Black and white or shades of grey: Religious approaches and Muslim marital conflict (2025)

Abstract

While the diversity of diasporic Muslim public experiences has been examined, thesocial contours of religious approach have received less attention. Moreover,the ways in which religion shapes marital relations remains understudied. Thisarticle, which features data from a larger research project, highlights twodivergent trends in Muslim approaches to religion: exclusivity, which framesonly one approach to Islam as correct, and inclusivity, which frames multipleapproaches as correct. This divergence plays a role in shaping definitions of‘good Muslim’, as exclusivist Muslims focus on ritual acts (outward observance),while inclusivist Muslims prioritize good manners (inward observance). Theauthor demonstrates how these inward and outward definitions of Muslimness inturn inform how participants evaluate their spouses’ religiosity and, thus, thepotential for conflict over religiosity with their spouses.

Keywords: gender and family, identity, Islam, marriage, religion

I’ve become more concerned with how things operate at a human level rather thanhow they operate at a juristic level. My husband is very black and white, andI’m very grey. (Umber, Inclusivist Muslim, married to an Exclusivist Muslim)

Introduction

Scholars have investigated immigrant Muslim gendered religious performativity inpublic spaces (Khan,2018; Khurshid,2012; Latif et al.,2018; Shams,2018), but Muslim gendered religious performativity within intimatefamily life has not been explored, nor has attention been focussed on the diverseapproaches through which Muslims engage with Islam. Although Joseph (2008) underscored the dearth ofcritical scholarship on family and gender relations in Muslim-majority contexts overa decade ago, there is an ongoing absence of, and the need for, more research on theintersection of immigrant Muslim religious and family life (Hatch et al., 2017). Notably, Musawah, aglobal movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, state in theirreport, Who provides? Who cares? Changing dynamics in Muslimfamilies, that gender fluid approaches to paid and unpaid work arevital to diasporic Muslim family health and mutually fulfilling family relations(Mir-Hosseini et al.,2018). Indeed, gendered expectations are cited as being at the heart ofNorth American Muslim marital conflict (Macfarlane, 2012). Thus, it is imperativeto uncover how Muslims engage with religion within their families, and how genderedreligious approaches shape Muslim married and family life.

I pursue these research questions by analysing qualitative interviews with currentlymarried Pakistani Canadian Muslim couples. Canada is home to the second fastestgrowing Muslim population worldwide, with a population of over 1 million CanadianMuslims that is expected to increase ten times faster than the general Canadianpopulation (Grim and Karim,2011; Shah,2019a; StatisticsCanada, 2011). Most Muslims entering Canada are from Pakistan. Toronto ishome to the largest population of Muslims and Pakistanis compared to other Canadiancities, as 41% of all Canadian Muslims and 63% of all Pakistani Canadians live inToronto. General concerns about the Muslim population (or, more appropriately,Muslim women) in Canada have peaked during the past decade because of the debatesover Shari’ah-based arbitration (Korteweg, 2008; Korteweg and Selby, 2012; Ruby, 2013), the Charterof Quebec Values (which prohibits the donning of conspicuous religious symbols) andpursuant debates on what Muslim women can(not) wear (MacCharles and Spurr, 2015), as well asthe ongoing concern about ‘honour’ killings (Korteweg and Yurdakul, 2010). Despite thisfocus on Muslim women’s public and civic lives, imbued with assumptions about theirprivate lives, little is actually known about the intimate lives, religiouspractices, and gender relations that structure their family home.

In this article, I define inclusivity and exclusivity, two approaches to religion,and the definitions of Muslimness that align with those two approaches. Afterreviewing extant literature on religious approaches, with a focus on the diasporicMuslim context, I present empirical examples of participants’ definitions of ‘goodMuslim’ according to their exclusivist or inclusivist approaches to Islam.Exclusivist participants, who accept only one way (their way) of Islam as correct,define ‘good Muslims’ as following a set of prescribed actions (e.g. regular prayer)and focus on outward performance of Islam. Inclusivist participants, on the otherhand, who accept multiple approaches to Islam as correct, prioritize an inwardperformance of Islam and focus on akhlaq, or good manners, withinthe home and intimate relationships.

Literature review

The below review highlights the different approaches to religion with a focus onIslam, followed by an assessment of literature on marital negotiations withinreligious couples. I demonstrate that, despite the documented diversity in religiousapproaches, researchers tend to treat religion as a monolith when considering how itplays a role in intimate contexts.

Religious approaches

Much of the literature on diasporic Muslim religiosity fixates on the push for aunified (or an orthodox) Islam. Before turning to this body of scholarship, Idiscuss the divergence between orthodox and heterodox approaches to Islam.According to Ahmed(2012: 123), there is a spiritual, fluid, unofficial women’s Islam,and an official, textual men’s Islam. Men’s Islam descends from literaturemostly accumulated during the medieval era, when men dominated women andbelieved themselves to be superior. Thus, men’s Islam continues to espouse anoppressive gender ideology, legitimated by merit of historical and canonizedtexts written by men who were themselves chauvinists (Ahmed, 2012: 125–126). Women’s Islam is‘gentle, pacifist, inclusive, [and] somewhat mystical’ (Ahmed, 2012: 121). Thus, women oftendismissed what shaykhs, the carriers of Islamic orthodoxy, had to say (Ahmed, 2012: 123–125),preferring instead intrinsic foci: making sense of the world, of people, ofourselves, and of God.

Historical evidence indicates that many religious intellectuals, including(female and male) Sufi philosophers and mystics, shared beliefsand values found in women’s Islam (Almirzanah, 2011; Helminski, 2003). Historically,however, given that men’s Islam held power, these intellectuals either keptsilent or were silenced (Ahmed, 2012: 130). Today, although women’s Islam hailed from an oraltradition, the relatively recent rapid increase in Muslim women’s literacy andattainment of higher education as well as availability of Islamic resources andreferences becoming more accessible through print and the Internet have spurredon a scholarship of written texts critical of orthodox Islam (see Hidayatullah, 2014 forreview). In turn, heterodox approaches to Islam are widely available to Muslimwomen and men alike.

Nonetheless, much of the literature on diasporic Muslims focusses on the push foran orthodox, monolithic Islam. No such thing exists, of course, given thevariances of experiences, cultural backgrounds, class norms, gender identitiesand ideologies, sociopolitical contexts, and a plethora of other factors thatcreate unique, varying Islams (Khan, 2016; Wadud, 1999). From the variance ofexperience, diverse approaches to Islam arise given selective acceptance ofdifferent forms of religious-based knowledge as individuals strive to live bythe Shari’ah (literally, ‘the way’, a source forfiqh or Islamic laws). TheShari’ah is not monolithic nor static andcan be reinterpreted to accommodate shifting social arenas and new tensions ingender relations (Akhlaq,2017; Bartkowskiand Read, 2003; Cesari, 2012; Korteweg, 2008; see Yadgar, 2006 for a parallel study onJewish women). Global migration has also prompted Islamic jurists to create (andsometimes bend) laws specifically for Muslims living in the diaspora (Kazemipur, 2016; Takim, 2017; see alsoAkhlaq, 2017).Globalization is also driving boundary work concerning exclusivist andinclusivist approaches to religion (Desplat, 2005: 482).

Inclusivist and exclusivist approaches to religion are defined through salvationaccessible to other religions or teachings. Inclusivity is demonstrated whenbelievers or dogmas allow for other teachings to provide salvation, whileexclusivity is identifiable if a believer or dogma positions the religion as theonly means to salvation (Zhussipbek and Satershinov, 2019: 609). Though the two are framed asopposing categories, conceptually, they are two ends of a spectrum. Drawing onthis work for this study, inclusivity is defined as acceptance of otherforms of religiosity, Muslim or not, while exclusivity is definedas preference for one’s religious teachings andrejection of others’, even if those other teachings are based onIslam. Inclusivity is associated with pluralism, respect for diversity, andharmony, while exclusivity is associated with authority, intolerance, andorthodoxy (Bakar,2009; Desplat,2005; Hew,2019). Exclusivity typically excludes a religious other, thoughadherents within a faith tradition may find means to exclude each other (Desplat, 2005:494).

As this study focusses on the processes of religious negotiations within anintimate context, Islam is not framed as inherently exclusivist; rather, it isframed as a fairly flexible resource with available interpretations that lend toeither exclusion or inclusion (Desplat, 2005: 483). However, it isnoteworthy that many theologians consider Islam an exclusivist religion, givenexclusionary verses in the Quran. This is certainly reflected by the push toobjectify Islam in the Muslim diaspora (Brubaker, 2012), as immigrant Muslimsseek to purify Islam from supposed cultural contaminants through criticalreflection (Rothenberg,2011). Much of this qualitative literature features intergenerationalrelations between parents and their children, particularly daughters rejectingtheir parents’ religion as cultural (see Hildson and Rozario, 2006 for review).There remains an absence of attention to how religious approach shapes relationswithin diasporic Muslim marriage.

Religiosity and marital negotiations

The predictable consensus in scholarship on marital relations is that men enjoypower over their wives and other women, religious or not. Research on Christianfamilies suggests that religion can be both a resource and a roadblock as womenand men engage in complex patterns of deference and control when negotiatingeveryday matters (Bartkowski, 2001). Much of this research focusses on Christianwomen’s negotiations of religion and gender ideologies, such as feministequality and faith-based prescriptions for women’s roles in the family (Ecklund, 2003; Mihelich and Storrs,2003). Studies focussing on the Muslim context present similarpatterns of gender and power negotiations, especially among immigrant women(Ajrouch, 2004;Nyhagen Predelli,2004). Studies in Muslim-majority settings tend to focus on womenactively resisting male dominance and claiming their rights (Jacinto, 2006),sometimes having to resist even their minor sons (Gallagher, 2007). Muslim womenleverage religion, as researchers document women utilizing religious rituals toavoid gendered expectations, including unpaid housework (Hegland, 2003).

Focussing on the Canadian Muslim context, Moghissi et al. (2009) explore severalareas in the lives of their immigrant respondents, and find that religiositypositively correlates with marital happiness. However, they remain critical ofthis finding, stating that couples may be hiding their own maritaldissatisfaction, even from themselves. While this study did include somemeasures of religion (e.g. Muslim identity and performance of Islamicpractices), it did not reach deeper into the processes and experiences ofreligiosity within the home, nor did it investigate religious-based patterns ofmarital conflict.

While these studies explore the processes through which social actors navigatereligiosity within their intimate lives, the consequences of these negotiationsare featured as ideological positions. In other words, though this scholarshipfocusses on marital negotiations, the negotiations are often internal to anindividual and not between members of a couple, which may be a methodologicalartefact of research samples comprised by individuals and not couples (see Bartkowski, 2001 for anexception). The studies do not assess consequences for the social groups orinstitutions these social actors inhabit – namely, the family. To my knowledge,no study has previously captured the role of religious approach in structuringindividuals’ evaluations of their spouses and the consequent potential forconflict, which the current study attends to.

Research design

This study draws on qualitative data to capture the mechanisms through which CanadianMuslims navigate their religious, ethnic, and gender identities, practices, andrelations (Shah, 2019b).Individual interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 46 currently marriedPakistani Canadian Muslims (23 couples) between the ages of 25 and 40 in which atleast one member of the marital couple self-identified as a Pakistani and apracticing Muslim (e.g. are you Muslim and do you practice Islam?). Given the widerange of Islamic interpretations and practices, allowing participants toself-identify – rather than having an a priori list of qualifications – provided adiverse sample that included multiple approaches to religious practice. By requiringat least one member of the couple to identify as practicing, I also ensured that Iwould be able to speak with individuals for whom religion is a salient aspect oftheir own lives and/or their family lives. The sample was restricted toPakistani-identified participants for three reasons: first, given the wide variationin the backgrounds, ethnic identities, cultural repertoires, and religious beliefsand practices among Canadian Muslims, sample limitation reduces sources ofvariation; second, the interviewers are fluent in Urdu, allowing for theparticipation of individuals who are uncomfortable with their English languageskills (Franceschelli andO’Brien, 2014); finally, the interviewers are Pakistani, allowing forrapport between interviewers and interviewees (Ajrouch, 2004).

A trained male interviewer and I spoke with the couples – I spoke to wives while he,in a separate space out of ear’s reach, interviewed their husbands. Participantswere interviewed using a pre-tested semi-structured guide, a useful approach forthis study as it allows flexibility in adjusting questions according tointerviewees’ responses (Bartkowski and Read, 2003; Berg, 2007). After participants grantedconsent, the audio recorded interviews took place face to face in the participant’spreferred language (English, Urdu, or a combination). I translated (when necessary)and transcribed all recordings before I coded all transcripts to identify emergentpatterns.

The interviews began with a brief life history component (e.g. ‘Let’s start at thebeginning; where were you born?’), with targeted probes on their family and marriedlife, religiosity, and experiences of immigration and discrimination. Notsurprisingly, these experiences were highly intertwined, so we allowed participantsto take the lead, often probing or redirecting to ensure all items from theinterview guide were addressed. This interview strategy is common in research ongender and family relations (e.g. Chesley, 2011). The interviews took placeanywhere participants requested and felt comfortable; most interviews took place inparticipant homes or cafes near the participants’ home or workplace. Interviews werecollected between October 2016 and May 2018.

Although this study was exploratory, it was shaped by sensitizing concepts (Bowen, 2006) initiallydrawn from the concepts of religious reflexivity (Brubaker, 2012), religious resourcing(Bartkowski and Read,2003), patriarchal bargains (Kandiyoti, 1988), hegemonic masculinity(Connell, 1995),gender justice (Gheaus,2012), and racial formation (Omi and Winant, 2015). Thus, the firstphase of analysis involved open coding data using both a priori codes drawn fromtheoretical concepts and in vivo codes for emergent themes. The second phase ofanalysis, focussed coding, involved mapping connections across saturated codes(Corbin and Strauss,1990; Glaser andStrauss, 1967). The second analysis situated the social meanings derivedfrom the first analysis within participants’ social locations, embedding participantexperiences within macro- and meso-level factors to identify how social structuresshape individual beliefs, actions, choices, and opportunities (Pamphilon, 1999).

To capture the relationship between religiosity and immigration, the sample wasinitially broken down by generation of immigration, including increments betweenfirst and second generations (see Table 1). However, generation ofimmigration proved not to be insightful, as there were distinct variations betweenmembers of the same immigrant generation, and there were distinct similaritiesbetween generations. Likewise, other social indicators, including socioeconomicstatus, ethnic identity, length of marriage, and age are reported in Table 1 but proved not toprovide insight into the processes described below. Instead, approach to religionemerged as a saturated concept in vivo, and thus, I present participants accordingto their approach to Islam: those who accept only oneinterpretation of Islam, their own, as clearly superior to others areconsidered to be exclusivist, while those who acceptmultiple interpretations are considered to beinclusivist (Zhussipbek and Satershinov, 2019). Afteridentifying specific religious modes emerging from the data (see Table 2), I used Mill’s (1843: 454) Methodof Agreement to capture the convergences and divergences in participantnarratives.

Table 1.

Sample sociodemographic characteristics.

	Husbands (N = 23)	Wives (N = 23)
Current age
20–24	1	3
25–30	5	11
31–35	11	7
36–40	4	1
41–50	2	1
Marital age
18–20	2	5
21–25	4	11
26–30	13	6
Over 30	4	1
Marital length
Less than 2 years	1	1
2–4 years	11	11
5–7 years	7	7
8–10 years	3	3
Over 10 years	1 (18 years)	1 (18 years)
Generation of immigration
First	8	8
1.25	2	2
1.5	3	2
1.75	5	6
Second	5	2
More than second	0	3
Ethnic origin
Kashmiri	2	0
Khodja	3	2
Muhajjar	8	8
Punjabi	5	10
Pathan	1 (Punjabi-Pathan)	0
Non-Pakistani	4 (1 Bangladeshi, 2 Indian, 1 Turkish)	3 (2 Indian, 1 White)
Education status
High school	1	0
Some college	1	4
Bachelors	14	8
Graduate/professional degree	7	11
Socioeconomic status
Lower SES	3	3
Middle SES	13	13
Upper SES	4	4

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Note: Generation of immigration is defined as follows: First generationare individuals who came to Canada as adults; 1.25 generation areindividuals who immigrated in their late teens, attended Canadian highschools and/or universities, approximately aged 16–21; 1.5 generationare individuals who arrived in Canada between primary and high schools,age 11–16; 1.75 generation are individuals who arrived in Canada duringprimary school or younger, ages 10 and below; second generation areindividuals born in Canada; and More than second generation areindividuals whose parents are 1.25 generation or more. Socioeconomicstatus is a crude measure based on education status, occupationalprestige (based on the National Occupational Classification), andreports of financial difficulties of the current household. Because SESis determined at the household level, married participants have the sameSES as their spouse.

Table 2.

Sample religious characteristics.

	Husbands (N = 23)	Wives (N = 23)
Heterodox
Sunni	13	9
Shia	4	2
Orthodox
Sunni	3	7
Shia	3	5

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In substantiating the claims I make when reporting study findings, I directly quoteand describe trends in narratives from participant interviews, and use pseudonymswhen referring to participants. Married participants are identifiable throughalliterating names (e.g. Fahad and Faiza). When quoting directly from interviews, Iadjust the language for the sake of confidentiality (removing identifiable languageuse), clarity, and brevity; however, the transcripts, which are not publiclyaccessible, retain the participants’ original responses (see also Gabb, 2008). Quotes andnarratives presented below represent trends common for others with the participants’religious approach (inclusivist or exclusivist), unless the data called upon is anatypical case, in which case I inform the reader of the divergence.

Findings

In the following sections, I highlight the divergence between inclusivist andexclusivist approaches to Islam in how participants define Muslimness. Afterdemonstrating how religious approach and definitions of Muslimness impact howparticipants evaluate their spouses’ religiosity, I shed light on how religiousapproach and definitions of Muslimness shape the potential for marital conflict overreligious practices.

Inclusivist and exclusivist approaches to Islam

The pattern that emerges from participant narratives is as follows: exclusivistparticipants accept only one approach (their own approach) of Islam to becorrect, while other forms are either less correct or wrong. Inclusivistparticipants accept multiple paths to Islam, without making moral judgements.Nonetheless, inclusivist participants still prioritize good manners(akhlaq) as salient for good Muslims, while exclusivistparticipants prioritize ritual acts and prescribed devotions, framing adherenceto these acts as a litmus test for Muslimness. For example, Fahad, asecond-generation Canadian, is a self-identified religious Sunni Muslim whoapproaches Islam from an exclusivist perspective, as does his wife Faiza. WhenFahad is asked what makes someone a good Muslim, he succinctly states, ‘Pray.Just pray. Once you pray, everything else comes’.

The primal importance of performing prayers is a repeated theme acrossexclusivist participant narratives, though sometimes other acts are alsoindicated as important. Regardless of what act is framed as important for goodMuslims, exclusivist participants fixate on adherence to rules and regulationsaround these acts. Like Fahad, his wife Faiza is also an exclusivistparticipant. In a longer narrative describing the masjid sheand her family attend, she mentions:

Their deen [religiously prescribed way of life] is veryon point, what we believe in. We’ve been to otherPakistani mosques and – like if we go for taraweeh[Ramadhan-specific prayers] – you’re supposedto stand shoulder to shoulder, but in the Pakistanimosques, they don’t stand shoulder to shoulder. Whereas at themasjid we go to, they stand shoulder to shoulder aswell [emphases added].

For Faiza, as well as other exclusivist participants, others’ Islams are ‘onpoint’ or correct if these approaches to Islam are in line with participants’own approaches. In addition, for Faiza and other exclusivist participants,failure to adhere to participant approaches to Islam is met with criticism, asthe acts are framed as highly salient for Muslimness. For inclusivistparticipants, good manners or akhlaq is framed as salient forMuslimness. When Nadia, an inclusivist participant, is asked what a good Muslimis, she states:

For me, it’s trying to be more familiar with my religion, going above andbeyond the five requirements, knowing the religion I practice, andtrying to make it a part of my everyday life, with the way I look at theworld, the way I interact with other people [emphasisadded]. And I want Islam to define that for me. For example, givingcharity, being kind to others, respecting others. I know it’s acrossevery religion, but for me, it’s defined by how I read religion. Byhadith, one of the most recognizable things aboutthe Prophet Muhammad was that he always had good manners towardseveryone.

Similar to exclusivist participants, inclusivist participants like Nadia mayacknowledge the importance of the ritual acts including the ‘five requirements’or five pillars of Islam. However, unlike exclusivist participants, inclusivistparticipants frame akhlaq or ‘good manners’ and how they‘interact with other people’ as salient to Muslimness. When asked what makessomeone Muslim, Jaffer, an inclusivist Muslim, states:

Your akhlaq – that’s huge. You can pray, you can be themost – but if you lack basic etiquette and akhlaq, tome you’re not a good practicing Muslim. A good practicing Muslim issomeone who will do his wajibat [obligatory practices],will have the utmost respect for others, and will never ever cheatothers in any way or form. You look at somebody, you see their actions,their humbleness. They don’t look religious, but deep down, theyare [emphasis added]. For me, it’s all about your actionsand akhlaq. I’ve always been more interested in that,how you respect others. It doesn’t matter how much you pray or how muchQuran you read. We do those things, we do what we have to do. Butthere’s a difference between rookie religious and being religious. Andakhlaq is the main determinant.

Contrasting with exclusivist participants, for whom Muslimness is achievedthrough outward actions (e.g. prayer and standing shoulder to shoulder inprayer), for Jaffer, akhlaq is ‘deep down’ and not just‘looking religious’. Again, like other inclusivist participants, Jafferprioritizes how an individual behaves with others – and the presence of ‘basicetiquette’ – over performance of obligatory, but outward, actions. Theprioritization of inward practice over outer manifestation is echoed by Umber, aconvert to Islam whose inclusivist approach tempers her husband’s exclusivity(see next section). When I ask Umber what she disagrees with her husband aboutin terms of religious teachings related to the family, she states:

I’ve changed in my Islamic perspectives since we got married.I’ve become more concerned with how things operate at ahuman level rather than how they operate at a juristic level. Myhusband is very black and white, and I’m very grey, becausefor everything he says is a ruling, I’ve been exposed to so mucheducation about Islam, at this point, that I can say, ‘yeah, but, theShafis [a Sunni school of thought] say this’, or‘but the Malikis [another Sunni school of thought] saythis’. He calls me [laughs] a ‘fatwa [religious ruling]queen’, because he says that – and you hear fatwashopping in a derogatory sense. I don’t shop forfatwas, I just know the differences. I put themon the table as an alternative, and he doesn’t likealternatives [emphasis added]. He likes black and white.Well, I have no problem with taking an alternative, if there’s a validjustification, which is in my opinion an Islamic thing todo [emphases added].

Umber frames the two approaches in fitting figurative language, one that alsodescribes the patterns of this study’s participants: exclusivist Muslimparticipants view religious matters as ‘black and white’, while inclusivistMuslim participants view the same in shades of ‘grey’. In addition, herobservation echoes Ahmed’s(2012) study, and describes a larger pattern among the currentstudy’s participants: while exclusivist Muslims are more concerned withreligious rulings and authoritative Islam, inclusivist Muslims centre ‘howthings operate at a human level’.

Umber, like some additional participants, shifted from one approach to the otherover her life course – recall above, the two approaches are not separatecategories but ends of a spectrum. Umber began her religious life with anexclusivist approach to Islam. As a white Canadian convert to Islam, she wasfirst introduced to religion through a Muslim friend’s family, one that had arigid exclusivist approach to both religion and gender practices – for example,the father of this family believed his female kin must wearniqab (a face covering), and that it was a sin on hisshoulders if his daughters were not married by a certain age. As Umber becameexposed to diverse Muslim communities, and the diversity of their religiousapproaches, she critically assessed Islam in a diverse Muslim context andembraced a more inclusivist approach – one that allowed her to also consider thepossibility her non-Muslim natal family would not be ‘condemned’. When I askUmber what makes someone a good Muslim, she responds:

[Amused laugh] My ideas on this have changed drastically in the 15 yearsor so that I’ve been exposed to Islam. I think the only thing that makessomeone a good Muslim is love of God and good etiquette –adab. I didn’t always think that. I used to thinkthat in order to be a good Muslim, you had to check a certain number ofboxes of practices, ‘do this, do that. Adhere to this, enforcethat’.

Like other inclusivist Muslim participants, Umber defines ‘good Muslims’ as thosewho have love of God and good etiquette – which she terms adab,a word interchangeably used with akhlaq. Unlike exclusivistMuslim participants, she does not believe good Muslims ‘have to check a certainnumber of boxes of practices’, since, as she goes on in the interview to state,‘being a Muslim can[not] be evaluated on the outside’. Like other inclusivistMuslim participants, Umber is more invested in the inward, or private,engagement of religion, whereas exclusivist Muslim participants are moreinvested in the outward, or public, enactment of religion.

Exclusivist participants prioritize ritual acts of worship as defining ofMuslimness, while inclusivist participants prioritize good manners orakhlaq as salient for Muslimness. This informs howparticipants frame the religiosity and religious practices of their spouses,discussed further below.

Evaluations of spouses’ religiosity

Participant inclusivity and exclusivity are further revealed when they are askedto compare their religiosity with that of their spouse. Notably, inclusivistMuslims tend to respect their spouses’ religiosity, while exclusivist Muslimstend to have rigid definitions of religiousness, frame their own religiosity asbetter than their spouse’s, and frame their spouses as not religious (or lessreligious) if their spouses fail to comply with their definitions ofreligiousness.

Qahira, an exclusivist Muslim, does not identify as a religious Muslim –something that made her question whether or not she should participate in thecurrent study. Because she does not identify as religious, she does not frameherself as more religious than her inclusivist Muslim husband, but she doesthink he is less religious than he thinks he is. Like otherexclusivist participants, Qahira defines prayer as integral to Muslimreligiosity, and failure to perform regular prayer proscribes an individual’sreligiosity. When asked what makes someone religious, she highlights thepillars: ‘I think praying, fasting, just doing your best to follow Islam’.Though she concedes that her husband does observe fasting and a number of otherIslamic practices, he does not pray regularly and thus she considers him lessreligious. When evaluating her in-laws, she again repeats the same litmus test:those who pray regularly are religious, while those who do not pray five times aday are not religious. When I ask Qahira why prayer bears such weight indefining Muslimness, she states, ‘it’s the number one thing, you’re supposed topray five times a day, that’s the number one basic thing’. As with the otherexclusivist participants, for Qahira, prayer holds central importance forreligious identity, and is rigid in this belief, rejecting the salience of otherreligious practices. Even if a Muslim is doing ‘all the rest’, but not praying,Qahira frames that individual as not religious.

Similar to Qahira, Husna is attached to prayer as a definition of Muslimnessgiven her earlier exclusivist approach to Islam. However, after experiences inher life challenged her exclusivity, Husna has come to an inclusivist approachto Islam. While she harshly evaluates her own religiosity, she respects that ofher husband Hassan: though her husband does not pray, she considers him to be apracticing Muslim. How she defines practicing is unclear – at first, shespecifies she does not pray nor does she ‘represent Islam’, so she considersherself non-practicing. Eventually, she makes clear that she evaluates Hasan’sMuslimness based on good behaviour (akhlaq):

Religious approach and marital conflict

Participant exclusivist and inclusivist approaches to religion shape participantdefinitions of Muslimness, which inform participant evaluations of spouses’religiosity, and therefore shape marital relations around religious engagement.In marriages featuring inclusivist husbands, religion does not arise as a sourceof conflict in participant narratives – though, to be sure, other items arenamed (larger family networks, finances, childrearing, etc.). Marriages thatinclude exclusivist husbands, however, tend to feature religion as a source ofconflict.

Starting with the example of inclusivist husbands, and continuing with theexample of Nabeel and Nadia, I find that Nadia confirms Nabeel’s influence when,after she mentions her husband is a ‘conservative’ Muslim (which she defines asbeing ‘more practicing’) but that she is not conservative, I ask:

Interviewer: Has your husband’s conservativism ever created conflict between you two?

Nadia: No. Never. He’s always been – I think he brought this up even when we weretalking [before we got married], ‘look, my mother and sister wear hijab, butthere’s no pressure on you to’ – and he’s never ever pressured me. When Ithought, ‘ok, I should get married’, one of the things was, I want to marrysomeone more religious than me, in terms of their practice. And he was. Hewas very regular with his prayers, he goes to the masjid a lot more. In thatsense, he’s really been my partner. I started praying more regularly, and Ibecame more mindful over – even small things, like halal meat. I wasn’t thatcareful before – ok, where I could, I would, otherwise I was pretty easygoing. And then with him, I became more careful.

Although Nadia frames her relationship with Nabeel as positively influencing herreligious practice, Nabeel avoids making such claims (see above). When pushed toevaluate her religiosity against his own, Nabeel tepidly responds. And as withother marriages featuring inclusivist husbands, religion as a source of conflictdoes not appear to be salient.

Contrast this with the experiences of Fahad and Faiza, two exclusivistparticipants. Like Nadia, Faiza also frames her husband as a ‘good Muslim’, andas helping her become a better Muslim. She admires his religious practice:

He’s a very religious person, he’s very good to his parents, he praysfive times a day on time. Me, I still miss prayers and I still can’tmake it on time for them because I’m just constantly – my head is allover the place. But with him, he’s a very good Muslim and I really lookup to him… . He’s very by the book … He’ll do his research, he knowswhat the right way is. When I got married to him, I was very influencedby my mom and cultural practices. He showed me a lot of things I wasdoing wrong, and so now I take his word as the word of – I shouldn’t saythe word of Allah, but I take his word as the true Islam.

Like Nadia, Faiza ‘looks up to’ her husband’s religiosity; unlike Nadia andNabeel, conflict still arises around religion for Faiza and Fahad. This tensionappears clearly when Fahad discusses Faiza’s religious practice. When Fahad,whose definition of Muslimness rests on prayer (see above), is asked about hiswife’s religiosity, he states:

Fahad: We’ve honestly – we both work on [her religiosity] together. A lot of times,I try waking her up for Fajr [the morning prayer], but shejust stays sleeping. It’s hard for me – sometimes I just keep tapping her,‘Wake up, wake up’. I go back to sleep because I finish praying. And I tryto wake her up but she’s still sleeping. It happens really often. I’ve beennoticing it a lot more now, before it was like I would wake her up and she’dget up. Now it’s like I struggle to get her up… . It’s really hard because Icome back from work – and I come back late. I’ll set my alarm and the clockis beside her. So, she’ll turn it off and go back to sleep and I’m like ‘youdidn’t let me get up, you didn’t wake yourself up!’ So even if I sleepthrough [time for prayer], as soon as I open my eyes, I see that the sun isabout to come up. Fajr is at 6:10, say I wake up at 7. I’mlike ‘oh crap’, I’ll get up right away and pray and go back to sleep.Whereas her, she’ll wait till Zohr [noon prayer] comes.She’ll be up already, and she won’t pray until that time.

Interviewer: Does it bother you?

Fahad: [Grave voice] It does. I’ve talked about it with her too.

Fahad frames Faiza’s practice as being subpar to his, ignoring the constraints ofher lived reality: she bears a disproportionate share of unpaid labour,including waking up during the night to care for their teething child, making itdifficult to awake for prayer. And, according to Faiza, when she asks for hishelp with childcare, Fahad shirks the responsibility by claiming it is herreligious obligation as a mother. When she responds by reminding him of hisreligious duties as a husband and father, including providing her a separatedwelling from his natal family, he responds by stating that interest on amortgage is haram (forbidden). Though both describe thisconflict as coming to a head over Faiza’s ability to wake up for the morningprayer, Faiza expands the narrative to include additional lived realities thatare shaped by Fahad’s religious beliefs and practices, while Fahad remainsfocussed on, and irritated by, her (delayed) performance of prayer. Note, Faizadoes pray, just not when Fahad wants her to.

This reflects a trend among exclusivist husbands: in pushing their wives topractice according to their own understandings of religion, they neglect theneeds of their wives and children. For example, Ghazal, an exclusivist ShiaMuslim, is married to Ghazanfar, also an exclusivist Shia Muslim. In a largernarrative about how life changed after moving to Canada with her husband andchildren, Ghazal shares:

Something [Ghazanfar] has been trying to convince me of recently is towear the Irani chadr [full body veil]. I said, ‘it willbe very hard for me to manage that with children’. I started it inPakistan, but it was not so hard in Pakistan, you don’t have jackets,you don’t [have multiple layers because of the cold weather]. But evenin Pakistan, I would fall down, the kids would fall!

Ghazal and Ghazanfar describe their marriage as companionate, and neither claimsto recall marital conflict even when extensively probed. Nonetheless, whendescribing her life transitions, Ghazal names numerous occasions where herinterests, goals, and even needs were dismissed because Ghazanfar believed heknew what was better for her and the family according to his religious-basedideologies. On his part, Ghazanfar frames his religiosity as far superior toGhazal’s – as well as to most Muslims generally – and feels he has greatlyimproved Ghazal’s religiosity.

Unlike exclusivist Muslim participants, who do push their spouses to be morereligiously practicing, inclusivist Muslim participants abstain from suchpractices. For example, Chanda, a happily married 1.25-generation Canadian, isalso an inclusivist Muslim. In a longer narrative, Chanda describes wanting toengage in religious practices with her spouse, like reading the Quran, but thathe is not willing. When I ask how she feels about that, she says, ‘I don’treally have a feeling. If he does, good. If he doesn’t, that’s okay [laughs]’.Unlike Fahad, who is greatly bothered by his wife’s procrastinated prayers,Chanda does not push her spouse to engage in religious practices, nor does shevaluate her spouse’s religious practice (or lack thereof). Likewise, and likeother inclusivist Muslim participants, Chanda respects her husband’s religiosityeven though he does not practice, thereby avoiding conflicts emerging fromdifferences in and enforcement of religious practice.

Conclusion

This study shed light on how religiosity shapes Muslim marital relations and createspotential space for conflict. According to the findings of this analysis, marriagesbetween two inclusivist participants does not feature religious-based conflict.Marriages between two exclusivist participants feature religious-based conflict.When spouses have different religious approaches (e.g. an exclusivist participantmarried to an inclusivist participant), then religious-based conflict is a featureof marriages specifically when the husband has an exclusivist religiousapproach.

These findings are important as they address current gaps in research and theories ofreligious resourcing in Muslim marriages. Extant literature highlights generationaland gendered differences of religious approach (Moghissi et al., 2009: 82). However, Ifind similarities between, and differences within, these categories. Instead,religious approach emerged as highly salient, and patterns of social processesaligned with the different religious approaches.

The findings of this research also inform directions for future research. Whileextant literature presents Muslim performativity in uniform frames, allowing Muslimrespondents to provide their own definitions of religiosity, and interrogate thosedefinitions alongside social processes, may help shed light on how religion shapesintimate social lives. Though this study focussed on Canadian Pakistani Muslims,this approach would yield fruitful results for other ethnoreligious minoritypopulations.

Finally, given the limited nature of a purposive sample, I cannot make claimsgeneralizable to the larger Canadian Muslim population. However, with representativesamples and quantitative analysis, it is possible to establish the relationshipbetween marital satisfaction, conflict, and religious approach (e.g. the oft-usedvariable of Biblical Literalism in social survey research). If the survey is alsolongitudinal, then variables can be staged such that causal relationships, inaddition to correlations, can be identified.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the anonymous reviewers for SocialCompass. The author would also like to thank Rania Salem, AnnaKorteweg, Zaheer Baber, Tahseen Shams, Kristine Ajrouch, Anver Emon, and YoucefSoufi for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. In addition, Youcef wasessential in translating its abstract. A version of this article was presented atthe Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Annual Meeting (St Louis,Missouri), the CEMFOR Conference on Race and Religion (Uppsala, Sweden), and theInternational Musawah Workshop (Toronto, Canada).

Author biography

Sarah SHAH is a postdoctoral fellow in the Study of Islam and MuslimsResearch Lab at the Institute of Islamic Studies, University of Toronto.

Address: University of Toronto, 170 Saint George St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Email: ssarah.shah@mail.utoronto.ca

Footnotes

Funding: The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported bythe Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

ORCID iD: Sarah SHAH https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9672-1755

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