Nikah/Marriage officiants for Muslim women marrying non-Muslims – and other resources

This is one of the most common requests I receive from people – Muslim women asking me for names/contacts of people who will officiate their marriage to a non-Muslim because the imams at the mosques in their communities won’t do it (some Muslims unfortunately claim that Muslim women aren’t allowed to marry non-Muslims – but that Muslim men are!).

This list will be updated periodically as I get more folks to add to the list. If you officiate interfaith nikahs (involving Muslim women), please feel free to let me know and I’ll gladly add you to this list! Send me your name and contact info, location, anything else you want others to know.

P.S. Yes, I know that in Islam, a male imam is not required as an officiant – but many traditionalist Muslim families require that their daughter’s wedding be officiated by a male Muslim imam so that they know that God approves, and so some couples are forced to choose a male imam. But the list below includes several women, too. See below for suggested readings on nikah officiation for more details.

And sorry about the formatting!! I’ll have to fix them some other time – wordpress is being weird.

Resources for Muslim Women Marrying Non-Muslims

– An article I’ve written on Muslim women’s marriage to non-Muslims and the historical religious debate about the issue: The Qur’an on Muslim Women’s Marriage to Non-Muslims: Premodern Exegetical Strategies, Contradictions, and Assumptions (article available for free on academia dot edu)

– a conversation on intefaith marriage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MoSkQ1Gvcg

– Q&A on interfaith marriage for Muslim women: https://open.bu.edu/ds2/stream/?#/documents/434556/page/1 (I recommend reading the whole book. You can look at the table of contents here: https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/44079)

– other sources cited in my Qur’an article above

Muslim Officiants –for Muslim women marrying non-Muslims, but apply to Muslim men in interfaith relationships as well
Note: More resources listed below at the end of this document, including religious/Islamic support for Muslim women’s interfaith marriage).

Seeking participants for a study on Muslim women’s marriage to non-Muslims

Beloved readers,

Some of you know I’ve been working on a research project on Muslim women’s marriage to non-Muslims for the last some years. (It was a chapter in my dissertation and my favorite one, and I’ve written on it on my blog – see this one on interfaith marriage in the Qur’an and a follow-up reflection on the responses to that post.) I’m interested in both textual traditions and the application of those texts/scriptures, their interpretations, how humans negotiate with texts to find meaning in them and extract meaning from them. The first part of my project, ultimately a book, is therefore a textual/scriptural analysis. The second part is ethnographic, involving conversations and interviews with real, actual Muslim women who have been in interfaith marriages/romantic relationships. And this is where I need y’all’s help!

What I need / who qualifies

Patriarchal religious modesty standards benefit men and inconvenience women, and they’re not from God.

Script to video below video.

Hello, salaam, and welcome to What the Patriarchy, where we strive to dismantle the patriarchy, one Muslim feminist theme or book at a time! Thanks for watching. This is Shehnaz.

I know I haven’t made a video in a long time. I’ve just got a lot going on in my personal life – and also some exciting professional updates, like my book coming out in a few months, inshaAllah. Book writing and editing is a LOT of work, y’all. I really wish authors were appreciated more.

But I’ve been wanting to do one good deed this Ramadhan, and this is it! This video is my one good deed this Ramadhan!

Anyway, so here I am. Thanks for your patience!

In this video, we’re talking about gendered modesty standards, which I began talking about in my last video, which was on double standards at the beach where patriarchy teaches men it’s totally okay to show skin but it’s not okay if women show skin while at the beach or when swimming. You can watch that for more.

Here, we’re continuing that discussion but more broadly.

Resources / Books / Videos for Understanding the Palestine and Israel Crisis

I’ll be updating this regularly. The list is in no particular order.

When is it “terrorism” and “savagery” and when is it not? Who has a right to self-defense and fight terror with terror? and other thoughts on Israel-Palestine

I keep hearing/reading how “the response to terror is terror, after all,” or I see people identifying only what Hamas did as “savagery” like what Israel has been doing for decades or at least is doing right now doesn’t count as savagery or terrorism? So I keep wondering … who exactly IS allowed to respond to terror with terror? Think critically about how “terrorism” claims work. It’s pretty much identical to how it works in white supremacy in the U.S. and American history generally – only and only one side (i.e., the oppressing side) gets to be entitled to self defense and will never, ever be accused of terrorizing the other side, never be accused of inflicting terrorism on the other side, no matter its brutalities.

Like, what does it mean, exactly, to insist that a colonial power has a right to self-defense? What does it mean to say that a country founded on the removal of the people who lived there (like the U.S.!) is entitled to self-defense? And what does self-defense look like – is depriving people of food and water self defense? But I digress. I’m interested here in the similarities between white supremacist injustices in the U.S. and Israeli injustices against Palestinians in Palestine, for now.

What Does “God Promised This Land to the Jews” mean? A Closer Look at Genesis and Abraham’s Descendants – and the Anti-African Bias

This was originally intended for Facebook, but I thought to post it here as well and make it available to everyone with access to the internet.

I know there’s a whole genocide happening currently against Palestinians (and has been since 1948), and I know it’s not about “promised land” like some misinformed people think it is, but I needed to write this anyway.

This is a long post, but I have an important message about Genesis, Abraham and God’s promises to him and his descendants. I’m sad about the misinformation I’m seeing about God’s supposed promise of ancient Canaan and modern-day Palestine/Israel to only Jews, so I’m here to quote some Biblical verses and tell you that I hate to break it to you – especially because I *know* this crisis is not about  God, Abraham, Isaac, the Bible, etc. – but you’ve been lied to. Please read the text on your own and read it carefully. As I emphasize to my own students when we read sacred texts (like Genesis!), you always have the option to read every story ethically and carefully and you always have the option to read it unethically and carelessly, the latter of which can affect people’s lives negatively and, as we see in today’s case as well as with the founding of the U.S., lead to genocides.

An underlying issue in the way too many Christian pro-Israel folks are talking about God’s promise to “the Jews” is the utter hate for all things Black/African people and people of African descent – Hagar and Ishmael, specifically. (Arabs are believed to be descendants of Abraham through Hagar and Ishmael, and Jews are believed to be descendants of Abraham through Sarah and Isaac.) Since I teach the Abraham story for a (part of my) living, in my Abrahamic Religions course, I thought I’d help shed some light on this. Also, I use the F-word in this post, something I haven’t done in years and am proud of, but I feel like that was called for in this moment as a last resort of expressing my frustrations, my hurt, my pain at all that’s happening to Palestinians and the support for the genocide I’m seeing.

Video script: On the selfishness of men who enjoy swimming with little clothing but require women to cover

Script below the video:

Hello, salaam, and welcome to What the Patriarchy, where we strive to dismantle the patriarchy, one Muslim feminist theme or book at a time or in some cases, one chapter of a Muslim feminist book at a time! Thanks for watching. This is Shehnaz.

So summer’s almost over – and I got to enjoy a ton of it at beaches and swimming pools. And every time I’m at a pool or at a beach, and I see Muslim families around, I always think I’m going to make this video and then I forget. So here I am finally!

I’m here to tell you not to trust any Muslim man who himself freely shows his skin and body at the beach or pool but forces or requires his wife, sister, daughter, mother, etc. to cover her body. Such men are selfish and entitled. Swimming with a lot of clothing is hard for everyone, not just for men, but yet, it’s only women who are supposed to be covered all the way? No, thanks, patriarchy. It’s inconvenient and difficult for every, not just for men, to be fully clothed while in water. But, no, in a patriarchy, only men are allowed the luxury of convenience.

Religious guidelines as advice for men but requirements for women: why?

Latest video on What the Patriarchy?!

Script below the video

Have you ever noticed this very interesting pattern when it comes to gendered guidelines in scriptures and religions. Guidelines to women r always interpreted as obligations (fardh); Guidelines to men? Mere advice. Women are penalized socially, spiritually, psychologically, & apparently even after death! We’re punished even if we don’t do what is considered simply recommended for us, let alone what is required!

What happens to women who don’t cover their hair or their legs or arms? How do people treat them, how do we talk about them? Or women who show their faces in public if their family doesn’t allow them to do so, or if they come from a context like mine where women aren’t supposed to be seen by the public ever? What happens to women who aren’t considered good mothers and wives? What happens to women who don’t treat their husbands and children very well? I think we all know the answers here.

Dr. Hadia Mubarak on her book “Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands” and Quranic verses 4:34 and 4:128

My latest video on What the Patriarchy?! is up! Sorry, no script available yet and the captions are auto-generated, but I’ll work on those in the coming weeks, inshaAllah.

This is part of my conversation with Dr. Hadia Mubarak about her new book “Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands.” The full conversation is available as an episode on the New Books in Islamic Studies podcast: https://newbooksnetwork.com/rebellious-wives-neglectful-husbands

In this video specifically, Dr. Mubarak talks about why she wrote the book, what she hopes people will get out of it, and what 4 Sunni Muslim male scholars from the 1800s onwards have said about Qur’anic verses 4:34 and 4:128 – e.g., can a man hit his wife? What does nushuz mean for women and men? Does “idhribuhunna” mean to hit or to separate from? What do Ibn ‘Ashur, Seyyed Qutb, Rashid Rida, and others have to say about these difficult verses and why do their interpretations matter – why did they think the way they did, etc.? And much more.

“People-Pleasing” is a misguided term and should be replaced with “people-deceiving.”

I don’t blog any more the way that I used to in the past, but this is very, very important. So:

I’ve been listening to the podcast “Unf*ck Your Brain” by Kara Loewentheil (really, very highly recommended – like mindblowingly good!) It’s just the perfect podcast for me right now. Today, I listened to her episode on people-pleasing, which I’m totally guilty of. But she made me look at the concept differently:

1. “People-pleasing” is a misguided term. Neither is it about other people, nor is it about pleasing them. She recommends the term “people-deceiving” because, she suggests – and I totally agree – we actually don’t end up pleasing anyone; we harm our own selves, and we’re in fact deceiving, manipulating others. How so? By fooling, deceiving them into thinking we are something we are not. People-pleasing is about “YOU trying to allay your own anxieties and fears and insecurities by manipulating them into thinking you are what they want you to be for that moment, rather than you managing your own mind” (her words). We’ve a misguided thought process that involves lying to ourselves and to others that if we simply do x, y, and z for other people, then they’ll like us, not for who we are, for our authentic, whole selves but for who we *think* they want us to be. And we never actually end up pleasing anyone. We might temporarily, for a quick few seconds, get them to go “oh you’re so nice” but that’s it, everyone forgets about it a moment later. When this becomes a pattern in our behavior, we end up harming ourselves because we stop prioritizing our own peace and comfort and deny ourselves joys and pleasures and even our safety and security at times in order to live for others.

Script: Hagar/Hajar’s Legacy and Role in Eidul Adha and Hajj

Rough script for this video:

Hello, salaam, and welcome to What the Patriarchy?! where we strive to dismantle the patriarchy.

So, as we get ready to celebrate the second most important religious holiday in Islam, called Eid, this one being Eid al-Adha, the Eid of sacrifice, I want to remind us not to erase the woman at the center of this Eid. Hajar. Bibi Hajera, as South Asian Muslims know her as.