed, 2021).

Challenges of Divorce for Pakistani Men

While it is more stigmatized among women, it is not deemed acceptable for men either. Pakistani men are also under pressure to keep their promises and stay in the marriages that have been arranged for them, including love marriages.

A Promise of Cultural Change: What do modern men and women think about divorce?

Thus, we can see that divorce is a difficult topic to discuss and even contemplate, both for women and men. The main reason is that in traditional Pakistani Islamic society, people have a negative mindset about divorce. Even talking about the possibility of divorce in their extended families is usually forbidden.

Pakistani culture, however, has evolved in recent years. Divorce is no longer regarded as a taboo subject. Over the last few decades, cultural attitudes have altered in many traditional societies around the world, including Pakistan. All this gives a promise of possible changes.

Cultural Views on Divorce in Pakistan

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For generations, traditional Pakistani family relationships and marriages have functioned as endogamous unions. The parents of the children or other family elders arranged all marriage matters for the boys and daughters. They found a prospective mate for their grown child, organized their wedding, and cared about their future family life. This is why such matrimonial practices are called “arranged marriages.”

What Is Special About Pakistani Marriage Today?

Nowadays, marriage is still a family affair in Pakistani culture. Parents and other adults in the family feel responsible for their children’s future. They are accustomed to being involved in their marriage decisions, wedding arrangements, and later marital lives.

Pakistani traditions are collectivistic and follow a community-based way of life. The large extended family, rather than the nuclear family, is the foundational unit of community life. All family members are interdependent and intertwined with each other in many ways in the family structure. Spousal bonds are often no stronger than those with other members of the family. Love and intimacy between spouses are of lower importance than family responsibilities.

The priority of extended family over nuclear family is the main reason why arranged marriages have been common in Pakistani society for years. Since parents planned and arranged the marriages for their children, they were active in many of their new families’ interactions and relationships.

What Are the Cultural Attitudes Toward Divorce in Pakistan?

Traditionally, marriage in Pakistani society has been set up to fulfill family duties. For any family member, the responsibility of others was a priority. The pursuit of marital happiness was not in focus.

Therefore, Pakistani Islamic culture looks down on the idea of divorce. The Prophet said that, “Of all things permitted, divorce is the most hated by God” (Ali, 2003). Because of this, many religious Pakistanis take this statement very seriously. Even conversations about the possibility that divorce may happen in their extended families are not allowed. Zara Ahmed (2021), however, argues and contends that cultural reasons rather than religious ones are the main reasons why divorce is avoided.

Spouses, young or old, were supposed to manage any problems in their relationship for the sake of family preservation at any cost. Parents tell their married children that they need to live with their spouse despite anything that happens in their lives. They suggest that “suffering through the hardships of marriage is the right thing to do” (Ahmed, 2021, p. 8).

That especially refers to women. They are taught to understand, compromise, and do anything more than leave their marriage.

Public perception and opinion about family life rather than happiness in family relations are priorities for parents and kin. Parents cared more about “what the town gossip may have begun to say about them.”(Ahmed, 2021, p. 8).

To Divorce or Not to Divorce?

Pakistani arranged marriages tend to be stable and endure for years. Do they have a cultural recipe for marital happiness? The cause of such stability, however, is different. Marriage “stability” has other reasons that make spouses remain in their marital relationship despite anything.

In general, parents do not usually welcome their married adult children’s return to their family homes. Many parents never leave the doors of their home open for their divorced children to come back.

Traditional culture teaches women and men that once they are married, they are married for life. Their parents encouraged them to do all possible things to bring peace to their marriage. Therefore, women and men stay in their marriages in order to satisfy their families. Their personal happiness takes a backseat.

For better or worse, spouses are aware that their extended family will never accept divorce. Therefore, it is pointless to try. It is extremely difficult to convince the parents’ family to agree with this.

Marriages in the Pakistani Diaspora Abroad

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The Pakistani diaspora in other countries often has the same conservative views on marriage as Islamic culture in Pakistan. Traditional Pakistani households and family unions have formed and run as endogamous marriages for many centuries.

In the arranged marriages, the children’s parents or other senior relatives arrange all matrimonial issues for the sons and daughters. They select a prospective bride or groom. They organize the children’s weddings and continue to be involved in many of the relationships in their new families.

Since the family structures are not nuclear, they all feel like part of their large extended family, which is interdependent in many respects. The matters of family life are to fulfill the duties and responsibilities for the practical issues of subsistence and wealth. Arranged marriages are effective in ensuring social and economic survival, security, stability, and affluence.

Love works as the pragmatic love of serving each other and being responsible for each other, rather than an interpersonal relationship and emotional intimacy. Love is just a romantic phantasy and dream. It is for leisure entertainment rather than for real life.

The Time of Change in Pakistani Culture

However, in the last few decades, a lot of social and economic changes have occurred in Pakistani society. As a result, many Pakistanis’ cultural views on marriage have shifted toward modern beliefs and attitudes about family roles and marital relationships. Former social and economic pressures have waned, while the importance of interpersonal relationships has grown. Subsequently, contemporary understanding of arranged marriages shifted towards a better acceptance of interpersonal attraction and love between partners in such marriages.

Yet, some people in Pakistan are still conservative and not very receptive to these new cultural tendencies in their perception of family, marriage, and interpersonal relationships. They resist these progressive advancements. They are less ready to adopt these open-minded cultural perspectives.

Conservative Pakistani Diaspora Abroad

It is worthy of note that some Pakistani families and communities living in other countries, such as the US and Canada, can be strictly conservative in their attitudes toward marriage. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (2019) witnessed such abusive cases among the immigrants in the Pakistani diaspora. For example,

“If the husband’s family does not approve of the marriage, it could encourage the husband to be physically or psychologically abusive toward his spouse, a situation that could result in divorce or murder. Sometimes, the husband’s family physically abuses the wife”

(p. 2).

It looks like the family is attempting to get revenge. Other times, they are dissatisfied with the care or attention given to their child’s spouse. They believed that the daughter-in-law was meant to move into the home to look after them (as they did for their in-laws), rather than enjoy her life with her husband and start a family. Besides, when parents choose a daughter-in-law or son-in-law, they assume the couple will work things out and stay married no matter what problems come up.

In another case, when their son or daughter finds a partner for themselves, parents may encourage them to separate and go their separate ways, even if the couple has no problems. For parents, it is challenging to comprehend that their child is now married and that everything should move on. Nevertheless, the nagging parents may frequently grumble at their married children that

“this would never have happened if you had married so-and-so” or “this is why I told you to marry so-and-so and not this girl.”

(Ahmed, 2021, p. 7).

The Proper Understanding of Pakistani Islamic Culture?

Zara Ahmed believes that the mentality of Pakistani people should evolve and accurately understand their cultural religion of Islam. It is not correct to use religion to cover their actions without a proper understanding of religion. It is painful to learn that by hurting others, you serve the Islamic faith. It is disheartening when people do things like this while saying they are following God (Ahmed, 2021).

The new generation of adults is attempting to make their voices heard and properly understand Pakistani culture and the teachings of Islam. As Ladly (2012) noted, young adults are increasingly asserting their rights against the traditions of forced marriage and parental authority. Thus, they are implicitly challenging one of the most powerful institutions in Pakistani society.

They should be able to transform Pakistani culture and shape more open and accepting attitudes towards marriage. There should not be a contradiction between arranged marriages and love marriages. Love is compatible with family values.