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The practice of informal marriages in the Muslim world: a
comparative portrait
Janet Afary and Roger Friedland
Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
ABSTRACT
Informal marriages have been on the rise in recent years in the
Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia (MENASA) region. These
unions are dierent from formal marriages in a number of ways.
There are also many factors contributing to the growing popularity
of such unions. Both men and women are delaying marriage; rates
of formal marriage are declining; and rates of divorce are increasing.
Because such unions are generally not registered, it has been
dicult to document the growing popularity of this trend. In
2018, we used Facebook (FB) banner ads in seven Muslim-majority
countries to survey the young computer-literate populations of
Algeria, Egypt, Iran
,
Pakistan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey, as well
as their respective diasporas, to better understand the nature of
such unions. Our respondents, we hope, are a representative sam-
ple of younger people who are living or have lived in these nations,
and who are using this social media site. Over 10,000 respondents
provided us with information about their marital status. Close to
4000 were in formal marriages and 454 in informal unions. This
paper examines the marital histories of those engaged in informal
marriages, their sexual orientations, and the attitudes of formally
and informally married respondents about informal marriage. Who
engages in informal marriage and what do married people think of
this marital form.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 17 September 2022
Accepted 17 March 2023
Introduction
Informal unions have become
1
more frequent in the Muslim world. In part, this is because
formal marriage has become increasingly unattainable for large numbers of young
people. This is for a variety of reasons. Wars and migrations are major sources of marital
disruption. Persistent unemployment, underemployment and low wages, combined with
CONTACT Janet Afary jafary@ucsb.edu Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara,
CA, USA
1
We have relied on the contributions of many people in developing this article. Thanks to Paolo Gardinali who bravely
mounted and administered the survey on Facebook and executed data collection; Max Stiefel who composed our tables
and tracked down Facebook demographics for each of our countries; Rujun Yang who re-checked the tables and
identified the branched pathways through the questionnaire and their implications for the categories of respondents
who would be counted in each table. We thank our graduate students at UCSB: Eric Massie, Leila Zonouzi, Sarp Kurgan,
Mesadet Sozmen, Mohammadreza Mirzaei, and Jahan Ahmed for translation of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu
sources and, Kevin Anderson and Tina Guirguis for editorial assistance. We are also grateful for the financial support we
have received from NYU Abu Dhabi, UCSB Mellichamp Fund, Gramian-Emrani Foundation, UCSB Department of Film
and Media Studies, and UCSB Institute for Social Behavioural and Economic Research. To reach the authors, please write
to: Janet Afary (jafary@ucsb.edu) and Roger Friedland (friedland.roger@gmail.com).
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2023.2194609
© 2023 British Society for Middle Eastern Studies
inationary price increases, also make it dicult, if not impossible, for couples and their
families to aord the high cost of a formal wedding.
There have also been dramatic cultural shifts. The age at rst marriage, for both men
and women, has signicantly moved up, while expectations from marriage have chan-
ged drastically. Whereas once the purpose of marriage was exclusively expanding family
ties, licit sex, and procreation, today mutual intimacy, love, and aspirations for a modern
life style impact the choice of marriage. Until the mid-twentieth century, couples often
moved in with their in-laws and did not establish a separate dwelling until they had
grown sons who were themselves ready to get married. Nowadays, a woman and her
family often insist on a separate dwelling at the time of marriage. The dramatic increase
in real estate prices, and the cost of construction, combined with wage stagnation, have
made this impossible for many and substantially increased the age at rst marriage,
leading some scholars to coin the new term ‘waithood’ for this age range.
2
As a result of these changes informal marriages have been on the rise in the Middle
East, North Africa, and South Asia region (MENASA). These informal unions not only dier
from formal ones in a variety of ways, they also vary across countries and between Shi’i
and Sunni Muslims. In addition, they have evolved over the last half-century. It was not
until after the Iranian revolution that the Shi’i institution of temporary marriage, a dying
form of concubinage, was revived and promoted by the government of the Islamic
Republic of Iran as an alternative to Western dating. The state also advocated temporary
marriage as a response to the large number of war widows resulting from the Iran-Iraq
War (1980–1988). Sunni religious leaders, coping with marital crises in their own commu-
nities, and as a recruitment tool for Islamist movements, began to recognize the signi-
cance of informal marital forms and revived them as well. The question of legalization of
informal unions has become a highly politicized issue in the Middle East.
In this essay we begin by looking at the historical dierences between a formal (nekah)
marriage, and the various forms of informal unions in the region. We will then review the
nature and history of informal unions in contemporary Iran and some Sunni societies.
Finally, using survey analysis we will examine the extent to which these non-normative
forms have evolved and become accepted, and how this acceptance varies by Muslim
denominations, by country, and by gender.
Informal unions are dierent from formal marriages in a number of ways and have
dierent names and characteristics. The most common form of such unions, which has
been practiced for many centuries in the Arab and Iranian Shi’i world, is known as mut’a or
temporary marriage. In Iran, mut’a is called sigheh (meaning contract). In this paper we use
the term mut’a to cover temporary marriages in Shi’i societies, both Arab and Iranian,
exploring its evolution in some detail. The Sunni world has its own forms of informal
marriage. The most common is zawāj ‘ur or simply ‘ur, a common law marriage. In the
Persian Gulf region, a non-traditional form of marriage called misyār (travelling marriage)
has also existed among Sunnis, with some similarities to mut’a. Among Sunni Syrians
informal marriages are known as Imam or Sheikh marriages, with some similarities to ‘ur
unions.
2
Marcia C. Inhorn and Nancy J. Smith-Hefner, Waithood: Gender, Education, and Global Delays in Marriage and
Childbearing (New York: Berghahn, 2020).
2J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
In 2017–2018, we used Facebook (FB) banner ads in seven Muslim-majority countries
to survey the younger and computer-literate populations of Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan,
Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey, as well as their respective diasporas, to better understand
the nature of such unions together with social attitudes towards them. Our Facebook
respondents are not a representative sample of these nations; they are, we hope, a
representative sample of younger people who are connected to social media sites such
as Facebook. This paper looks at a cross section of survey respondents who expressed
their attitudes about informal marriages and/or participate in such unions.
In elding the survey we did not use the term ‘informal marriage’. Rather, for Shi’i
societies we used the term mut’a or sigheh, and for Sunni societies we used the term ‘ur
or misyār depending on the local usage. Our survey did not include Imam marriages of
Syria but we have beneted from studies at least in this area.
3
Our survey reveals the respondents’ ambivalence on the subject. Only a minority want
to legalize such unions outright. At the same time, large percentages of the surveyed
populations do not want to make informal marriage illegal, and penalize those who
engage in it. Our survey suggests that women are much less likely than men to support
the legalization of informal marriages, at least in their present form.
Formal marriage in MENASA: a brief sketch
Until the 20
th
century, marriage was universal in Muslim-majority countries of the region.
There was also no civil registration of formal marriages, which were conducted according
to sharia law. Among the urban and rural poor, informal marriages, whether mut’a or ‘ur,
were the most common type of union. These unions were recognized by the community
and often the religious authorities and did not involve elaborate nancial arrangements.
Formal marriages, generally known as nekah, were, in contrast, elaborate and often
expensive, unions involving much negotiation by the parents and relatives of both
partners. Nekah was common among the merchant, clerical and elite sectors of urban,
rural, and tribal communities, i.e., people with signicant assets.
It was usually the mother of the groom who found a proper spouse for her son in a
formal union, while her husband and other male relatives negotiated the nancial details
of the arrangements. The bridegroom’s family visited the house of the prospective bride,
checked her out, and initiated the nancial arrangements. These discussions were meant
to lay out the couple’s plans to procure and maintain the necessities of life. Young people
were not expected to have a job or complete their education before they were married.
Once they reached adulthood, their parents found them a spouse, arranged their mar-
riage, and provided for them until they became self-sucient.
Depending on the nancial situation of the family, provisions could entail the couple
living in a room in the in-laws’ house, where they would be provided with bedding and
clothing and basic necessities, while in a rich family, it could involve gifts of jewellery,
carpets, land and houses, cash, and even slaves. In addition, the wedding was celebrated
according to the nancial means and status of the bride and groom, who often belonged
to the same social class.
3
Yafa Shanneik, ‘Displacement, Humanitarian Interventions and Gender Rights in the Middle East: Syrian Refugees in
Jordan as a Case Study’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47: 15 (2021): 3329–3344.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 3
Sharia has historically privileged the extended family over the conjugal one with regard
to marital property and inheritance. It has also allowed polygamy and easy male divorce
(talaq), thereby further contributing to the fragility of the conjugal family.
4
Because
Muslim law grants men the easy right to talāq (divorce by repudiation), and because
there was no concept of community property, the bride’s family tried to extract as many
nancial commitments from the groom’s family as possible in this early stage, hoping that
these commitments would later reduce the chances of divorce for their daughter. The
contract thus involved great detail. The husband was required to provide nancial
maintenance (nafaqa) at a level that was appropriate to the woman’s social class, as
well as housing for his wife and any children of the union. He took the obligation to pay
his wife a marriage portion known as mahr. A wife could claim her mahr any time after the
marriage (and even a portion of it if the marriage was not consummated), but usually
women claimed their mahr at the termination of the marriage upon the divorce or death
of the husband.
5
In return, the wife was required to provide her husband with sex and be
obedient to him. The bride’s family often included specic stipulations in the marriage
contract, such as the wife’s right to live in the city in which she was married, if her husband
chose to relocate elsewhere, or the right to divorce for the wife with her full mahr if the
husband chose to take a second wife.
6
A formal marriage contract thus provided signicant protection for the wife in a union,
but also made marriage expensive. The groom had to provide an acceptable domicile and
pay for a wedding. The bride’s family had to come up with a respectable trousseau (jahiz).
A wife in a formal marriage was entitled to several rights: (1) daily maintenance, (2) her
children’s legal paternity, (3) child support from the husband and/or his family in the case
of divorce or the death of her husband, and (4) inheritance of ¼ (if no children) or 1/8 (if
there were children) of movable assets from her husband. The right to daily maintenance
commensurate to the standards of her family of origin, was signicant as it provided
women with an additional right to ask for divorce, though it was not always granted.
7
As noted earlier, informal unions were the more common practice in society among the
rural and urban poor. These were generally life-long and monogamous unions. However,
the institution of polygamy, practiced among the middle and upper- classes, meant that
men with greater discretionary assets could enter into informal unions with women other
than their formal wives.
8
And these unions, both in Shi’i and Sunni communities could be
of long or short duration. There was usually no public celebration by the community
recognizing these forms of union and sometimes they were secret or semi-secret.
All the countries in our review started with this sharia-based personal status code but
in the course of the 20
th
century adopted new state legislation, including civil marriage,
which to varying degrees expanded women’s entitlements within marriage. The age at
4
Kenneth M. Cuno, Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology, and Law in Nineteenth-and Early Twentieth-Century Egypt
(Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2015), 2.
5
In Iran and Shi’i Azerbaijani communities of South Caucasus an amount known as shirbaha (milk money) was also paid
by the groom and his family to the bride’s family at the time of marriage.
6
Janet Afary, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009), 22.
7
This very brief discussion of formal marriage does not do justice to subject. For more see Frances S. Hasso, Consuming
Desire: Family Crisis and the State in the Middle East (Stanford UP, 2011); Judith Tucker, In the House of Islamic Law in
Ottoman Syria and Palestine (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998); various essays in Beshara
Doumani, ed. Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003); Hanan
Kholoussy, For Better, For Worse: The Marriage Crisis that Made Modern Egypt (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2010).
8
Shahla Haeri, Law of Desire Temporary Marriage in Shi’i Iran. (Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1989).
4J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
rst marriage was increased, polygamy was banned or made more dicult, and unilateral
divorce (talaq) was also made more cumbersome. These reforms in family law set the
scene for a tug-of-war between modernized elites, clerical classes and Islamist constitu-
encies in the late 20
th
century. Since the new codes restricted existing male entitlements,
all regimes in the region claiming Islamist roots attempted to ratchet up male privileges
via the legalization of practices that oered less protection to women. The resurrection of
informal unions is thus a response to at least two dierent phenomena: (1) ‘Waithood’,
due to increased education and the prohibitive cost of formal marriage, and (2) the
Islamists’ keen awareness of this dilemma and their ability to tap into young people’s
resentment by resurrecting the practices of informal unions, giving them religious bles-
sing, and using them as recruiting tools.
Informal marriages: types and denitions
Much of the literature on the subject of informal marriages in the contemporary period
has focused on the abusive nature of such relations. These often involve wealthy married
men such as those from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Saudi Arabia, the United
Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain) who travel to impoverished countries in
the region, such as Egypt, war-torn Syria, or Syrian refugee camps elsewhere in the
MENASA region, and contract short-term ‘travelling marriages’ with girls as young as
eleven.
9
An informal marriage need not be transnational to be exploitative. In Iranian
society, some parents continue to arrange a temporary marriage between their underage
daughter and an older and more well-to-do suitor, in order to bypass the legal marriage
age of thirteen for girls.
10
But a handful of feminist authors, such as the Canadian-Iranian Homa Hoodfar, the
Iranian journalist Shahla Sherkat, the Arab-American Sociologist Franes S. Hasso and
the Qatari writer Tofol Jassim Al-Nasr have shown that contemporary informal
marriages are not always exploitative. When these unions involve two consenting
adults, they may oer a solution for single people who want to engage in a
consensual sexual relationship while maintaining religious norms which prohibit
extra-marital relations, or for those who do not have the nancial means to enter
into a long-term formal marriage.
11
Our research examines single adults who enter such unions consensually, even if
somewhat reluctantly, because it is often the only choice available to them. We excluded
three types of arrangements involving informal unions: (1) a polygamous relationship
where the man is simultaneously in a formal marriage and has an informal wife; (2)
‘travelling marriages’ with underage girls; and (3) prostitution cases where adult women
9
Hussein Hassan Soliman, Nagwa Ibrahim Alsharqawi, and Mustafa Ahmed Younis. 2018. ‘Is Tourism Marriage of Young
Girls in Egypt a Form of Child Sexual Abuse? A Family Exploitation Perspective’ Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 27(2): 12–
140; Max Fisher. 2013. ‘Some Girls Have Been Married 60 Times by the Time They Turn 18’. The Washington Post (6
August 2013). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/08/06/some-girls-have-been-married
−60-times-by-the-time-they-turn-18/ Retrieved on 31 August 2021.
10
For a discussion of child marriage see Mary Elaine Hegland and Maryam Karimi, ‘Child Marriages and Their Results:
Insights from Women’s Stories’. Pp. 67–86 in S. B. Hosseini, ed., Temporary and Child Marriages in Iran and Afghanistan
(Singapore: Springer Press, 2021).
11
See for example Hasso, Consuming Desires, 1–3.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 5
call such transactional relationships ‘temporary marriage’ as a guise for what is in fact sex
work.
12
How does informal marriage t into the marital histories of the women and men who
engage in them? If we look at the marital status of the 454 Muslim survey respondents who are
in informal marriages (Table 1), more than half have never been formally married (61%). Twelve
percent of respondents are separated from their spouses, 6% are divorced, and 4% are
widowed. Seventeen percent of people in informal marriages are engaged to be formally
married. Shiʿis who are in temporary marriages are more likely than Sunnis to be engaged to
be formally married. We do not know if these respondents are engaged to the partner with
whom they are currently in an informal marriage or to someone else. Although we cannot say
for sure, our results are consistent with trends amongst young couples—both Shiʿi and Sunni
—who use informal marriage to legitimate pre-marital relations. Men and women who are
informally married have dierent marital histories. Less women had never formally married
than men (47% versus 65%). In total, 37% of women in such informal unions are either
divorced, separated, or widowed, versus 17% of the men. The biggest gender gap here is
the experience of divorce—16% of the women have had a divorce and never formally
remarried, compared to 3% of the men. We do not know for sure, but it is reasonable to
argue that for these women, informal marriages are a desirable option. It may be the only
legitimate means of nding a partner given their lack of perceived desirability in the formal
marriage market, in which virginity continues to be prized at rst marriage both by men and
their families. Or, perhaps it reects a woman’s desire for companionship and love while
foregoing a life-time commitment and familial obligations, which they have already experi-
enced and may want to avoid.
Historically in the Shi’i world mut’a gave religious legitimacy to relationships that were
predominantly sexual. Often they were entered into by auent older married men who
took a much younger mut’a wife from a poorer family as a second or third wife, usually
when the men were away from home.
13
In mut’a the contract stated the start and end
dates of the union, as well as the amount of compensation (ajr) that the woman would
Table 1. Marital status for those in a non-standard marriage, by gender.
Marital Status
Female Male Total
N % N % N %
Never formally married 51 47.2 225 65 276 60.8
Engaged to be formally married 17 15.7 62 17.9 79 17.4
Separated 17 15.7 37 10.7 54 11.9
Divorced and not formally remarried 17 15.7 10 2.9 27 5.9
Widowed 6 5.6 12 3.5 18 4
Total 108 100 346 100 454 100
12
We can assume the men in our sample are not formally married, as respondents are filtered by study design. With
regard to the second category of exclusion, only survey participants over the age of eighteen were included. Regarding
the second and the third categories to be excluded from the study, we found that only a very small percentage of the
women sampled, who reported being in a temporary marriage, were also financially dependent on their partners.
13
Hoda Rashad, Magued Osman, and Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi. 2005. ‘Marriage in the Arab World’. Population Reference
Bureau (2005). https://www.prb.org/resources/marriage-in-the-arab-world/ Retrieved on 31 August 2022.
6J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
receive.
14
The marriage concluded when the stipulated time arrived but could be
renewed if both parties desired to do so.
The most common type of informal unions in the Sunni world are ‘ur unions, meaning
customary, and misyār, which are travelling marriages. Again, there were dierences in
the way ‘ur marriages operated in the premodern world compared to how they are
today. As Annelies Moore has also shown, until the emergence of modern nations,
unregistered ‘ur marriages were the norm among common people, and were publicly
recognized and celebrated, just as mut’a unions were the norm in impoverished Shi’i
communities of Iran.
15
Whereas the Sunni world had two kinds of marriage for two social classes (nekah and
‘ur), both of which were recognized by the community, the Shi’i world had three types of
unions: (1) nekah, for the upper and middle classes, (2) monogamous mut’a/sigheh for the
majority poor and lower classes which was cemented through a religious ritual and
recognized by the community, and nally (3) mut’a/sigheh as a form of concubinage for
the upper and middle classes. This last type of union was contracted between two people
of vastly dierent social classes, but it was a religiously sanctioned form of union. It could
be, though not always was, kept secret or semi-secret from one’s community, especially
the formal spouse.
16
As we saw, ‘ur unions were the most common type of marriage that were also
recognized by one’s community. However, contemporary ‘ur marriages are dierent
from their predecessors. The new ‘urs are concealed from certain people, such as the
parents of the couple, or the man’s formal wife.
17
These newer ‘ur marriages have no state
or social recognition but in recent years have received religious blessing. Two people can
enter into an ’ur marriage by reciting the rst sura of the Qur’an and signing a contract
before two male Muslim witnesses, though a cleric may also perform the ceremony.
18
The new ‘ur unions began in the late 20th century. Following the broad institutiona-
lization of the practice of mut’a by the Shi’i government of the Islamic Republic of Iran in
the 1980s, Sunni clerics and Islamists took notice and began to issue religious opinions
(fatwas) that legitimized the practice of ‘ur throughout the Middle East.
19
As a result, ‘ur
unions are now assumed to have religious blessing, making it dierent from simple
cohabitation, which is deemed a sinful transgression.
20
The other type of informal union is misyār, a religiously sanctioned marriage, but with
none of the nancial and legal protections of a formal marriage. There is no right to daily
maintenance, no assurance of paternity for any children born of the union, and no
14
The practice was not a Muslim innovation. Indeed, pre-Islamic forms of informal marriage can be found in both Arabia
and Iran, among Muslims and non-Muslims. Caliph ‘Umar (r. 634–644) outlawed the practice and it was prohibited in
Sunni denominations. But the Shiʿis maintained the custom. Anthropologist Shahla Haeri, who pioneered research in
this area, has shown that the purpose of mut’a is the sexual enjoyment of the husband, whereas that of traditional
marriage (nekah) is procreation. Mut’a is regarded as one of the key differences between Shi’i and Sunni doctrines.
Haeri, Law of Desire, 50–57.
15
Annelies Moore. 2013. Unregistered Islamic Marriages: Anxieties about Sexuality and Islam in Maurits Berger (ed.), The
Application of Sharia in the West. Leiden University Press, pp. 141–164.
16
Janet Afary, Sexual Politics, 60–67.
17
Dina Zbeidy. 2018. ‘Marriage Registration Among Palestinians and Syrians in Jordan’, Sociology of Islam 6(3): 359–380.
18
Bettina Dennerlein and Aymon Kreil, ‘Family affairs: The Doing and Undoing of Family in Modern and Contemporary
Egypt’, Asia and Europe-Interconnected: Agents, Concepts, and Things (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2018), 284.
19
Sammy Z Badran and Brian Turnbull. 2019.‘Contemporary Temporary Marriage: A Blog-Analysis of First-Hand
Experiences’. Journal of International Women’s Studies 20: 2 (2019): 244.
20
Dennerlein and Kreil. ‘Family affairs’, 284.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 7
inheritance rights for the wife. It originated in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and
has been gradually growing in popularity in other Sunni countries. The practice spread
through Arab migrant workers who returned home after living and working in the Persian
Gulf, as well as wealthy Gulf citizens who travelled to poorer countries of the Middle East
and engaged in such unions. In 2006, the Islamic Jurisprudence Assembly in Mecca issued
a fatwa that declared misyār a legal form of marriage.
21
As in mut’a, the couple need not
cohabitate, making it possible for a man to keep a formal wife in one city and a misyār
companion in another. Similarly, the misyār wife can continue to live with her own
parents, relatives, or children from another marriage. The technical dierence between
the Shi’i mut’a and the Sunni misyār is that in mut’a the end of the union is specied in the
contract, while in misyār it is not.
22
‘Ur unions have increased among the more educated sectors of the Sunni world.
People are postponing marriage until their late twenties or thirties, when they have
completed their education, have worked for a few years, and are thus more nancially
secure. Others, especially men, are foregoing formal marriage altogether due to its high
expense. Women who wish to pursue advanced studies face a particular dilemma. By the
time they have completed their studies, and worked for a few years, they are considered
too old for a suitable formal marriage, meaning a marriage with someone of equal or
higher social status. The rise in these new types of ‘ur marriages has led to deep legal and
moral concerns, as well as questions over the role that the state can and should play in
monitoring such relations. More research has to be done to examine the social and
economic contexts within which ‘ur marriages in the Sunni world are increasing.
However, ‘ur and misyār marriages can be quite dangerous for the young urban women
who enter them. Even an ‘ur that is ociated by a cleric places the wife in a precarious
position if her husband leaves her. She cannot request a divorce, as her marriage is not
registered under civil law; the paternity of any children from the union cannot be easily
established; and if she remarries, her community may accuse her of entering a polygamous
marriage.
23
There are relatively few statistics that lay out the data surrounding ur/misyār mar-
riages because so many of them are carried out secretly. This is also the case with mut’a in
Iran where the union is sanctioned by both religious authorities and the state but
disparaged by families. This secrecy for fear of societal repudiation works against the
woman in the partnership. In a nekah the woman’s family is intensely involved in the
nancial negotiation of the marriage and also lends its support in multiple ways during
the course of the union and even after divorce. The wife in an informal marriage has none
of these protections and can be easily abandoned without anyone speaking on her behalf,
as her union was never ocially celebrated and recognized by the community.
Temporary marriage in contemporary Iran
In the late nineteenth century, Iranian advocates for social reform demanded changes in
marriage and divorce laws including the prohibition of polygamy (both formal and
21
Ibid., 243–244.
22
Tofol Jassim Al-Nasr. 2011.‘Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Women and Misyār Marriage: Evolution and Progress in the
Arabian Gulf’, Journal of International Women’s Studies 12:3 (2011): 49.
23
Rashad, Osman, and Roudi-Fahimi, ‘Marriage in the Arab World’. 7.
8J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
temporary) and an end to easy divorce for men.
24
Small steps aecting women were
taken in the rst half of the 20
th
century. Nekah had to be ocially registered and the
minimum marriage age for girls at rst marriage was increased to fteen and later
eighteen. Between 1967–1975, the Women’s Organization of Iran, with support from
the state, ratied a dramatic series of reforms known as the Family Protection Law.
Now, nekah contracts included certain rights to divorce for women.
25
A man could no
longer divorce his wife at any time or for whatever reason. He could still take a second
wife but he needed the permission of his rst wife. If she refused him, and he went ahead
anyway, she had the right to a divorce with her full mahr.
26
In January 1976, the Justice
Ministry announced that a man who wished to take a temporary wife was required ‘to
make a declaration that at the time of taking the temporary wife he was not married to
another woman’.
27
Thus as a matter of policy, though not reality, temporary marriage
became limited to single men.
Three years later in 1979 the Islamic Revolution reversed these trends. The Islamist
state continued the literacy and health campaigns of the Pahlavi era, but also granted
more power to men and the state over women’s sexuality and reproductive functions. The
state reduced the age of marriage for girls to nine, and then over a decade later, settled on
thirteen. It encouraged polygamy and temporary marriage, as well as the return of easy
male divorce. While these measures weakened conjugal bonds of aection, they served to
compensate men who had acquiesced to the strictures of the new theocratic state.
In the new Islamic Republic, polygamy and temporary marriage gave married men easy
access to other sexual partners. Moreover, the new law increased their power in the home.
Many men enjoyed this greater legal authority over their wives, and began to use their right
to take another wife as a threat, even if they did not intend to or have the means to do so.
An increase in widowhood from the Iran-Iraq war, high divorce rates, and female unem-
ployment, augmented the pool of available women for temporary marriage.
28
The war left
over a million deaths and casualties on both sides. Over 500,000 soldiers died, with Iran
suering the greater loss. During and after the war, the state pressured young war widows to
remarry. Ranking clerics, and later President Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989–1997), advocated for
temporary marriage as a solution to the economic burdens of the war and the moral
dilemma of having many young women widowed.
29
The state also promoted temporary
marriage as a solution to social ills. A media campaign advertised temporary marriage as a
morally sanctioned substitute for Western dating and cohabitation. It encouraged men and
women to avail themselves of this ‘sacrament’, and deemed temporary marriage an ethically
suitable alternative to masturbation and prostitution.
30
24
According to the Quran a man has the right to have four formal wives. In reality, few men had the financial means to
have more than one formal wife.
25
Gholamreza Afkhami, Jameʿeh, Dowlat, va Jonbesh-e Zanan-e Iran, 1342–1357: Mosahebeh ba Mahnaz Afkhami.
Foundation for Iranian Studies (2003): 253–264.
26
For details on this period see Ziba Mir-Hosseini, ‘Women, Marriage, and Law in Post-Revolutionary Iran’, 59–62 in Haleh
Afshar, ed. Women in the Middle East: Perceptions, Realities and Struggles for Liberation. (London: MacMillan 1993).
27
‘Echo of Iran’. Iran Almanac (1976): 351; see also Willem Floor. A Social History of Sexual Relations in Iran. (Washington
D. C.: Mage Press, 2008).
28
Akbar Aghajanian. 1986. ‘Some Notes on Divorce in Iran’. Journal of Marriage and the Family 48:(4 (1986): 749–755.
29
Aghajanian, ‘Some Notes on Divorce in Iran’. 749–755; Homa Omid, Islam and the Post-Revolutionary State in Iran (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 201.
30
‘Ezdevaj-e Movaqqat Yeki az Rahha-ye Mahar-e Biband va Bari va Fesad’ Keyhan (Shahrivar, 25, 1370), 4.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 9
The practice of entering into temporary unions became more common among Islamist
men and women, many from the urban and rural poor, who joined various regime-
sponsored revolutionary organizations, working side by side with the opposite sex.
31
Hence, in the dark years of the 1980s, female Islamist enforcers of morality experienced
much freer sexual lives than the young secular women they arrested and ogged on
imsy charges such as sipping coee with a male colleague in a café.
When the state lifted some of its most draconian measures in the 1990s, it became obvious
that the sexual mores of Iranian society had undergone a dramatic shift after a decade of war and
revolution. It was a process not unlike what happened in Europe after the heavy casualties of
World War I, and II. Iranian society had become less religious as a resistance to the theocratic
state, and from exposure to Western sexual mores through satellite television, the internet, and
interactions with the Iranian diaspora. Many urbanites, and gradually even people from small
towns, had lost their inhibitions about premarital sex. In this environment, cultural reticence
about temporary marriage in the general public also decreased, and some decided to use the
institution to their advantage in order to circumvent the state. Some young college students
entered into temporary marriages to avoid the hassle of the morality police. Urban girls
contracted brief unions with their boyfriends to go on vacations and spend extended periods
away from home. Young educated men entered into temporary marriages with their girlfriends,
promising to have a formal marriage when they were nancially stable. Temporary marriage
even became a g leaf in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART). When a man had low sperm
counts, the religious authorities advised him to get a divorce. His wife would then briey ‘marry’
the sperm donor in order to undergo ART, and then remarry her husband.
32
By the second decade of the 21
st
century, the institution of temporary marriage had evolved
signicantly, largely due to cultural shifts in attitudes about sinful behaviour. For some, tempor-
ary marriage began to replace Western-style cohabitation. From 2011 to 2014 the number of
formal registered marriages declined around 18% from 11.8 to 9.1 per thousand people. Among
the more religious sectors many entered more longterm temporary marriages, hoping to
formally marry some day. But in the more secular sector of society, people were simply opting
for cohabitation commonly referred to as white marriage, despite legal prohibitions against such
relationships. The state turned a blind eye to such unions because of their increasing popularity,
but this did not mean they were free of problems. If the woman became pregnant she could not
obtain a birth certicate or claim custody rights. More recently in 2021, the state passed
draconian anti-abortion laws, hoping to force such couples to marry.
33
Sociologist Akbar Aghajanian has concluded that the institution of temporary marriage
has changed. In his qualitative study of twenty-seven couples in the conservative south-
western province of Kermanshah, he found that the mean age of marriage for men was
forty and for women was thirty-two. In addition, he noticed that these newer mut’as were
31
Haeri, Law of Desire, 96–100.
32
Elhum Shakerifar. 2006. ‘Temporary Marriage in Modern Iran’. Unpublished paper presented at the Sixth Biennial
Conference of the International Society for Iranian Studies (2006); Soraya Termayne, ‘Law, Ethics and Donor
Technologies in Shia Iran’. In Assisting Reproduction, Testing Genes: Global Encounters with Biotechnologies. Pp.
103–130. Edited by Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli and Marcia Inhorn (New York: Berghahn, 2009). Tara Asgarilaleh and
Annelies Moors, ‘Laboratory Sigheh’ Global Dynamics of Shi’i Marriages (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2022), 135–150.
33
For more on white marriage see Gholam Reza Vatandoust and Maryam Sheipari, ‘Beyond the Sharia: ‘White Marriage in
the Islamic Republic of Iran’. Pp. 55–78 in Janet Afary and Jesilyn Faust, Iranian Romance: From Arranged Marriage to
White Marriage (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2021); Omid Khazani, ‘Iran is Urging People to Have Babies-and Making Life
Hard for Those Who Don’t Want To’. Los Angeles Times. 14 September 2022. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/
story/2022-09-14/Iran-urging-people-have-kids-restricting-abortion-contraception Retrieved on 15 September 2022.
10 J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
meant to be more long-term as they did not have a termination contract. About a third of
the men and women were either divorced or widowed. In another third, the husband had
an additional formal wife. However, a majority of the unions (60%) were between people
who had never married before. These trends, especially the higher median age of women
in such unions, more closely resemble those of cohabiting couples in the West.
34
Informal marriages in today’s Sunni Middle East
Let’s now turn to informal unions in several predominantly Sunni countries targeted in
our Facebook survey—Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey—to provide a context for this increase
in informal marriage.
Egypt
‘Ur marriages gained greater popularity in Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s when women
whose husbands had died in the Arab-Israeli wars realized they could maintain their status
as widows, continuing to receive their deceased husband’s pension, while entering into
an ‘ur marriage.
35
The delay in marriage due to the need to nish one’s education,
growing consumerism, and the increasing cost of housing and furniture, have also led to
changes in marriage arrangements. When more educated women reach their thirties,
some opt to marry men who are of much lower education and status, just so they can
form a family. When a man’s family cannot nancially contribute to a marriage, ‘ur unions
oer an alternative. Here we come across unions where men are marrying women who
are nancially independent, and even have better incomes. The woman’s family takes on
a greater share of the cost of marriage and she herself is working.
36
In such ‘ur marriages,
often the man cannot aord the nancial costs of a marriage, something a wife would
require in a nekah.
37
As to the marriage itself, the nancial contributions of husbands and
wives has not been systematically studied, something we will do here.
As elsewhere in the world, men usually seek out younger marriage partners, but even
this dynamic is changing. A growing number of young men enter into either formal or ‘ur
marriages with somewhat older (divorced or widowed) women, ‘who are more nancially
secure to oset the high cost of marriage and the high costs of living’.
38
‘Ur marriages are
also popular among college age students. In 2010, the National Council of Population and
the American University of Cairo estimated that approximately 400,000 ‘ur marriages
took place annually. Of this, around 225,000 were among university students (one in every
ve students), and most were contracted between classmates. ‘These young adults often
arrange to meet after classes for a few hours, in apartments owned by their families or
friends, without parental and community knowledge’.
39
Sometimes, the young couple
34
Aghajanian, ‘Recent Trends of Marriage in Iran’. Sociology Department Faculty. Working Papers 15. Fayetteville State
University, 2018.
35
Gihan Shahine. 1998. ‘The Double Bind’. Al Ahram Weekly On-line. On the history of marriage reform in Egypt see
Monika Linkbekk, ‘Inscribing Islamic Shari’a in Egyptian Divorce law’, Oslo Law Review 2 (2016): 103–105.
36
Dennerlein & Kreil, ‘Family affairs’, 286.
37
Rashad, Osman, and Roudi-Fahimi, ‘Marriage in the Arab World’.
38
Shahreena Shahrani, ‘The Social (Re)Construction of ‘urfi Marriage’. 36.
39
ibid., 37.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 11
sign their informal contract with bloody ngerprints as a testimonial to their
commitment.
40
Since there are very few records of ‘ur marriages in any ocial registry, it is dicult for
women to take these cases to court if they become pregnant. In 1998, there were nearly
10,000 cases of contested paternity in Egyptian courts, often involving ‘ur marriages. In
2000, the state recognized the right of an ‘ur wife to seek divorce but did not extend this
right to alimony and child support.
41
As a result, women have turned to suing the fathers
of their children for paternity. Many such cases have remained unresolved, as the women
wait for years for the state to order a paternity test, to then collect child support. Some
cases involving movie stars have become sensational tabloid stories or subjects of TV soap
operas.
42
It is evident that Egypt is undergoing a ‘nuptuality transition’.
43
Not only are marriage
patterns shifting for social as well as economic reasons, but the collective views of society
and the state are also changing. Religious and academic scholars have chimed in as to
whether ‘ur marriages are compatible with Sunni religious doctrines. The conversation
about whether such unions are legal or illegal routinely surfaces in parliamentary debates,
government publications, and mosques. As we will see, these debates reect a sea change
in attitudes towards these practices.
44
In 2006, the former Chief Mufti of Egypt’s al-Azhar University stated that misyār needs
to be recognized in some situations.
45
In contrast, in 2009, Egyptian parliamentarian
Ibtisam Habib proposed that the practice be outlawed and those who engaged in it be
sentenced to prison for at least a year. In the same year, the Egyptian Supreme
Constitutional Court organized a symposium of scholars and religious leaders to discuss
the social consequences of such unions, and to nd solutions to the crisis it has created.
More recently calls for recognition of misyār, which the Egyptian press has dubbed ‘part-
time marriage’, have generated huge controversy
46
The general public holds a negative view of such unions, especially for women. In
recent years, there has been a push to criminalize ‘ur marriages through TV dramas and
in fervent political debate on the subject. The stories that make headlines suggest a
variety of reasons for such unions among college students. Some wealthy male students
simultaneously enter into ‘ur unions with several female college students. Some go
through a series of short-lived monogamous ‘ur unions with no intention of formally
marrying. Others are in a committed ‘ur union but cannot formally marry because their
parents or relatives disapprove of the match.
47
Since 2012, the practice has grown rapidly among the half million Syrian refugees who
have settled in Egypt.
48
Egyptian men apparently nd these displaced refugee women
40
Ibid., 39–40.
41
Mamdouh Wahba. 2019. ‘Adolescents’ Sexual and Reproductive Health in the Arab World” Handbook of Healthcare in
the Arab World. SpringerLink, 2020.
42
Hasso, Consuming Desires, 1–3.
43
Diane Singerman and Barbara Ibrahim. 2001. ‘The Cost of Marriage in Egypt: A Hidden Variable in the New Arab
Demography’. New Arab Family Cairo Papers in Social Science 24 (2001): 80–116.
44
Shahine, ‘The Social (Re)Construction of “urfi Marriage”’, 67.
45
Badran & Turnbull, ‘Contemporary Temporary Marriage’, 243–244.
46
Shahrani, .‘Contemporary Temporary Marriage’, 68–69; Mohamed Sabry, « ’Part-Time Marriage’ Provokes Controversy in
Egypt”, Al-Monitor.com Egypt Today 24 August 2021. Retrieved on 23 August 2022.
47
Dennerlein & Kreil, ‘Family affairs’, 287–290.
48
Syrian refugees in Jordan are going through a similar experience; see Zbeidy, ‘Marriage Registration’.
12 J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
more attractive, since they are in no position to make nancial demands and seem more
pliable than the average Egyptian women. For the displaced Syrian women such unions
oer a chance at survival, to form a family, and to forge a new community. Some Syrian
women prefer an ‘ur marriage because they will remain eligible for humanitarian
assistance from the UN refugee organization (UNHCR). Others prefer ‘ur as an alternative
to nekah, where they would have to commit to the full-time care of a husband who in
most cases has a formal wife. Additionally, this arrangement keeps their options open in
case they return to Syria.
49
Tunisia
Tunisia’s struggle for women’s rights was linked to the country’s struggle for national
independence from French colonialism. Tunisia was far more urbanized than Algeria, and
was able to end colonialism without the mass carnage that Algeria experienced. Since the
decolonization process was less violent, fewer women were widowed, which contributed
to the improved position of Tunisian women. These factors facilitated the emergence of a
uniquely progressive Family Law in Tunisia in comparison to many other Arab countries.
Tunisia legislatively prohibited polygamy, and abolished a husband’s right to unilateral
male divorce.
50
After the 2011 Revolution, and despite the rise of al-Nahda Islamist Party which
advocated more conservative gender relations, state laws became more protective of
women in several areas. The 2014-2022 Constitution declared men and women equal
before the law (Art. 21). It guaranteed equal opportunities for women in all sectors and
argued for parity between men and women in all elected assemblies (Art. 46). Laws that
banned marriage between Muslim women and non-Muslim men were abolished.
Parliament passed laws to ght violence against women, and to provide social and
psychological support for domestic violence survivors.
51
A new constitution took eect
in 2022 with uncertain eects in terms of women's rights & human rights as a whole.
However, social customs continue to be inuenced by forces that are outside the
purview of the state. While ‘ur and misyār remain illegal under Tunisian law, they have
been on the rise since the 2011 Revolution.
52
Islamists have supported such unions.
Salasts argue that ‘ur marriages are a ‘remedy to high wedding costs and premarital
sex’ and have in recent years advocated for its legalization.
53
Student protesters of Islamist
persuasion have argued that the state had no right to forbid a custom that is now
religiously authorized and thus called halāl marriages.
49
Dina Taha, ‘”Like a Tree Without Leaves”: Syrian Refugee Women and the Shifting Meaning of Marriage’. Mashriq &
Mahjar 7 (2020): 1.
50
Monira Charrad, States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2001).
51
Renata Pepicelli, ‘From “Hero” to “Zero”: Re-Thinking Youth in Post Revolutionary Tunisia. A Focus on Family, State, and
Public Discourse’ Images of Transformations Between the Two Shores of the Mediterranean (Genova UP, 2018), 65–66.
52
Imed Bensaied. 2012. ‘”Temporary marriage” on the Rise in Post-revolutionary Tunisia’. France 24.com. https://www.
france24.com/en/20,120,131-urfi-marriage-trend-seen-among-tunisian-university-students Retrieved on 31 August
2022.
53
Maria Cristina Paciello, Renata Pepicelli and Daniela Pioppi, ‘Youth in Tunisia: Trapped Between Public Control and the
Neo-Liberal Economy’. Working Paper No. 6. Power 2 Youth. (Rome: Instituto Affari Internazionali, 2016). https://www.
researchgate.net/publication/301822295_Youth_in_Tunisia_Trapped_Between_Public_Control_and_the_Neo-
Liberal_Economy Retrieved on 31 August 2022.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 13
But Salast inuence cannot be the sole reason for the increase in these marriages. As
elsewhere, young people delay formal marriage due to a host of impediments. Young
men in particular nd ‘ur to be a convenient method to engage in sex and form unions.
Young women who are concerned with the lack of suitable men, demands of their own
family members to enter a socially and economically proper marriage, and fearful that
they may not nd a suitable husband during their child-bearing years, might also nd ‘ur
a desirable alternative. The problem is that ‘ur marriages in Tunisia, as elsewhere, often
leave women legally unprotected, particularly when the husband does not recognize the
children of such unions.
Halal marriages are viewed dierently depending on the vantage point of the person
who is being asked. Young people on university campuses are increasingly practicing
such unions. However, more secular Tunisians are rejecting both nekah and ‘ur unions,
and instead opting for cohabitation.
54
As in the case of Iranian white marriages, these
stories need to be included in our understanding of why and how non-traditional
marriages are becoming more desirable for many Tunisians.
Turkey
Women’s issues have long been central to the polarization of Turkey’s politics into secular
and religious camps. In 1926, at the initiative of Kemal Atatürk, the Turkish Civil Code
made polygamy illegal, and introduced laws that gave women greater protection in the
event of divorce or death of the husband, such as child custody and inheritance.
55
Polygamy remains illegal and couples who intend to marry must provide ‘celibacy docu-
ments’ that certify the applicants are not currently married. In recent years, however, the
Islamist government of Recep Tayyib Erdoğan has been steadily chipping away at these
and other rights of women. Despite the widespread nature of public and domestic
violence in Turkey, in March 2020 the Turkish government withdrew from the Istanbul
Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic
Violence, a treaty whose Founding Conference Turkey had hosted and joined in 2012.
56
Migration patterns have contributed to a rise in informal marriages. There are over 3.5
million Syrian refugees in Turkey, making this country host to the largest refugee popula-
tions from Syria.
57
Informal marriages were revived in refugee communities as a reli-
giously sanctioned alternative to nekah, which was not attainable, or as an alternative to
Western-style cohabitation, which was deemed immoral. In Jordan and Turkey where
large numbers of Syrian refugees have settled, marital practices of the newcomers have
caused great anxiety within the native populations. By tradition, many Syrians are rst
married by a religious gure (hence the name Imam or Sheikh Marriage) and only much
later (for example when recording the birth of a child) register the marriage with the
54
Iris Kolman, ‘Beyond Non-Registration: Women Opting for Cohabitation in Tunis’. Sociology of Islam. 6:3 (2018): 381–
400.
55
Ayse Kadioglu. 1994 ‘Women’s Subordination in Turkey: Is Islam Really the Villain?’ Middle East Journal. 48: 4(1994): 645–
660.
56
‘Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention rallies the fight for women’s rights across the world’ Amnesty
International 21 July 2021. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/07/turkeys-withdrawal-from-the-istanbul-
convention-rallies-the-fight-for-womens-rights-across-the-world-2/ Retrieved on 26 August 2022.
57
‘UNHCR Syria Regional Refugees Response’. (2018).
14 J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
state.
58
Thus before the civil war Syrian society resembled early 20
th
century Iran, Turkey,
or Egypt where religiously pronounced unions were the dominant form.
What Syrian women are experiencing today as refugees in Turkey and elsewhere is a
dierent phenomenon. Many have been abandoned by their Syrian spouses who have
returned to Syria or relocated to other Middle Eastern countries in search of a job and
often remarried there. The Turkish authorities might pressure the wife to register her
marriage but the Syrian husband may not be found. Even if he were found, marrying him
legally would not necessarily be helpful unless he provided nancial support for her. If he
did not support her nancially and left, then the wife would have the additional problem
of not being able to get a divorce in order to remarry. Hence Syrian refugee women may
opt to become the informal wife of a man in the new homeland to survive. This is yet
another example of a situation where customary marriages, which were the norm, have
become transgressive unions while the meaning of the union has also shifted
59
Attitudes about informal marriage: our Facebook survey
In 2018, we used Facebook (FB) banner ads targeted at Facebook user home pages
associated with seven Muslim-majority countries to survey the young and computer-
literate populations of Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey, as well
as those living in their respective diasporas. Gender and sexuality can be sensitive topics
in Muslim-majority societies, so an anonymous online instrument may yield more accu-
rate information than in-person surveys, phone surveys, or paper questionnaires adminis-
tered to convenience samples (on strengths and weaknesses of Facebook surveys, see
Pham, Rampazzo and Rosenzweig 2019; Schneider and Harknett 2019).
60
Respondents
were assigned to countries based on their country of Facebook access, not their places of
residence or birth. Our analysis indicates strong cultural ties to the seven Facebook-access
countries, with 95% of respondents reporting that they were born in the country of access
and 92% reporting that they currently live there. Among those respondents who were
currently living or born elsewhere, approximately 90% had at least one parent born in
their Facebook-access country.
61
The survey was meant to be representative of each society’s 2018 Facebook user
population, not its general population. The average share of the population that uses
Facebook (i.e. the penetration rate) is close to 50% across the six countries, but with
considerable variability. Pakistan, with a 16% penetration rate, is a low outlier; usage in the
other ve countries ranges from 41% (Egypt) to 63% (Tunisia). Comparing gender, age,
and educational distributions of our country samples with data on the overall Facebook
user populations in the respective countries, shows little dierence by age, but an
58
Zbeidy, ‘Marriage Registration’, 370.
59
A Moors, R. C. Akhtar, R. Probyn’, Introduction: Contextualizing Muslim Religious-Only Marriages’ Sociology of Islam 6:3
(2018): 263–273; Shanneik, ‘Displacement’, 3337–3341.
60
Pham, Katherine Hoffmann, Francesco Rampazzo, and Leah R. Rosenzweig. 2019. Online surveys and digital demo-
graphy in the developing world: Facebook users in Kenya. MIT conference on digital experimentation. doi:10.48550/
arXiv.1910.03448; Schneider, Daniel, and Kristen Harknett. 2022. What’s to like? Facebook as a tool for survey data
collection. sociological Methods & research 51 (1): 108–40.
61
Palestinian respondents are least likely to live or be born in their place of Facebook registration (79% and 74%,
respectively); most non-matching Palestinian registrants reported birth or residency in Israel.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 15
overrepresentation of women and non-college educated persons, attributable to our
intentional oversampling of these groups.
62
To learn how Facebook users dier from the general population, we used nationally
representative data on Facebook usage from the 2018 Arab Barometer (AB) survey,
available for four of the six sample countries.
63
Facebook users, like Internet users overall,
are younger, more educated, more likely to be male, and less likely to be married than the
corresponding general populations. They also report lower levels of religiosity and less
support for sharia law than the general population in these countries.
Our respondents who took the survey in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Urdu were almost
all (98%) Muslims (Sunnis and some Shi’is), largely between the ages of 18 and 41, with an
average age of 31 years. We analysed Muslim respondents only. With the exception of
Iran, where the regime was cracking down on access to the internet at the time of our
survey, and a new round of harassment against women had started, women made up
more than 40% of our sample.
Most respondents indicated they were religious: 64% reported praying every day and
84% believed that the Quran should be read literally. More than half were employed,
either full or part-time. Although those with some college education constituted a
majority, survey respondents, due to our intentional oversampling, came from a wide
range of social backgrounds including both professionals and manual workers, highly
educated individuals and those with very little education at all. Forty-three percent of our
sample was female. Comparing gender, age, and educational distributions of our country
samples with the overall Facebook user populations in each respective country, we found
little dierence in regards to age. But our sample by design has an overrepresentation of
women and an underrepresentation of college degree holders. (See Table 2: Age, educa-
tion, employment).
Those who survey married populations often assume that almost all respondents will
be heterosexual. We asked respondents about their sexual orientation. Looking at Tables
3 and 4, which examine the distribution of sexual orientation by type of marriage,
signicant percentages of married people, whether in formal or informal unions, do not
identify as heterosexuals. What is striking is the large number of married respondents who
are not sure of their sexual orientation and their willingness to say so on a survey.
We think this result reects two things. First this is a manifestation of the fact that to be
recognized as a legitimate member of society in the Middle East, an adult with the
requisite social respectability in their community, marriage remains essential. As a result,
for many respondents a desire to marry does not not depend upon a determinant
heterosexual identity. These results also likely reect the continuity of pre-modern sexual
practices in which it was not uncommon for married people to also have same-sex
partners. Given more recent research on the uidity of sexuality in medieval and pre-
modern Middle East these results are intelligible..
62
Due to oversampling, women make up 47% of the unweighted sample, but approximately 37% of Facebook users in
these six countries. In 2017, approximately 39% of Internet users in the Arab world were women, Badran & Turnbull,
‘Contemporary Temporary Marriage’, 244.
63
Charles, Maria, Roger Friedland, Janet AFary, and Rujun Yang. 2022. ‘Complicating Patriarchy: Gender Beliefs of Muslim
Facebook Users in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.’ Gender & Society, Vol 37 No. 1, February, 2023 91–123
DOI: 10.1177/08912432221137909
16 J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
Table 2. Age, education, employment, gender, pray daily, literal interpretation by country, Muslims only.
Algeria Egypt Iran Pakistan Palestine Tunisia Turkey Total
Country Mean N Mean N Mean N Mean N Mean N Mean N Mean N Mean N
Age 30.65 2887 34.55 1368 35.48 499 28.41 2782 31.91 687 30.37 1228 33.01 944 31.06 10,395
Education (college and above) 0.47 2921 0.56 1492 0.82 518 0.54 2792 0.64 719 0.44 1296 0.53 1010 0.53 10,748
Employed 0.52 2929 0.52 1491 0.75 518 0.60 2777 0.47 723 0.46 1296 0.54 1008 0.54 10,742
Woman 0.47 2946 0.41 1497 0.14 519 0.31 2821 0.43 728 0.55 1304 0.70 1012 0.43 10,827
Married 0.23 2936 0.48 1490 0.53 511 0.32 2671 0.47 724 0.23 1303 0.34 1003 0.33 10,638
Pray daily 0.73 2753 0.74 1423 0.44 500 0.66 2651 0.75 701 0.50 1239 0.35 983 0.64 10,250
Literal interpretation of Quran 0.91 2828 0.89 1436 0.25 502 0.94 2658 0.87 709 0.77 1271 0.68 986 0.84 10,390
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 17
Second, given the high percentage of respondents who checked ‘not sure’ when asked
their sexual identity, it is likely that some proportion of our respondents are not sure
either what the terms mean and/or how to determine their applicability to themselves
given the likehood of pre-marital same-sex interactions in societies with high levels of
gender segregation, the shame that attaches to such an identity, and the lack of public
discussion, let alone education, about such matters. Researchers report similar issues
among American respondents.
64
In the sample as a whole, including those who have never been married, there is not
much support for the legalization of informal marriages. Only 20% say it should be legal
compared to 40% who say it should be outright illegal, with the remainder either wanting
to restrict it to singles over 30 years of age or who are not sure. As Figure 1 makes clear,
there is considerable country variation in support and opposition to informal marriage.
Iran, Turkey, and Tunisia have the greatest support for legalization. Algeria, Palestine, and
Turkey, followed by Tunisia, have the largest percentages in opposition to legalization.
Facebook users in Pakistan are almost equally divided on the issue, showing both high
levels of support and opposition.
Table 3. Cross Tabulation of Respondent Sexual Orientation by Marriage Type, Men Respondents.
Formal Marriage Temporary Marriage Total
(N = 3,442) (N = 110) (N = 3,552)
N % N % N %
Heterosexual 1,862 65 49 56 1,911 65
Gay/Lesbian 21 0.7 2 2 23 0.8
Bisexual 141 5 5 6 146 5
Other 361 13 13 15 374 13
Not sure 484 17 18 21 502 17
Table 4. Cross tabulation of respondent sexual orientation by marriage type, women respondents.
Formal Marriage Temporary Marriage Total
(N = 3,276) (N = 358) (N = 3,634)
N % N % N %
Heterosexual 1,490 57 118 48 1,608 56
Gay/Lesbian 117 5 25 10 142 5
Bisexual 132 5 16 7 148 5
Other 272 10 20 8 292 10
Not sure 617 23 67 27 684 24
Note: Chi tests were completed to calculate p-values, but no significant values were present. The N values at the top of
each column count the total number of men in our sample who answered the temporary marriage question. N values
and percentages within the cross-tabulation list the number of men who identify as a certain sexual orientation and are
currently in either a formal or temporary marriage. For example, 1,862 (65%) men in formal marriages identify as
heterosexual. In the sample as a whole, 1,911 men (65%) who are currently married either formally or informally
identify as heterosexual.
64
This opens a much larger ambit of inquiry that we do not have space or data to pursue here. A similar trend seems to be
taking place currently in the West among the younger generation known as GenerationZ. Savin-Williams, Ritch C.
Generational Rebellion Bi: Bisexual, Pansexual, Fluid, Nonbinary Youth, NYU Press, 2021. Jstor, http://www.jstor.org/
stable/j.ctv2tr535d.8. Accessed 30 March 2023.
18 J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
The Iranian result is not surprising, given that such marriages are legal in Iran according
to both civil and religious law. This result is not because the Iranian sample (n = 500) is not
religious; in fact, 44% report praying daily. At the same time, our Iranian sample is the least
interested in imposition of religion through state law (something they have experienced
for over four decades) since only a small minority (6%) believe that Islam alone should be
the basis of state law.
In our total sample we had 3,959 married respondents, of whom 468 were in informal
marriages, just under 12% of all married respondents (See Table 5). In all countries
sampled, those who engage in informal marriage are surrounded by people who do
not believe this type of union should be legally institutionalized by the state. Rather, a
large proportion of their fellow citizens believe it should be outlawed in its current form.
There is little support for the outright legalization of informal marriages in our sample;
only one in ve respondents compared to two in ve respondents who want to outlaw it
entirely. There are, however, big gender dierences in attitudes towards its legalization
(see Table 6). Women are much less likely to support the legalization of such unions than
men and are also more likely to want such marriages to be made illegal. For men, it is the
reverse. Female hostility may, in part, reect the problems which women who have
already gone through such unions, or their relatives, have experienced. As reported
above in the Egyptian case, women have had to ght to establish the paternity of their
children and to receive child support. Many were unable to re-marry after such unions
Figure 1. Support and opposition to legalization of non-formal marriage by country.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 19
because of the stigma that attached to them as a rejection of an inferior form of union
associated with movie-stars and performing artists.
Religious tradition also inuences attitudes about informal marriage. Given the long
historical tradition among Shi’i communities with legally sanctioned temporary marriage,
we should not be surprised that Shi’is are much more likely to support its legalization than
Sunnis (see Table 4). Shi’i respondents (both men and women) are much more likely to
Table 5. Formal and non-standard marriage by country and gender.
Marital Status
Formal Non-Standard Total
Country N % N % N %
Female
Algeria 214 19.6 22 20 236 19.7
Egypt 200 18.4 15 13.6 215 17.9
Iran 21 1.9 3 2.7 24 2
Pakistan 236 21 36 32.7 272 22.7
Palestine 89 8.2 4 3.6 93 7.7
Tunisia 111 10.2 10 9.01 121 10.1
Turkey 219 20.1 20 18.2 239 19.9
Total 1090 100.0 110 100.0 1200 100.0
Male
Algeria 458 19.1 77 21.5 535 19.4
Egypt 515 21.5 43 12.0 558 20.2
Iran 252 10.5 7 2.0 259 9.4
Pakistan 616 25.7 179 50 795 28.8
Palestine 249 10.4 12 3.4 261 9.5
Tunisia 184 7.7 24 6.7 208 7.5
Turkey 127 5.3 16 4.5 143 5.2
Total 2401 100.0 358 100.0 2759 100.0
All Total 3491 88.2 468 11.8 3959 100.0
Table 6. Support for legalization of non-standard marriage among married people, by gender and
type of marriage.
Female Male Total
In Formal
Marriage
In Non-
standard
Marriage
In Formal
Marriage
In Non-
standard
Marriage
In Formal
Marriage
In Non-
standard
Marriage
Do you think non-standardmarriage
should be: N % N % N % N % N % N %
Legal 358 13.8 26 33.8 482 21.0 78 39 840 17.2 104 37.7
Illegal 1,331 51.3 17 22.1 787 34.3 16 8 2,118 43.3 33 12
Legal over age 30 115 4.4 4 5.19 152 6.6 25 13 267 5.5 29 10.5
Not sure 793 30.5 30 39 873 38.1 80 40 1,666 34.1 110 39.9
Total 2,597 97.1 77 2.88 2,294 92.0 199 8 4,891 94.7 276 5.3
20 J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
believe it should be legal (30%) compared to Sunnis (19%), and less likely to think it
should be illegal (21%) compared to Sunnis (41%). But it is striking that only a minority of
Shi’is support the continued legalization and a large percentage think it should be made
illegal. One-fth of the Shi’i sample, most of whom live in Iran, oppose their own religious
laws on temporary marriage. Indeed, in Iran, while respondents are equally divided
between outright support and opposition to such unions, if we add up the percentage
of respondents who are opposed to temporary marriage, believe it should be restricted to
people over 30 years old, or are unsure about the continued legality of the institution,
they add up to 70% of our Shi’i respondents.
65
Reciprocally, and equally notable, there is a
relatively large percentage of Sunnis who both approve of ‘ur and misyar and engage in
them, or are undecided about the legality of such unions (59%).
66
Conclusion
Contemporary non-formal unions form part of a continuum. At one end are exploitative
practices where unions are contracted between parties of glaringly unequal power and
wealth, such as men, single or already married, seeking poor underage girls, displaced
women or refugees. At the other end are pragmatic arrangements between consenting
parties that solve concrete problems for either party or both, for example the wish to have
a family on the part of women who are above the normative age of marriage. Such unions
also allow single, unrelated individuals to have intimate companionship, including sexual
relations, in societies where pre-marital and extra-marital sex are proscribed. Young
people who want to cohabit or have pre-marital sex may seek the looser, but nonetheless
religiously recognized, arrangement of such unions.
There are dierent sets of factors inuencing the decision to establish an informal
union. One set is related to modernization and urbanization such as the preference for an
independent household (neo-locality) rather than cohabitation with in-laws, or the
increase in the age of marriage, particularly for women who delay family formation due
to educational or professional reasons. Such women may have to informally marry ‘below’
their social class if they want to form a family. As a formal marriage, such a union would be
unacceptable to her parents and extended family. Another set derives from the insecu-
rities of employment and property relations that have become widespread under neo-
liberal regimes throughout the world, such that unemployed but poorly paid young
Table 7. Expect relationship to last whole life, by gender and type of marriage.
Type of Marriage Female Male
Percentage expecting life-long union
Non-Standard 35.9% 15.8%
Formal 52.0% 45.5%
65
One possible reason for the relatively low level of outright support for temporary marriage in our sample among Shi’i
Iranians is that Facebook has a reputation of attracting more liberal participants. However, we also sampled students
using the websites of the state Azad universities, which attract students from more traditional, and thus more pious,
backgrounds. Our Iranian respondents are not secular. Indeed, 49% believe that the Quran is true in all ways, but not
always meant to be read literally.
66
While Sunnis state that their informal marriages are nothing like those of the Shi’is, given how close their attitudes are
becoming, further research is called to compare the attributes of informal marriages between Sunni and Shi’is today.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 21
people, and their families, cannot aord the costs of a formal marriage. For many men of
more modest means the cost of initiating a formal marriage is overwhelming; for all but
the wealthiest women, the cost of a break-up of a formal marriage is catastrophic.
There is also a contradiction between market liberalism and outdated sharia laws,
which continue to determine property ownership, inheritance, and child custody in many
Middle Eastern countries. In sharia law each individual (male or female) has his or her own
property. Although this, on its face, is egalitarian, in fact, when women are formally
married, they are tasked with raising the children and taking care of their husbands and
their in-laws, leading them to drop out of the labour market. In the absence of community
property and inheritance laws which tend to disfavour the wife in most Middle Eastern
countries, as opposed to the in-laws and the progeny of the marriage, the marital union
becomes fragile. The fact that women have so few property rights to conjugal assets
leaves them with less purely material interest in sustaining the marriage. This is particu-
larly the case given the rising level of divorce and dissolution of formal marriages.
It seems that very dierent dynamics feed the increase of informal unions. On the one
hand changing mores lead to dierent aspirations that are out of sync with the normative
and legal expectations. In these cases, informal unions function as a mechanism to bridge
that gap. On the other hand, processes of societal dislocation occasioned by wars, internal
strife and displacement create new categories of vulnerability that stimulate a new
marriage ‘market’ for the more auent ‘buyers’. For the majority, the sheer cost of
marriage in terms of payments and ceremonial costs is a major consideration, although
these costs are also a mark of social status. The question is: What will be the implications
of this re-adoption of ‘ur marriage for the more educated urban communities? In the Shi’i
world, the institution of temporary marriage, or mut’a, has evolved so that it is not just a
form of concubinage; we also nd it between consenting cohabitating adults of similar
age and social background who are making a more long-term commitment to one
another. In addition, ‘white’ marriage, or simple cohabitation without any civil or religious
sanction, is also becoming an increasingly popular alternative in both Iran and a few Sunni
communities such as urban Tunisia.
A common popular understanding of ‘ur marriages is that they are far less stable than
formal marriages. Indeed, we nd in our survey that those who are in ‘ur marriages—
particularly men—do not expect their marriages to last a lifetime (see Table 7). Men who
are in formal marriages are nearly three time as sure as those who are in informal unions
that their unions will last their whole life (46% vs 16%). There is also a signicant gender
gap. While 36% of women in informal unions believe their marriage will last their whole
life, only 16% of the men think so. Whether the high level of expected dissolution in these
‘ur marriages contributes to this pattern will require research of its own. Will Sunni use of
‘ur marriage follow the same path as in Tunisia, where unsanctioned cohabitation has
become more socially acceptable? The other possibility is that ‘ur marriages will gradu-
ally become legally registered unions, though remain an inferior form of union, where the
paternity of the child is assured and divorce is formalized. Egypt is probably moving in
that direction. Such registrations will grant women who leave an abusive ‘ur or are left by
their spouses some degree of protection.
Many questions remain unanswered. Is the high level of opposition to the legalization
of informal marriage that we found in our survey due to the current form of such
practices, which leave women in a highly vulnerable position? If a potential future path
22 J. AFARY AND R. FRIEDLAND
of legal reform or political struggles over the institutionalization of these unions were to
emerge, will this shift public perceptions towards legalization? Will the gradual accep-
tance of informal marriages among Sunnis, and the evolution of mut’a marriage in the
Shi’i world bring these two denominations closer in their acceptance of informal unions?
Will the growing popularity of informal unions lead to a legitimation of cohabitation? Only
time, and further research, will tell.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
The work was supported by the New York University Abu Dhabi and the Duncan and Suzanne
Mellichamp Fund at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 23
