Love and Sexuality among Shia Students at the Lebanese University:
An Exploration of the Interconnectedness with Religiosity and Nuclear Family Relations.
1 Suzanne Lugthart Thesis within the master Middle-Eastern Studies University of Amsterdam Student number: 10878564 Supervisor: Dr. Robbert Woltering Second reader: Dr. Marina De Regt (VU) Word count: 21269
1 Joseph Eid, A Lebanese Couple on Beirut’s Ramlet al-Bayda Beach, November 8, 2016. AFP, https://www.lebanoninapicture.com/pictures/a-lebanese-couple-were-kissing-on-ramlet-elbayda-beach.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 2.
Abstract 3.
1. Introduction 4.
2. Theoretical framework 14. 2.1 Love 14. 2.2 Sexuality 16. 2.3 Interconnections of the Nuclear Family 17. 2.4 Religion, Religiosity and Shia religion 19. 2.5 Love and Sexuality in the Muslim world 21. 2.6 Love and Sexuality in Lebanon. 23. 2.7 Politics, Social Movements and Mass Media 24.
3. Religion, Love, and Sexuality 29. 3.1 Changing Religiosities 29.. 3.2 What is Love? 32. 3.3 Love and Religion 33. 3.4 Physical Contact and Religion 34. 3.5 Mut’a 38. 3.6 Interim Conclusion 39.
4. Family, Love and Sexuality 40. 4.1 Bad parental relations and 3ib shuma elik! 40. 4.2 Let’s talk about love, but not about everything 42. 4.3 Marriage 44. 4.4 Siblings 46. 4.5 Interim Conclusion 48.
5. Discussion and Conclusion 50. 5.1 Love and Sexuality 50. 5.2 Intersectionality of Shia Religion 52. 5.3 Intersections of the Nuclear Family 53. 5.4 Final Conclusion 56.
Bibliography 57.
Appendix; Table of informants. 61.
1
Acknowledgements
First, I would like to thank all my informants for sharing their thoughts, ideas and experiences. Without their kindness, trust and openness, this research would not have been possible. Especially, I would like to thank Rhanim and Hassan, who both always helped me and tried to connect me with other students for interviews.
The next person I would like to thank is my supervisor for this thesis, Robbert Woltering. I would like to thank him for being patient when I switched the topic of this thesis, for his critical, constructive feedback, for helping me with analytical doubts, guiding me in narrowing down my topic and advising me in my role as a researcher.
Additionally, I would like to thank Marina de Regt for her feedback on my research proposal and for giving me advice in the field. Her critical feedback on the proposal helped me to improve the theoretical framework of this thesis and to strengthen my methodologies. With her advice, she helped me to be a better anthropologist. In addition, I would like to thank Joseph Alagha, for his wise counsel about my research, but also concerning the practical problems of living in Beirut. Furthermore, he gave me very motivating feedback, when I felt that the research was going too slow.
Furthermore, I could not have written this proposal without the support of my family and my friends. I would like to especially thank my mother for her moral support when I needed it the most. Also, I would like to thank Wietske Boskma and Judith van Uden for their moral and intellectual support. I am grateful to Nancy Mouawad and Issa Haddad for their moral support, good company in my spare time in Lebanon, and for checking parts of my thesis from a Lebanese perspective. Finally, I am thankful to my uncle, Paul Thuilliez, who helped me to improve the level of English of this thesis.
2
Abstract
In no society sexuality is left unregulated. Family and religion are two important factors that mostly come with rules, expectations and advice for sexual activity, but also for love, a feeling or experience that could lead to sexual activity. A sect of religion who has extraordinary thoughts about the regulations of love and sexuality are the Shia Muslims, because an essential part of these Muslims accepts short-term marriages, mut’a marriages. This thesis is an exploration of the interconnections between the nuclear family and religiosity with experiences of love and sexuality among Shia students at the Lebanese University in Beirut. This study is based on eleven weeks of fieldwork in Beirut in which nineteen in-depth interviews were done with students who spoke openly about their experiences of love and sexuality. The main question is: How do Shia students of the Lebanese University in Beirut experience love and sexuality before the permanent marriage in relation to ideas, rules and expectations of religion and the nuclear family?
This research aims towards a deeper understanding of the interaction of family, religion and gender on experiences of love and sexuality for Shia students of the Lebanese University. This research shows that family and religion are tightly connected factors, because differences or similarities with parents in religion affect family bonds, communication and the way in which students deal with parental advices, rules and expectations. When there are great differences between religious ideas of parents and students it is less likely that students follow parental advice and talk with their parents. Women who shared the same religious beliefs as their parents were likely to follow the rules of their parents and have abstinence from sexual activity before marriage, however this was not the case for the men. Physical borders were however also apparent for men, but less strict. Furthermore, male sexual experiences were less likely to be in a religious context, were female first sexual experiences were always in a mut’a context or for one woman in a forced context, being raped. This research explores the interconnections of gender, religiosity and family by looking at experiences of love and sexuality of Shia students.
Keywords: Shia, Students, Religiosity, Religion, Nuclear Family, Love, Sexuality, Mut’a.
3
1. Introduction
“When I was eighteen years old, I got confused between myself and religion. I had met a boy, and he seemed really religious, so I thought he could help me, but it turned out to be the upside down. I lost my virginity-card with him. I thought to be with him forever, and he said that we were going to get married. I believed him. A week after this happened, I discovered that he not only did the mut’a (short-term marriage) with me, but also with two other women and that he was still talking to his ex. I was so angry and never talked to him again, even though he tried hard to see me. We did mut’a because he did not want to do the haram, but it is wrong! Mut’a should not be done by just two persons like we did it. It needs a sheik and should not just be done for sex. After this situation, I started to doubt religion even more. I believe in God and that he is by our side, but I did not seem to find a religion. A year ago, I also removed my hijab. It was a war between my parents and me.” Ghada (21 years old)
This story of Ghada shows how religiosity can relate to love and sexuality. Later in this interview, it was also to be seen how the difference in religiosity had affected the interaction between her and her parents concerning love and sexuality. I asked her whether she could tell her parents about what happened with this man and she answered: ‘No! I am sexually active, but they cannot know! It is the biggest sin ever. If they knew this happened, they would be really mad and treat me bad. They have strict rules. You cannot touch or give a man a handshake.’
The interaction of religiosity, family, love and sexuality is the central topic of this research. The story of Ghada is just one example of this interaction, and this research will show that these interactions vary for each student depending on their gender, religiosity, bond with their parents and sexual activity. The main goal of this thesis is to explore how students’ experiences of love and sexual activity are affected by their religiosity and nuclear family communication, rules and advice.
Baydoun states that young adults in Lebanon are subjects to the hegemony of the familial/private sphere in Lebanon, which is regulated by various religious sects in Lebanon
4 with legal jurisdiction about marriage and the family.2 These are mostly groups who promote sexual activity only inside marriage. Statistics, however, show that Lebanese youth have sex at a young age and that this occurs in most cases outside of marriage.3 These results of Baydoun show a significant interaction of family, religion, love and sexuality in the lives of young adults in the entire Lebanese society. This thesis aims to explore this interaction for a smaller group of these Lebanese young adults, which are Shia students at the Lebanese University.
The focus is on Shia students to eliminate the influence of sectarian differences, plus it makes this research more reliable since it makes the research group more focused. This study is focused on Shia since it takes essential differences between Shia and Sunni in Lebanon into consideration. The most significant difference, relevant for this research is the existence of mut’a, which was also an important aspect of the story of Ghada. Mut’a is a temporary marriage, that is only approved in Shi’ism.4 It is a contract for a certain pre- determined period, and something should be given to the woman. The story of Ghada illustrates that the rules of mut’a vary widely, but there are also differences in ideas on whether mut’a should be accepted.
The research focuses on students at the Lebanese University to ensure a focus on a lower middle class. This focus is made because previous studies about love and sexuality among students in Lebanon were done to a broad sample of students and did not make a difference in social class.56 Furthermore, a study of Michael Oghia7 to this topic, was conducted among students in the American University of Beirut, which is the most expensive university in Lebanon. The Lebanese University is the only state university in Lebanon. The Lebanese University has different departments, spread all over Lebanon, so
2 Azzah Shararah Baydoun,"Sex education in Lebanon: Between secular and religious discourses," in Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East: Challenges and Discourses, ed. Pinar Ilkkaracan (New York: Routledge, 2012), 98. 3 Baydoun, "Sex education in Lebanon,” 90. 4 Linda S. Walbridge, Without forgetting the imam: Lebanese Shi’ism in an American community. (Detroit Wayne State University Press, 1996), 64. 5 Bernadet Barbour, and Pascale Salameh, “Knowledge and Practices of University students in Lebanon regarding Contraception,” Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 15, no.2 (2009): 387-399.” 6 Pascale Salameh et al., "Attitudes towards and practice of sexuality among university students in Lebanon." Journal of biosocial science 48, no.2 (2016).” 7 Michael J. Oghia, "Different cultures, one love: Exploring romantic love in the Arab world." In Intercultural communication with Arabs: Studies in Educational, Professional and Societal Contexts, ed. Rana Radawi (Singapore: Springer, 2015), 279-294.
5 most people who go to this university lived already with their families near to Beirut because you do not necessarily need to travel far from your family for studying. However, some departments like the medical department, are only to be found in Beirut. The university fees are the lowest, but it is very hard to get accepted since the entry demands high grades.
Influence of religion in the Lebanese University is clearly demonstrated by the religious separation between Christian and Muslim departments. Whether this is done consciously by the university or by the students themselves is not clear. Whilst explaining my research in the department of architecture, a teacher directed me to other departments, since there were mostly Christians in this department. However, divisions are not only seen between religions, but also within religion. For example, no cafeterias were open in the department of Hadath, the biggest campus, due to the influence of Hezbollah and Amal, (two Shia parties in Lebanon), who are fighting for the right to have these cafeterias.
Most informants live in the southern part of Beirut, where the majority of the community is Shia. Exceptions were four informants. One was a total exception and lived in Aramoun, a mostly Maronite village half an hour by car from Beirut. Two others lived in Ras al Nabah and Mazraa. These are areas in the Western part of Beirut. Ras al Nabah and Mazraa are mixed areas. The last informant lives in Mar Mikhael, which is in the north and is a popular, mostly Maronite area. All informants live with one or both of their parents.
Nevertheless, all informants saw themselves as Shia, this was not always based on their real feeling on religion, but more on the background of their father’s origin. If their father was Shia, they too considered themselves Shia. Two informants, Nesrine and Imane, had Sunni mothers. This research focusses on students that are not in a permanent marriage. The average age of regular (i.e. not mut’a) marriage for Lebanese women was 28.8 and for men 32.8 in 2006.89 My informants are all younger than these ages.
At the departments of this research, the majority of students are women. This research is focused on both men and women, even though men were generally not having a high
8 “Lebanese Women a Diminishing Marriage Market” AUBulletin Today, accessed September 26, 2017, https://staff.aub.edu.lb/~webbultn/v8n2/article21.htm 9 World Health Organization, Defining sexual health: report of a technical consultation on sexual health. (Geneva: WHO, 2002)
6 standard of English language and were less apparent in the university. Heterosexual relationships and sexuality are practices concerning both sexes, so both male and female informants are necessary to be included for a holistic understanding of premarital romance and sexuality in connection with family relations and religious ties. Furthermore, the dynamics between men and women and different rules for males and females, illustrate important gender dynamics in these premarital relations better. Sexual identities and gender are always linked and connected.10 Perceptions of sexuality depend on conceptions of gender and perceptions of gender depend on conceptions of sexuality as will be illustrated in the theoretical framework.
This study is based on nineteen interviews. Ten interviews were with women between the age of 18 and 24, with an average age of 20 and the other nine interviews were with men between the age of 20 and 24, with an average age of 21,4. This age difference is mostly related to the fact that the men did not always go directly to this university. They went first to another university, have study delays or travelled abroad, whereas most of the women went directly to the university.
The goal of this research is to investigate how love and sexuality before marriage intertwine with religion and family for Shia students at the Lebanese University in Beirut. This will be done by means of qualitative research into the following main question:
- How do Shia students at the Lebanese University in Beirut experience love and sexuality before the permanent marriage in relation to ideas, rules and expectations of religion and the nuclear family?
An answer is given to this main question with the help of the following sub-questions:
- How do Shia students at the Lebanese University experience love and sexuality before the permanent marriage? - What is the role of religion in the lives of Shia students at the Lebanese University? - How does religiosity interact with the love lives and sexual experiences of Shia students at the Lebanese University?
10 Nynäs, Peter. Religion, gender and sexuality in everyday life (New York: Routledge, 2016), 6.
7
- How do Shia students at the Lebanese University communicate with their parents concerning love and sexuality? - How do Shia students at the Lebanese University deal with rules, advice and expectations of their nuclear family regarding their love lives and sexual activity?
The faculty of information, where half of my fieldwork was conducted, is a six-floor building, which is not well maintained, is no longer white but grey, has a little café on top and when you follow the road downhill, you find the main entrance. The café is small and consists of eight red plastic tables with chairs around them on which mostly women were seated. Around half of these women wore a hijab11 and some also wore a lengthier hijab and an abaya.12
On my first day, when I entered, all eyes were on me. To ease my discomfort, I bought a bottle of water, took a seat and started a conversation with a woman wearing a purple hijab. I told her that I was at the university to do a research concerning love and the interconnections with family and religion among Muslim students. To allow for the idea that talking about sexuality might be embarrassing or scary for her and might stop her talking to me, I did not tell her this part of the research. Since conversations about love can progress naturally to the topic of sexuality, I did not feel I was hiding this from her.
She thought the subject was interesting and she introduced me to a big group of students who were comfortably seated in a sunlit open area, in a circle of old furniture. This furniture were old chairs, an old wooden bench and broken pieces of sofa with broken fake black leather by which you saw the filling of the sofa coming out. As they gave me a place to sit, the group created attention and more students came to join. It was a mixed group of around fifteen people of which two men and the rest were women in a mixture of dress, some with short skirts, some with jeans and t-shirts and some with the inevitable abaya and/or hijabs. At that time, I did not yet focus on Shia. When I spoke about my research focus on Muslims, they emphasized the different sects within Islam, such as Druze, Shia and Sunni. All of which were represented within the group.
11 Hijab is the Arab word for veil. It only covers the hair and sometimes also the shoulders. 12 An Abaya, is a loose fitting dress that has a length till the ground, has long sleeves and mostly goes with a lengthy veil.
8
They were all very interested in the topic of the research and wanted to be involved right away in a group setting. So, I asked them a couple of basic questions about love which they discussed together. Their degree of interest and friendship was surprising. Readily accepting me into their group, they taught me Lebanese Arabic, and in the end, they invited me for the Ashura remembrance, a meeting in the period to remember the death of Imam Hussayn and his family, the next day in the University.
Fieldwork was done from the second of October 2017 till the sixteenth of December 2017. This research is written by means of four research methods; participant observation, informal conversations, in-depth interviews and informal focus groups. Participant observation means that I joined informants in their daily activities and activities considering my subject of research. In this way, tacit knowledge became clear. This is information where informants are not actively aware of. Besides, participant observation made me able to show the difference between what informants say and what they do.13
When doing this participant observation, I deliberately positioned myself in a place, watched the students, who are the principal actors of this research, and I became involved with them and their activities.14 My presence influenced the setting sometimes such as when students started to talk in English or during the religious remembrance ceremony of Ashura they sat next to me and tried to pay attention to the Sheik who was talking to the group. Later, they declared to never listen to this type of gathering, but they now freely did it for me. A hindrance while doing participant observation was the language barrier since most of the time students spoke with each other in Arabic, and my Arabic is not good enough to follow entire conversations. Sometimes translations were done for me, but also in translation, information can be missed, because they are a précis of the complete story.
I mostly hung out with students inside and around the university. I went with them to cafés, malls and their lessons. A specific activity was the attendance at the religious ceremony of Ashura within the University activity. Another specific activity was a gathering of a beginning student association. I took some ideas about student’s family lives, because of my roommates. They both are Shia students from the Lebanese University. Their family came
13 Kathleen M. DeWalt, and Billie R. DeWalt, Participant observation: A guide for fieldworkers (Plymouth: Altamira Press, 2011), 1-2. 14 James P. Spradley, Participant observation (Long Grove Illinois: Waveland Press, 2016), 39.
9 over sometimes, and they took me to the village where they grew up and where their parents and younger siblings live. In the end, I did not interview the women I lived with because all my interview informants lived with their parents and they did not. Furthermore, I did not feel that they were very willing to participate and the oldest one was twenty-eight, so she was also way older than the average informant.
Participant observation allowed me to make essential observations and have informal conversations about dating, premarital love relations and sexuality. Furthermore, it allowed building rapport which resulted in improving the information received. Having informal conversations was affording much interesting and useful information for the research. While having this day-to-day interaction, I was sometimes steering the conversations by asking follow-up questions or questions that were intended to move back the conversation to the subject of my research. These informal conversations gave me extra information that was helpful during interviews or that added new information to the interviews I had already done.
I also did some observations in places where Shia students at the Lebanese University claimed to have had experiences of love. I went to different malls and cafes, places that were often considered as places for dating. The majority of students had met their partners in such cafes or the university, so my observations about flirting were mostly there. It was difficult to meet with students outside the university since they always said to be very busy with their studies and on the weekends, most of them went to their village. This meant that I haven’t been able to be involved in many family spheres. Besides, religious gatherings were not that apparent, so I only have been to one in the University. I was looking for these religious and family gatherings to provide research concerning the interaction of religion and family on premarital love and sexuality. Now, I mostly investigated this from the student’s perspective.
While doing participant observation, great care was taken with notes to ensure that observations were fair and relevant and allowed the improvement of my methodologies whilst reducing the chance of being influenced with my own opinion. Because of my notes I would also find subjects I needed to ask more about in informal conversations. I sometimes took short, jotted notes in the field. At the end of each day of participant observation, I
10 made more elaborate field notes.15 These full field notes exist of direct observation notes, researcher interference notes, analytic notes and personal notes.16 The information from the notes was assisting the results obtained from in-depth interviews.
Before doing interviews, I always tried to establish a level of rapport. This meant that I let my informants trust me and made them feel comfortable being around me before talking about sensitive subjects.17 This sometimes worked out better than other times and, in some cases, this rapport was just getting stronger after the interviews. Students were very open even though the rapport was not always as good as I preferred it to be. This might be related to the knowledge of students about research in general. Three female informants emphasized the importance of this kind of research and informed me how pleased they were that I was researching this topic. So, my work was appreciated and seen as valuable for these women.
These in-depth interviews were semi-structured. I had a list of standard questions, but these were not always asked in the same order, depending on the answers informants gave. I always checked in the end whether all questions were answered. In these interviews, I also further developed conversations about topics that passed by in day-to-day conversations.
After four interviews I reflected whether the list of questions was still valuable or whether it was missing anything. Some changes were made in the way I asked about specific topics and I added a couple of questions. The list of questions consisted of standard questions, but in the interviews, there were also interrogate questions which tried to clarify the individual answers of the informants 18 or which were used to develop fascinating results in the previous answers. When I read the interview notes later, and still had some follow-up questions, I asked these in a non-official setting of day-to-day conversations. I always tried to clarify whether I could use this information in the research.
I tried to find a representative group of informants in religiousness/liberalness, by finding my informants in different campuses and by using different connections, but this mission was not fully accomplished. My interview informants vary widely in their religiosity, but all
15 Lawrence W. Neuman, Understanding research (Boston: Pearson, 2016), 280. 16 Neuman, Understanding research, 281. 17 Neuman, Understanding research, 272. 18 Jeanine Evers, Kwalitatief interviewen: kunst én kunde. (Den Haag: Boom Lemma, 2007), 33.
11 have one thing in common, which is that they were all willing to speak openly with me about their love and sexual lives. Some students warned me that I would not be able to speak to the very religious men and women since their English was not of a reasonable level and/or they would not be willing to speak to me. This idea was confirmed when I had informal conversations with two very strict religious informants, and they both said no when I asked them for an interview. Another example of this warning was that the male students that organized the Ashura remembrance had not an accurate level of English to let me interview them. Furthermore, the use of the snowball effect made that I did seven interviews with unveiled women and three interviews with veiled women which is not very representative since more than half of the women in the universities were veiled. Nevertheless, wearing the veil does not necessarily represent religiosity as one informant wore the veil because her parents wanted her to wear it.
All nineteen interviews, except one, were in English. This other interview I did was in French. However, the level of French of this man was not very high, but he managed to give me information that is useful for this research. One other interview was with a man with a low level of English, but we solved this problem with the help of a friend in common who was really trusted by the informant and who translated parts if the informant did not know the words. All the other informants had a reasonable level of English through which they could express themselves clearly. Some studied English and others had to read articles for their studies in English.
Most interviews were in cafes or in the university. I always conducted the interviews in a place where the student would feel comfortable and at ease to talk about the topic of my research. In most places, there were other people around us, but this did not seem to affect the data. Only once, during an interview with Jade, a big group of women entered the restaurant all wearing a black veil and abaya. One woman sat close and sometimes looked at us over her shoulder, so this has probably influenced the interview. I made notes of this while writing down his answers and I was aware that his answer became more religiously correct after the women just sat next to us. However, in the end, he did tell that he broke some rules and that he had kissed a woman.
12
In addition to one-on-one interviews, I had some informal focus groups which gave me clear insights on differences in point of views on topics between people. These focus groups mostly happened by surprise when I found myself among a group of students and they initiated a conversation concerning my subject. Questions in these group conversations were mostly regarding more general topics like how people date, what they think about sexual activity before marriage and how they see mut’a. This way of gathering data also shows more of the social context and how people talk about these topics.19 These focus groups gave me new insights that did not come forth out of personal interviews.20
The final part of my research was the analysis. I analysed my data by coding it to find similarities and differences between the students. In this way, the sub-questions and eventually the main question were answered. In my results, I did not use the real names of the informants, but pseudonyms and I sometimes made minor unimportant changes, so that my informants were protected and their stories which they told me in confidence, cannot be traced back to them by others.
19 Evers, Kwalitatief interviewen, 31. 20 Neuman, Understanding Research, 288.
13
2. Theoretical Framework
This chapter explains the theoretical debates around love and sexuality with a focus on Lebanon. Firstly, it elaborates the most important and relevant scientific debates of essential concepts for this research. These concepts are love, sexuality, gender, family and Shia religion/religiosity. Secondly, this chapter discusses relevant research into love and sexuality in Muslim majority countries. Thirdly, romance and sexuality in Lebanon will be widely elaborated. Last, this chapter will explore other circumstances such as politics and media that affect love and sexuality, but also family and religion.
2.1 Love
The concept of romantic love has mainly been ignored within cross-cultural academic literature in the Arab world.21 For example, in anthropology kinship has long been the key for research to intimate relationships rather than the relationships they represented. The study of love moves beyond these kinship systems.22 Plotnicov states that anthropologists and social scientists saw romantic love as unique for the modern west. If anthropologist found romantic love in the field, they ignored it, since romantic love was perceived as a luxury in human life, which in their ideas, only existed in Western, elite, educated societies.23 In history, love was perceived as a Western invention to create a more subtle and delicate way to deal with sexual activity.24 However, Jankowiak and Fischer compared 166 ethnographies and remarked that romantic love exists in every culture. In 88,6 percent of ethnographies they found this romantic love directly and in the other cases they could not find it in the texts but could not exclude it either. 25
21 Oghia, “Exploring romantic love in the Arab World,” 279. 22 Mark B. Padilla, Jennifer S. Hirsch, and Miguel Munoz-Laboy. Love and globalization: Transformations of intimacy in the contemporary world (Vanderbilt University Press, 2007), xiv 23 Conrad Phillip Kottak, Cultural anthropology: Appreciating cultural diversity (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011) 272. 24 William M. Reddy, “The Rule of Love. The History of Western Romantic Love in Comparative Perspective,” in New Dangerous Liaisons. Discourses on Europe and Love in the Twentieth Century, ed. Luisa Passerini, Liliana Ellena and Alexander C.T. Geppert (New York: Berghahn 2010), 35. 25 William R. Jankowiak, and Edward F. Fischer. "A cross-cultural perspective on romantic love," Ethnology 31, no.2 (1992): 153.
14
Padilla sees love as a useful lens for social analysis since it shows complex interconnections between cultural, economic, interpersonal and emotional realms of experience. 26 Love is a useful concept in social sciences since it reveals much about the ways that human societies organize social life and sexuality, but also reveals how individuals are in continuous interaction with social discourses. Ideas and experiences of love are based on specific cultural and historical contexts.27 Furthermore, the study of love fills a gap in research on gender and sexuality which often ignored the complex, personal motivations underlying sexual practices and relationships.28
Gender is an essential concept in the study of love since cultures ascribe different roles to men and women regarding love. King uses the concept of Børressen in which gender is a socio-biological category and not just a result of history and culture29. This means that gender has a base in biology, which is sex in the sense of being born with male or female organs, but gender is also constructed in dialogue with social processes, history and culture. Butler adds to this vision that gender is a process of embodiment which is the result of repeating performances30. Another important vision of Butler on gender is intersectionality, which means that gender identity is interacting with other categories of identity like religion, class, ethnicity, age, sexuality and regional conditions.31
This intersectionality of gender is also relevant to love. Love is also affected by identities as religion, ethnicity, age, sexuality and regional conditions. In addition, love is affected by family, power, gender dynamics, globalization, religious sectarianism, modernity, social change, resistance, intergenerational relationships, patriarchy, individualization32, politics, emotions, feelings and previous experiences.
Because of the cultural and historical contexts defining love, it is difficult to give one standard definition of love. Hellen Harris found seven shared experiences of being in love for every cultural setting in psychological literature. These experiences are a desire for
26 Padilla, Hirsch, and Munoz-Laboy. Love and globalization, Xiv and xxvi. 27 Ibidem. 28 Ibidem. 29 Ursula King, “Introduction: Gender and the Study of Religion” in Religion and Gender ed. Ursula King. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1995), 6. 30 Anne Cranny-Francis, Wendy Waring, Pam Stavropoulos and Joan J. Kirkby, Gender studies: Terms and Debates (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), 4. 31 Judith Butler, Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity (New York: Routledge, 1990): 6. 32 Oghia “Exploring romantic love in the Arab World,” 281.
15 unification with someone, idealization of the beloved, exclusivity, intrusive thinking about the loved one, emotional dependency, recording of motivational hierarchies or life priorities and a powerful sense of empathy and concern for the beloved. 33 Love in this research will be focused on romantic, heterosexual love from the perspectives of my informants, which are developed in chapter three.
2.2 Sexuality
Sexuality is one of the most powerful dimensions of individual intersubjective human life.34 Sexuality is an individual experience which is expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviours, practices, roles and relationships.3536 Sexual activity is not only about erotic pleasure, but it is also physical action of intimacy between two persons.37 In this research, the concept of sexuality will be focused on thoughts, values, norms and experiences of sexual activity.
Sexuality is a field of power differentiation because sexual activity can be the base for kinship structures and social reproduction. It is one of most private topics, but because of reproduction, every single society regulates sexual activity.38 All societies define and enforce norms about sexual activity. These norms answer quesions as how, with whom, when, where, how often and why people have sex. How these norms are determined varies in each society by formal and informal regulations. The formal regulations can be seen in laws and religion. The informal regulations are created by family and friends, but also other members of society that perform social control.39
33 Helen Harris “Rethinking Polynesian Heterosexual Relationships; A Case Study on Mangaia, Cook Islands” in Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience?, ed. William Jankowiak (New York: Columbia University Press 1995), 102-03 34 Jose Casanova, “Nativism and the Politics of Gender in Catholicism and Islam,” in Gendering Religion and Politics: Untangling Modernities, ed. Hanna Herzog, and Ann Braude, (New York; Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 39. 35 World Health Organization, Defining sexual health. 36 Mathilde Azar, Thilo Kroll, and Caroline Bradbury Jones, “Lebanese women and sexuality: A qualitative inquiry,” Sexual Reproductive Healthcare 8 (January 2016): 13. 37 Casanova, “Nativism and the Politics of Gender,” 39. 38 Ibidem. 39 PJ McGann “Healing, (Disorderly) Desire: Medical-Therapeutic regulation of sexuality.” in Introducing the New Sexuality Studies. ed. Steven Seidman, Nancy Fischer and Chet Meeks London (New York: Routledge 2006): 365
16
Casanova states that individuals that fit within these norms are rewarded with mental health, respectability, legality, social and physical mobility, institutional support and material benefits. Others who do not fit into these norms are subjected to a presumption of mental illness, disreputability, criminality, restricted social and physical mobility, loss of institutional support and economic sanctions.40 This idea of sexuality from Casanova fits with the idea of Giddens that sexuality is a social construct which operates within fields of power and not just exists out of biological stimulations.41
So, numerous factors affect the experience of sexuality. That’s why intersectionality must be included as an analytical tool in research into sexuality.42 In this research, there will be a focus on religion and the family, but it will not be denied that there are other factors that affect sexuality and love.
2.3 Interconnections of the Nuclear Family
Ayyash Abdo states that the nuclear family has a very important role in the lives of Lebanese, regardless of their religion, gender, financial status or geographic location. The extended family is the second most important social group. Lebanese youth live in a relatively collective society with life goals which fit into collective goals, with Muslim youth having more collective attributes than their Christian peers. 43
As the interpretation of love and sexuality depend on interactions with family and religion, family is not a stable entity. Families are not stable and are formed and reformed by economic factors, social factors, religion and state interventions.44 Week gives examples in which sexual life is affected by this process of forming and reforming of the family. These are encouraging or discouraging marriage, the frequency of reproduction, attitudes to non- procreative sex and non-hetero sex, acceptance of cohabitation and power of men over
40 Gayle S. Rubin “Thinking Seks” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, David M. Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1993), 12. 41 Anthony Giddens, The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies. (Oxford: Polity Press, 1992), 23. 42 Homa Hoodfar, “Kicking Back: The Sports Arena and Sexual Politics” in Sexuality in Muslim contexts; Restrictions and Resistance, ed. Anissa Hélie and Homa Hoodfar (London and New York: Zed Books, 2012), 323. 43 Huda Ayyash Abdo, “Adolescents´ self-image in Lebanon: Implications for Education.” In International Perspectives on Adolescence, ed Frank Pajares, and Tim Urdan (Connecticut: Information Age Publishing, 2003), 180. 44 Jeffrey Weeks. Sexuality: third edition. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 25.
17 women.45 In this thesis, the focus is on family attitudes towards non-procreative sex and this research aims to explore family positions towards love. This study also touches on the topic of power relations between men and women by comparisons of experiences of love, sexuality, family and religion between male and female students.
Parents have a great impact on their children’s social competencies and skills, which are among others expressed in romantic relationships. Social learning theory and attachment theory together provide a framework of parental transmissions of behavioural repertoires and their disposition concerning intimacy.46 The attachment theory states that secure attachment leads to more compassion and considerateness in relationships than insecure attachment.47
This theory is confirmed by the research of Jaccard and others to African Americans in Philadelphia. This study states that the quality of the relationship between the mother and child affects the relationship between disapproval and the initiation of sexual intercourse. Their African-American children were more likely to delay their first sexual contact when the relationship with at least one parent was perceived as warm and caring. However, after the adolescents had their first sexual intercourse, the impact of the parental relationship quality became less.48
Social learning theory of Bandura states that new behaviours are acquired by a model of behavioural transmission that exists of observing the behaviours of others, direct experiences which are punished or rewarded and possible rewarding and punishing consequences that influence future activities.49 The idea of rewards and punishments for behaviour that come from parents are expressed in rules, expectations and advice. These
45 Weeks, Sexuality, 25. 46 Wyndol, B. Furman, Bradford Brown, and Candice Feiring, ed. The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 254. 47 Jeremy Holmes, The search for the secure base: Attachment theory and psychotherapy (New York:Routledge, 2014), xiii. 48 James Jaccard, Patricia J. Dittus, and Vivian V. Gordon, "Maternal correlates of adolescent sexual and contraceptive behavior." Family planning perspectives (1996): 164-165. 49 Albert Bandura, Social learning theory (New York: General Learning Press, 1971), 3-5.
18 are not static because parents do not always respond to behaviour in the same way because they evaluate the intentions of the child.50
Aspya and others concluded from research in Oklahoma that parents have the opportunity and ability to influence their children’s sexual behaviour decisions with communication.51 Their research suggests that communication between children and parents can increase the likelihood of youth sexual abstinence and safer sexual health practices regardless of demographic characteristics.52 Youth whose parents had clear rules and youth who had spoken with their parents concerning what is right and wrong in sexual activity and about delaying sexual activity were significantly more likely not to have sex or wait longer when compared to youth whose parents had not communicated this information.53
In this research, the interconnection between love, sexuality and family is explored from the perspective of the students. Following the social learning theory, more insights are gained by looking at their reflections on their parent's expectations, advice and rules. Following the attachment theory, reflections on the family bonds and interactions with their parents and siblings about love and sexuality are studied.
2.4 Religion, religiosity and Shia religion
Nowadays, the scientific debates around religion are tightly connected to debates of secularization. Erosion of religion was seen as a feature of modernity before, but this claim became questioned. On the contrary to secularization, there are also different processes of perserverance of religion going on in the world, like new religious movements and growth of spirituality.54 Nowadays, more nuanced understandings of religion have emerged. These new understandings take historical, geopolitical and socio-cultural specificities into serious consideration. Religion is a complex multidimensional phenomenon with different forms depending on different contexts of modernization, history, social and cultural systems.55
50 Albert Bandura, "Social learning of moral judgments." Journal of personality and social psychology 11, no. 3 (1969): 278. 51 Cheryl B. Aspya, et al. "Parental communication and youth sexual behaviour." Journal of adolescence 30, no.3 (2007): 449. 52 Aspya et al., “Parental communication,” 462. 53 Ibidem. 54 Nynäs, Religion, Gender and Sexuality, 1-2. 55 Ibidem
19
Lassander argues that religion should be approached as a hybrid concept. He says that the only way to deeply understand religion is to study individual religious expressions. An individual's religion is a process which depends on what someone does with his/her religion, how someone talks about religion and how social actors are involved and engaged.56 Nynäs adds to this theory of Lassander that this idea of religion is embedded in social, political and cultural processes and in how categories as 'religious', 'secular', 'public' and 'private' are manifested in new ways.57 This thesis aims to have an individual approach, which considers mostly social and cultural processes that are related to family, love and sexuality. The concepts of religion of Nynäs and Lassander are therefore taken as important. These concepts, show the same idea of intersectionality, which is illustrated in the previous paragraphs. So, like the other important concepts of this thesis, religion is intersectional to other categories such as class, ethnicity, age, politics and regional conditions.
A study of Abdel-Khalek to religiosity and its relation to happiness among students at the Lebanese University concluded that women are more religious than men. This was a study concerning Shia, Sunni and Christians, but he states that religious difference and its correlation to the study variables was not statistically significant.58 An essential aspect of this research is that in Lebanon someone’s religion is part of his or her personal and social identity and not a reflection of the level of religious involvement.59 This is not only the case in Lebanon, but these social identities are specifically important in Lebanon because of the sectarian divides and their history.
When Shia students are not affected by their personal religiosity, they are probably affected by the beliefs of their families. The Quran and the Hadith, the behaviour of the last prophet, influence the Shia family in a model-oriented way.60 These parts of religion show examples
56 Mika Lassander, "Grappling with liquid modernity: Investigating post-secular religion," Post-Secular Society (2012): 242-243. 57 Nynäs, Religion, Gender and Sexuality, 5. 58 Ahmed Abdel-Khalek, “Happiness, health, and religiosity among Lebanese young adults,” Cogent Psychology 2, no. 1 (2015): 3 and 9. 59 Lilian A. Ghandour, Elie G. Karam, and Wadih E. Maalouf. "Lifetime alcohol use, abuse and dependence among university students in Lebanon: Exploring the role of religiosity in different religious faiths." Addiction 104, no. 6 (2009): 942. 60 Batoul Pakzad, and Hassan Alipour. "Justice and Family Issues in Shia: Dealing with Domestic Violence." in Women and Children as Victims and Offenders: Background, Prevention, Reintegration, ed. Helmut Kury, Evelyn Shea, and Slawomir Redo. (Springer Cham, 2016), 702.
20 that should be followed or show mistakes that should not be made. Being affected by religion is a part of social learning theory because these examples in religion form a model of behavioural transmission. This social learning is, however, a dialectical process with other social actors and experiences of which can be learned such as peers, siblings, neighbours and previous experiences of themselves.
2.5 Love and Sexuality in the Muslim world.
Friedland, Afary, Gardinali and Naslund did a Facebook survey on heterosexual love and sexuality in seven Muslim majority countries (Lebanon was left out). This study included around 15000 respondents and showed both differences and similarities between Muslim and secular citizens on their interpretations of love and sexuality.
Firstly, the researchers showed that the desire for love in marriage crosses the secular and religious divide. Observant and pious Muslims want love as much as their secular fellow citizens. Religious beliefs may not have much effect on wanting love. However, this research shows that every form of adherence to religious norms has a significant negative effect on approval of unmarried men and women being alone together.61
Secondly, this research showed the discrepancy between norms and behaviour for this group. They showed that 32.3% of respondents who said that being alone with someone of the opposite gender was always wrong, nevertheless had engaged in such an act. 62 The differences between norms and behaviour are always to be questioned, but in the study of love and sexuality, the difference might be even more important.
Thirdly, a prominent finding of this research is that women are just as likely as men to engage in intimate premarital interactions of which their parents and their communities do not approve. This is a fascinating result, since women experience much higher risks than men that come with discovery of their pre-marital sexual activity. These are risks such as ruining one’s marital prospects, banishment, beatings and even death.63 Yet, following this
61 Roger Friedland, Janet Afary, Paolo Gardinali, and Gambria Naslund. "Love in the Middle East: The contradictions of romance in the Facebook World." Critical Research on Religion 4, no. 3 (2016): 245. 62 Friedland, Afary, Gardinaly and Naslund, “Love in the Middle East,” 246. 63 Friedland, Afary, Gardinaly and Naslund, “Love in the Middle East,” 249.
21 research, young, religious single women are knowingly engaging in risky intimate behaviours.64
2.6 Love and Sexuality in Lebanon.
Qualitative research into the conception of love was done before among twenty-one students at the American University of Beirut by Michael Oghia. These students had different religions, and some were born in other countries than Lebanon. All of them desired romantic love, they highly valuated love and saw it as an essential to human existence, but it was somewhat difficult for them to define romantic love.65
The informants frequently connected love to Western cultural ideas of individualism, which clashed with Lebanese honour, shame, family collectivity and traditions. Love was also seen in this research as a luxury by the informants, linked to social class. Students connected love to marriage and contradictions of society and the family.66 The conclusion of the research states that more research into love is needed to understand how demographic shifts and exposure to transnational media, modernization, globalization affect the family and the individuals.67 This research aims to do this with a narrow research group of Shia students and a focus on religion and sexuality. This research is also different in that the Lebanese University attracts a very different student body than the American University of Beirut since the study fees are much higher in the AUB.
Two relevant qualitative studies are conducted into sexual activity among students in Lebanon. The latest is a study of Salameh and others in 2016 to 3384 students in seventeen different universities in Lebanon with a response rate of 79,8% on the questions on sexuality. This study showed a big difference in sexual activity between women and men. A percentage of 85,1% of women and 34.8% of men stated never to have had sexual activity. For males, 29.9% had tried it, and 35.3% were regularly sexually active. For females, 5.3% had tried it, and 9.6% were regularly active.68
64 Friedland, Afary, Gardinaly and Naslund, “Love in the Middle East,” 252. 65 Oghia, "Romantic love in the Arab world," 299. 66 Ibidem. 67 Oghia, "Romantic love in the Arab world," 300. 68 Salameh et al., “Attitudes towards and practice of sexuality,” 233.
22
Previous research into Lebanese students from Salameh and Barbour in 2007 showed that most males (73.3%) and some females (21.8%) admitted having been engaged in sexual contact. These findings are in line with the findings of the research in 2016 in the argument that a smaller number of women than men are being sexually active. This contradicts the idea of Friedland and others in paragraph six that both men and women are as sexually active in Muslim countries.
In this study, most men had used condoms (86.1%), but women had generally not used any contraceptives (75.6%).69 A big problem revealed in this research is a low percentage of sexually active students who used condoms for protection. The other research showed that mostly women lack knowledge and use of contraceptives. Sexually transmitted diseases are commonly reported in Lebanon, and young people do not always have the information needed to take responsibility for sexual health and safe sex.70
Barbour and Salameh conclude that hymen protection, and traditional values of chastity are very important in Lebanese society and society encourages sexual experience for males but prohibits these for females.71 However, this does not exclude women from sexual activity as previously named studies show that premarital sex is existing among females as well in Lebanon.
The research from 2016 of Salameh and others showed that experiences of sexual activity were more common among students in higher age groups and especially among those from private universities. Furthermore, sexual activity was more common for students with higher economic status, for students who were cigarette and water pipe smokers and for students who were problematic alcohol and tobacco consumers.72 The region had an effect too on sexual activity. Students living in the Mount Lebanon region were most sexually active. Beirut was the second region in which experiences of sexual activity were more common, with 38,9% of students who had engaged in sexual activity or who were regularly sexually active. 73
69 Barbour and Salameh, “University Students regarding Contraception,” 387–399. 70 Salameh et al., “Attitudes towards and practice of sexuality,” 234. 71 Barbour and Salameh, “University Students regarding Contraception,” 396. 72 Salameh et al., “Attitudes towards and practice of sexuality,” 240. 73 Salameh et al., “Attitudes towards and practice of sexuality,” 241.
23
Factors like ethnic groups, religion, religiosity, peer pressure and norms and parental monitoring are not included in these studies. These factors could affect attitude and practice of sexual activity and remain to be studied in future projects.74 This research aims to elaborate on religiosity and parental/familial monitoring, so it fills some of the missing information which is stipulated in the research of Salameh and others.
2.7 Politics, Social Movements and Mass Media
As seen in this theoretical framework, the concepts of love, religion, sexuality and family all intersect and dependent on many variables. This part of the theoretical framework aims to describe other variables that affect religion, family, love and sexuality. These variables are Lebanon’s political environment, social movements and mass media.
To understand politics in Lebanon, it is necessary to comprehend the system of law, which is divided into two different sets of laws. The first set of laws consists of civil, secular laws, dealing with all matters other than family concerns. The second set of laws involves the personal status codes based on religion and sects. These are dealing with family issues like divorce, inheritance, guardianship, adoption and custody of children. Each religious sect can administer its own affairs and also legislate, judge and carry out sentences.75 Lebanon’s great diversity in religions is not only visible in its laws, but is also integrated into the political system. The president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shia Muslim. 76
The regional sectarian and political polarization causes many challenges. The Syrian war and the influx of refugees have intensified political and sectarian tensions, but local factors have been playing a crucial role to ensure the Lebanese system is exceptionally flexible.77 Among these factors are shared socio-economic interests and local and foreign donors who intervened in the refugee crisis with efforts to reduce differences.78 Political actors also act
74 Salameh et al., “Attitudes towards and practice of sexuality,” 245. 75 Lamia Rustum Shehadeh, "Gender-relevant legal change in Lebanon." Feminist Formations 22, no.3 (2010): 211- 212 76 Anna Hager, “Lebanon is more than a notion, more than a country. It is a message: Lebanon as a model of Christian-Muslim relations,” Journal of Beliefs & Values (2017): 1. 77 Lorenzo Trombetta, “Willy-Nilly we have to live side by side; relationships between locals and newcomers at the Syria-Lebanon Border” in Lebanon Facing The Arab Uprisings; Constraints and adaptation, ed. Rosita Di Peri, and Daniel Meier (London: Palgrave MacMillan 2017), 16. 78 Trombetta, “Relationships Between Locals and Newcomers,” 31.
24 on bridging sectarian divides, to avoid a new civil war breaking out. Hezbollah holds regular dialogue sessions with the Christian-based Kataeb Party, even though Israel supports them.79 Furthermore, despite tensions between Hezbollah and the Sunni Future Movement, Saad Hariri, the Sunni premier elected in 2016, invited Hezbollah to join his government and they agreed. This collaboration of both sides restrained supporters of both parties to pick up arms.
During my fieldwork, there was a beginning of a new tension between the Shia and Sunni parties. The Sunni prime minister, Saad Hariri, resigned under opposing pressures of Saudi- Arabia and Hezbollah, using a video of his resignation speech that was taped in Saudi- Arabia. It took him some time to return to Lebanon, where he suspended his resignation. The reason why this all happened remains vague but is linked to disagreement about Hezbollah and Iran’s power in Lebanon, alleged threats to Hariri’s life and pressure from Saudi-Arabia. It could have caused trouble in Lebanon, but it remained peaceful.
There is now an emergence of civil society groups and grassroots organizations. These consist out of student activists and workers who advocate for a non-sectarian platform in opposition to sectarian-based politics.80 Many students in my research also exclaimed they wanted politics without sectarian divides. A lawyer told me however that she thought this would never be possible since the entire law is based on sectarian divides and one single civil law would not work in Lebanon.
Moreover, Lebanon is witnessing several other political problems which are not directly linked to sectarian divides. These are large-scale corruption, the so-called washta, slow economic growth, lack of job creation, weak public institutions, high levels of youth unemployment and the Syrian crisis and its effects on the Lebanese society.81
A current feature of politics in Lebanon is the discussion concerning women’s rights.82 Changes in discriminating laws are taking place, but gender equality in law is not yet
79 Jeffrey G. Karam “Beyond Sectarianism: Understanding Lebanese Politics through a Cross-Sectarian Lens” Middle East Brief, no. 107 (2017): 5. 80 Karam “Beyond Sectarianism,” 6. 81 Ghassan Dibeh, Ali Fakih, and Walid Marrouch, "Decision to Emigrate amongst the Youth in Lebanon." International Migration 56, no. 1 ( February 2018)4. 82 Rosita Di Peri, and Daniel Meier, “Introduction” in Lebanon Facing The Arab Uprisings; Constraints and adaptation, ed. Rosita Di Peri, and Daniel Meier (London: Palgrave MacMillan 2017), 3.
25 achieved. The sixteenth of August the parliament agreed to abolish Penal Code article 522, which stated that a rapist could not be punished if he married the victim. Saad Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister, tweeted about this: “All these steps are part of a journey that we will pursue along with the Lebanese woman until she gains all her rights” 83. This means, there is still a journey to be followed before women are on equal foot with men in law.
A great example of this inequality is the gender of judges. All judges in religious laws are men, many of whom are immersed in a patriarchal ideology and are therefore reluctant to rule in women’s favour. It is only recently that female lawyers and judges have been able to criticize discriminatory laws with the help of activists and women organizations.84 A rise of feminist and social movements, globalization and socio-economic changes contribute to new sexual discourses characterized by openness. However, sexuality in Lebanon is still regulated by patriarchal and religious beliefs. 85
The outcomes of this research are affected by politics and social organizations, but also by mass media and globalization. Because of mass media, international TV shows became very popular in the Arab world, like Latin-American telenovelas, Egyptian melodramas and Hindu series. Another new phenomenon was talent shows. A show called Staracademy, captured the biggest audience in Arab television history in 2004, which was 80 percent of all viewers in some countries. This kind of entertainment attracts a larger and more diverse audience than that of previous television programming which was mostly news and sports. Now, the audience also includes women and youth. These television shows have caused big ongoing debates in the Arab world concerning the role of Islam in public life, Western cultural influence, political participation and gender relations.86
Another important aspect of popular culture is music. In 2003, Lebanese singer, Nancy Ajram shocked many people with her new video clip, Akhasmak ‘ah (I will taunt you), because of explicit erotic dancing and sexual appeal.87 The rise of conservatism in every
83 UN Women, “Parliament Repeals Rape Law” UN Women, accessed September 18, 2017, http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2017/8/news-lebanon-parliament-repeals-rape-law 84 Shehadeh, "Gender-relevant legal change in Lebanon," 225. 85 Azar,“Lebanese Women and Sexuality,” 13. 86 Marwan M. Kraidy, Communication, Society and Politics: Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public life (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 2. 87 Elisabeth Cestor, “Music and Television in Lebanon” in Music and Media in the Arab World, ed. Michael Aaron Frishkopf (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2010), 104.
26
Arab country is interfering with the reception of music videos. The widening gap between conservatives and liberals leads to harsher critics than before. 88 Though the new generation of singers is very popular and most of them gained considerable power because of their wealth. This may be best shown by Haifa Wehbe, the most popular and controversial singer from Lebanon, who is the subject of crude jokes. However, she and other famous female singers enjoy a rising social status in public life in Lebanon, where such recognition outside the music business is not common for women.89
The increase of conservatism has much effect on ideas on sexuality and love in Lebanon. Contemporary Muslim fundamentalism has focused on patriarchal hierarchy, by creating a more gender-segregated society in which women are subjects of men. Fundamentalists see male supremacy as ordained by God and female bodies in public space as sinful, and threatening to the social order, morality and societal well-being. This results in strong ideas of compulsory veiling and limiting women’s public mobility, like in schools and jobs.90 In addition to this focus of control on women, sexuality remains one of the cornerstones through which Islamic ideas are enforced.91 Hezbollah remains to have a strong influence in Dahiyeh, the neighbourhood where most informants live.
Another influence on love and sexuality is the internet. A study into romance in Muslim countries of Sotoudeh, Friedland and Afary showed that internet had become an important vehicle for the pursuit of romance in the Muslim world. However, the data indicated that Facebook users who used the cyberspace to breach restrictive norms, tend to be the same people who breach them in real life. It turned out that men had more advantages of the possibilities of the internet as a romantic cyberspace than women. Women, however, make more use of the internet as a romantic space when being outside of their own country and living in the West.92
88 Cestor, “Music and Telivision,” 104. 89 Cestor, “Music and Television,” 104-105. 90 Homa Hoodfar and Ana Ghoreishian. “Morality policing and the Public Sphere: Women reclaiming their Bodies and Rights” in Sexuality in Muslim contexts; Restrictions and Resistance, ed. Anissa Hélie and Homa Hoodfar (London and New York: Zed Books, 2012), 260. 91 Anissa Hélie, “Introduction,” in Sexuality in Muslim contexts; Restrictions and Resistance, ed. Anissa Hélie and Homa Hoodfar (London and New York: Zed Books, 2012), 2. 92 Ramina Sotoudeh, Roger Friedland, and Janet Afary, "Digital romance: the sources of online love in the Muslim world," Media, Culture & Society 39, no.3 (2017): 437.
27
Mobile phones have a big impact in changing the environment for romance. Bowen, Green and James show this for young adults in Morocco, and Walter shows this idea for a Shia community in Pakistan.9394 In these studies, both research groups used mobile phones to create a space to have a more romantic relationship, meanwhile living in a more restrictive environment about love and sexuality.
In Pakistan, this new phenomenon of phones was integrated into the system of arranged marriages. Phones gave women the opportunity to integrate ideas of romance within the relationship with their future spouse. For example, after getting a phone from their husbands after the nikah, the marriage contract, they will stay in touch with each other by sending messages and pictures. The nikah is not always directly followed by the shadi, the social marriage celebration, so the phones give them a way to contact each other before the shadi.95 In the article of Bowen, Green and James mobile phones are used by young adults to have a love relationship which is not inside a marriage perspective. So, as seen by comparing these two settings, mobile phones have great impact on love relations and sexuality, but in different ways in different communities.
So, love and sexuality are not integrated in the same way in every society and need to be interpreted in local contexts.96 These concepts intertwine with the political environment, globalization, social movements and technological changes. This research focusses on family and religion, but all the aspects named in this chapter will be kept in mind as possibly affecting premarital love and sexuality, religious ties and family ties among Shia students.
93 Walter, Anna‐Maria, "Love at Your Fingertips." German Research 38, no.2 (2016): 6-11. 94 Donna Lee Bowen, Alexia Green and Christiaan James, “Globalization, mobile phones and forbidden romance in Morocco.” The Journal of North African Studies 13 (2008): 238. 95 Walter, “Love at Your Fingertips." 9-10. 96 Ibidem.
28
3. Religiosity, love and sexuality
“People are going non-religious here. You have no idea. Many women who wear the hijab here are forced to by their parents” Husseyn (20 yeasrs old).
It was an unexpected result that many informants did not follow the same ideas about religion as their parents, even though they described themselves as Shia. This description was more related to descendancy. Many informants informed me at the beginning of interviews that they were Shia, but not religious. When I first heard this, I did not know how to respond on this since I was planning to do my research with students from within the Shia religion and the effects of religion on love and sexuality. But in the end, I found out that this too is a result, and I should not neglect these students. Religiosity is an essential aspect of this research because it has not only significant influence on the data on religion but also on the data considering love and sexuality. Religiosity has also an effect on the relationship with the nuclear family, but this will be more widely elaborated in the next chapter.
This chapter will focus on religiosity and the effects on love and sexuality among students. Firstly, the religiosity of the informants will be elaborated. Secondly, ideas and general experiences of love of the students will be examined. Thirdly, the relation students see between religion and love will be explored. The fourth paragraph is dedicated to ideas of mut’a marriages since this religious phenomenon affected students’ experiences and ideas of love and sexuality.
3.1 Changing Religiosities
Choosing a different vision of religion than their parents, was a prevalent matter for the students in my research. Eleven out of nineteen informants had formed entirely different religious beliefs than their parents. This change will now be more widely explored and described for female and male students separately.
From the ten female informants, five women had different beliefs from their parents. Imane became an atheist. Her parents were very shocked when they heard this news. Sukaina described herself as a deist, which meant that she believes in God but does not follow a religion. Ghada and Nour had similar ideas but did not call these deism. Nour wore
29 the hijab, but only due to the pressure of her parents. Ghada had a similar story but took the hijab of a year ago, which made her parents very sad and was a difficult thing for Ghada to do. The parents of Ghada, Nour and Sukaina, don’t know that they have left the religion of Islam.
Hala had a remarkable story that she became atheist because of her parents, but that she returned to Islam after she saw Imam Ali: “I became an atheist because of my parents. They make you scared of God! They threaten you with God. But God is fair, not violent. When I doubted my religion, I asked for a sign to see whether this was the right choice and then I saw Imam Ali and another day I suddenly felt the need to pray. My sister was shocked. God listens to you.”
The other five women all prayed and fasted. They saw themselves to be of the same beliefs as their father. Three of them had something to remark on their religiosity. Maryam declared that she became more religious by starting to wear the abaya and now she believed that she should be more dedicated in her prayers. She said she prayed out of habbit now rather than the requirement of giving God the gratefulness he deserves. Yanna wanted to change her religiosity and religious behaviour and wanted to start wearing the hijab.
The other two religious Shia women, Mouna and Nesrine did not remark something on their religious beliefs but found some of the rules of their religion too strict. Mouna said that it’s not good to marry before love even though religion requires this in her eyes. She claimed that it is essential to feel how a man’s hug feels before you marry. Nesrine said that kissing on the lips before marriage should be fine, however this is not readily accepted in her beliefs.
Jade, Karim and Kamal, were the three out of nine men that seem to follow the religion of their parents, but they all saw themselves as not completely fulfilling God’s will. In Karim’s case, because he drinks alcohol and is sexually active. Kamal declared that he doesn’t pray even though he should. Jade said that he made a small mistake by kissing women.
Of the eight students that seem to follow the same ideas of religion as their parents, six stated that they had to improve themselves in their relationship with God. This focus on
30 change in dedication was less likely to be seen with informants that did no longer follow the religion of their parents. Probably due to the fact that their relationship with God became less strict or there was no relation with God anymore in the case of atheists.
More men than women expressed different religious beliefs to those of their parents. These were six out of nine men. Amir and Fadi became agnostic. Fadi, previously a Hezbollah member, became agnostic after realizing Hezbollah brainwashed him. Amir became agnostic after studying geography and finding out about Darwin. Husseyn became an atheist. His foreign girlfriend had an influence on this since they debated on religion. He kept his lack of religious beliefs secret for his family.
Ahmed had an interesting interpretation of his belief in God, which was to see believing in God as an insurance: “I believe in God, but it doesn’t matter whether you believe in God. But it’s better to believe in God because you will not lose anything. If you don’t believe in God, what will happen? Someone created us, so I believe in God.” He declared not to pray anymore and that he did not like the traditional ideas of his parents and neighbourhood. However, he thought that it was a good idea that sex before marriage was prohibited in religion. Hadi and Mahmood have a more convinced believe in God but have their own way of believing. They both pray, but Mahmood has his own way of praying, and Hadi believes he sees God in people.
In total eleven out of nineteen informants developed different ideas about religion than their parents. Two informants became atheist, one informant became an atheist but returned to Shia religion of her own volition. Further another informant said to be a deist, two claimed that they became agnostic and the other five informants still believe in God but found another way than their parents to deal with it. The other eight informants did not claim to have experienced a change away from the beliefs of the religion of their parents.
From this paragraph, it can be concluded that religiosity of Shia students is not stable and changes over time. The identification of being Shia is not related to real religious beliefs, but rather to the father’s religion. All students had or a period of loosening themselves from their parent's religious ideas, or visions on religious beliefs that contradict with their parents’ beliefs without rejecting parental beliefs or they had something to improve in the
31 relationship with their religion. This means that all students had a period of reflection on Shia religion or they were still reflecting on religion and religious ideas.
3.2 What is Love?
“Love is the best thing ever. Without love, life is empty. It’s respecting all of his flaws.” Yanna (19 years old)
“Love is to have strong emotions that make you feel shaky, acting dumb and just let you think about one person.” Imane (21 years old)
“Love is looking at her and knowing how she feels and what she wants without asking. It’s taking care of each other.” Karim (21 years old)
Love is described in many ways, but most informants reflect on love as strong feelings, emotions and in a description of different essential values between two people who love each other. These values vary from loyalty, to respect, trust, making time for each other, taking care of each other, feeling comfortable with each other. Only Nour claimed that she did not know whether she believed in love because her experiences with men were bad. Three informants described love as a chemical reaction, and two students described love as a combination of the heart and the brains. A very different perspective of love was the view of Fadi, who said: “Love is something sacred. It is a meditation and prayer between two souls.”
Most informants had experiences of love. One man had not a lot of experience in love but said that he loved two times, but he did not tell the women to not lose the women as friends. Two female informants declared they had not experienced a relationship or real love, but one of them said she lived something beautiful, which she later described as a romance. These were occasional stories because all the other sixteen informants declared to have experienced real love at least once in the form of one or more relationships. The last relation was always described as the best.
Informants met their partner and ones they loved or fell in love with in their villages, online or by friends in common. After the first contact students declared they would mostly stay in touch with the persons they liked by using mobile phones. They would go on dates to the
32 mall, restaurants and the cinema. Sometimes when relationships lasted, they also came over to each other's houses. If relationships finished, it was for many different reasons, but a reason that came back several times for female and male informants was that the man was not ready to settle. A man in Lebanon needs to afford a house and a car. Plus, he should be able to afford food for the future kids to get married, and he should bring his future wife on dates and give her presents. This is not possible for students like Jade; “I broke up with her because I could not do all of this (the things described before). I could only support her family a bit, but not also take her to the cinema and buy presents. I am still a student. I also have a job, but it does not pay well, plus I also need to support my family. She deserves someone who could give her all of this.”
3.3 Love and Religion
The question about the connection between love and religion seems only relevant for the students that still believe in God. However, in the coming chapter, this research will show that religious ideas also have an influence on non-religious/non-believing informants. This influence depends on whether students are atheist or agnostic since agnostic students still doubt whether there is a God, so they keep in mind the judgment of God and atheists don’t think about this anymore. However agnostic informants doubt the existence of God, they have a more open morality towards love than their convinced believing students. Agnostic Nour said: “If there is a God, he won’t put you in hell for love. If you are a good person, you get to heaven.” Atheist Husseyn claimed that he felt guilty a lot when he was a Muslim and that atheism optimizes his experiences and that he can do whatever he wants now.
“There is a right way to love in religion. When he sees you, he has to go to your father to see whether you have the same mentality and can get engaged” Fatima. For this religious respondent, love in religion is ultimately connected with marriage. However, she did declare to have a boyfriend with whom she was not yet engaged, but she did not see that this relationship contradicted her religion. This was because she was still studying. He was waiting for her to finish her studies to get engaged. This example shows that what students think is the right religious behaviour, it is not always practised in this way.
Most answers about the connection of love and religion were focused on religious lines for physical contact. Three informants, Hadi, Maryam and agnostic Amir, referred to suras in
33 the Quran to say that love is encouraged by religion. Three other religious informants, Karim, Hala and Nesrine, say similar things which point out a favourable position of God towards love, but without reference to suras. Five of these six answers were followed up with limitations for physical contact, and the other informants’ answers were just focused on limitations for physical contact. This shows that limitations of physical activity play the most prominent part in the way religion affects students’ experiences and ideas of love and sexuality.
3.4 Physical Contact and Religion
Four out of ten women declared to have had more sexual activity than kissing. Two of these women had a bad first experience with sex which was not entirely their will. Nesrine was touched by her boyfriend which she enjoyed, but she also wanted it to stop. She got touched while she did not want this and sent pictures she didn’t want to, but she felt pressured to send. Imane was raped by her ex-boyfriend. Imane and Nesrine both told me they had no place to go and no-one to talk to about this. ‘Friends would judge me’ said Nesrine and ‘a psychologist is expensive, and people will think you are crazy.’ Nesrine was not continuing sexual activity because she agrees with her religion, think it is wrong. Imane is an atheist woman and did find help with a psychologist. She continued sexual experience slowly with her new boyfriend. She considers a hymen surgery because she said: “I want to lose my virginity consciously.”
The other two women who had experienced sexual activity were Ghada and Hala. Hala is the woman who became Shia again after becoming an atheist because of her parents. She had only experienced anal and oral sex. She told me she wanted to keep penetration as something special for after the wedding even though it was hard for her because she wanted it. Ghada had “lost the v-card, the virginity card” because her boyfriend convinced her to have a mut’a marriage. Ghada lost her virginity when she was still wearing the hijab, which she is not wearing anymore. Both these women had their sexual experiences in a mut’a arrangement with their boyfriends. Ghada was convinced by her ex-boyfriend to do this, and Hala convinced her Druze boyfriend to do the mut’a. Hala is still together with this man and is planning for the permanent marriage with him. Ghada broke up with the man she had sex with and is now liking sex more with her current boyfriend.
34
So sexual activity before marriage is seen by some women as okay in the form of a mut’a marriage. Ghada, however, became less religious because of the bad experience she had with her ex since he convinced her to do mut’a in the wrong religious way and he cheated on her. Hala is having her religious boundary, which is waiting for the official marriage for penetration. And Imane continued to have sex, but she is not Islamic anymore. So, the women with sexual experience are not religious anymore or saw/see sexual activity in a religious perspective of mut’a as not a wrong thing to do.
Another conclusion which can be drawn from the sexual experiences of the women is that the female students are prone to sexual harassment and sexual violence. This is also to be seen in other stories of informants. Sukaina, a deist, never had sexual activity but declared to watch porn and declared to have masturbated. She got forcedly kissed once by a boy she dated to please her parents. She told her parents, and after this, she did not have to go out with him again because kissing is not allowed. Even though she had a bad relationship with her parents, she could find their help, unlike the other informants who experienced unwanted physical actions and were not able to find similar support.
Three out of ten women had an experience where a man touched/kissed them without them willing this. This is a high number, especially when you consider a fourth story that did not come to sexual abuse because she escaped. This is the story of Nour. She was asked for mut’a by three guards in the building where she was living. This made her feel unsafe, and her parents did not believe her till someone else told them it was true. She also got almost abused by a friend of her relatives. She hit him with an iPad and escaped. Another time she got almost sexually abused when she was waiting for her friend with the brother of her friend. These stories show that sexual harassment and violence is high, and women cannot easily find a place to go with sexual harassment or aggression. Furthermore, several informants declared that in Lebanon there is very little sex education, which means that protecting your borders and lines is also not learned in schools.
Unreligious informants have a more open sexual moral than their fellow students who are still with the religion of their parents. However, the severity of sexual borders differs also in these groups. This was most clearly in a discussion between Yanna and Maryam, two women that still followed the religion of their parents. Maryam is one of the two women
35 wearing the veil and an abaya and Yanna is the woman without a veil, but who stated she wanted to start wearing the veil.
Maryam (18 years old): “Touching hands leads to many feelings. Holding hands may lead to kissing. It’s forbidden.”
Yanna (19 years old): “That’s good but also a shame. It’s a good feeling that doesn’t hurt.”
Maryam: “But people should be married.”
Yanna: “No! Holding hands is something innocent and sweet. Why do you think like that?”
Maryam: “Well if you end up with him, why not wait? It’s exciting to wait. When you are engaged, you can hug tightly and hold hands.”
Yanna: “I haven’t felt I have done wrong by kissing and holding hands.”
Maryam: “I love the mentality of feelings before physical contact.”
For Maryam and Fatima, the more religious women both wearing the abaya, physical borders were stricter than for others. Their borders did even go beyond touching. They also declared they had to keep their voice and behaviour decent to not attract man. ‘I can’t do sweet talking to a boy’ said Maryam.
“If Islam had a gun, it killed me. I mostly regret having sex. But I am still doing it. An instinct is an instinct. We need it.” Kamal (24 years old)
“I made little mistakes by holding hands and kissing but having sexual relations before marriage is a big mistake.” Jade (22 years old)
“I kissed, but I never did something God is not okay with.” Mahmood (21 years old)
These three quotes show in very different ways that sexual relations before marriage are not just limited for some women, but also for some men. Six out of nine men declared to have had more sexual activity than kissing. Of these six men, three men had the idea that this was not good. Karim told me he had sex, but he didn’t do it anymore since he is with his girlfriend. He declared that sex in the community for men is okay, but he did not agree and said that in religion it is prohibited for both. Amir declared that his girlfriend made a move
36 and seduced him when he had his first sexual experience. He said that it was not right that this happened, but he couldn’t resist her. Kamal declared to always feel guilty after having sex, but he declared that this guilt feeling gave him the awareness that he is still a good person who knows what is right and wrong, so he did not mind doing it again. Karim, Kamal and Amir their experiences of sexual activity were not in the form of mut’a.
Of these three guys, Amir is agnostic, and Karim and Kamal declared to have the same religious beliefs as their parents but not follow every rule. The other three guys who had sexual relations were agnostic Fadi, atheist Husseyn and Hadi with his own beliefs about God. Fadi and Husseyn declared to only have had oral sex. Husseyn felt uncomfortable with the subject, so I did not ask him why he did not move to more sexual activity than oral sex. For Fadi, this was in a mut’a marriage with a divorced woman who was poorly treated by her ex-boyfriend. Fadi was very religious but turned to be non-religious after he saw he was brainwashed by Hezbollah. He would be open for a sexual experience with the woman he is dating now. For Hadi, his sexual experiences were in mut’a marriages. He claims to be religious but has his own point of view on it, since he declared to see God in people.
Religion seemed to influence the male students’ sexuality less than the female students’ sexuality. For the men, following religious beliefs of parents, did not lead to less sexual activity as did for the women. Also mut’a seemed less important for sexually active men. Only two out of six male students that had sexual experiences declared that this took place in a mut’a arrangement. Mut’a offered these two men a way to have legal sexual relations. This was also to be seen for the women Hala and Ghada. But on the contrary, there is an effect of religion that is not to be seen in the interviews of the women. Three male informants had experiences that came with guilt. Two of them stopped this sexual contact because of guilt feeling, but the other one of these three informants dealt with this guilt feeling in an entirely different way which was having more sex because he liked this feeling of guilt to remind him of the existence of his religious beliefs.
Ahmed, the man who believes in God, because he sees God as an insurance, never kissed or touched a woman. This was not from a religious perspective, but he had never felt he wanted this and never experienced answered love. However, he had a strong opinion which was against sex before marriage, because of pregnancy and community reasons. The two
37 informants that had experienced kissing women, but not had sex, were Mahmood and Jade. They both were religious and strongly saw sex as something prohibited before marriage. They neither ever considered mut’a. Mahmood saw mut’a as a bad thing, and Jade never considered it as an option, since he preferred women who were never married, and he saw mut’a as something for widows and divorced women.
3.5 Mut’a
In these results, we saw different opinions about mut’a. These views varied widely from disapproving to approving, but with many different conditions. Some informants, like Hala and Hadi, saw mut’a as something that could be done between two persons, while most other informants described it as a temporary marriage that needs to be sealed by a Sheikh. Ghada was convinced by her ex-boyfriend that the mut’a they did, without the consent of a Sheikh, was correct, but later, she realized this was wrong.
There was also a significant variety of ideas whether this idea of temporary marriage is only for widows and divorced women or whether it was also okay for virgin women. This comes together with the difference in ideas about whether mut’a was for sex or also for legal kissing. Fadi did a mut’a marriage with the woman he first fell in love with, so they could kiss and hold hands. Nour declared that men asked her for mut’a marriages so they could just hold her hand. Mahmood stated it was a purely sexual contract.
All informants declared that mut’a comes with a specific period and with something the man gives to the women. The difference in this were the ideas of the gift. Some said it could be something rather small like a pen or a Quran, but from the story of Hadi, it became clear that it can also be about money. “A friend of mine introduced me to women who work in this domain (mut’a marriage). The women called me to arrange friends and guys for them, and these women would give me money for helping them. The women told me I could do it for free, but I didn’t feel like it.”
Others like Sukaina strongly rejected mut’a: “It’s better to make a sin than to make mut’a.” Sukaina stated she is agnostic, but still in this answer you can see that religious ideas still influence her. Imane who is an atheist said she would agree with mut’a if this would mean that a guy could date her. So, in the visions of mut’a, you see that students who made a
38 religious change, still negotiate with the most common religious norms in their daily lives and relations.
3.6 Interim Conclusion
All informants thought they could experience love before marriage and most of them did experience it. Love before marriage did never conflict with religion. The boundaries for love before marriage, where boundaries in physical contact. The idea that having sex before marriage is not allowed is something most religious informants agreed with and felt wrong if they did do it. However, if they believed in mut’a and sex was in a mut’a context, it was less of a problem. The non-religious informants, however, did also show a connection with religious ideas of love and sexuality before marriage.
Men had more sexual experiences than women. For men, it was six out of nine and for the women four out of ten. However, the men in this research were older, so we cannot say from this research that male Shia students are more sexually active than their female students. However, we can say female students, if sexually active, had sex in a mut’a context or in a situation they did not want it. For men, sexual activity before marriage did not necessarily need to be in a mut’a context. Four women experienced physical contact against their will, but there was just one story in this research of a situation where a male informant did not want sex but did had sexual activity. However, he was seduced by his partner, so this is different from the stories of the women about sexual harassment.
Few informants thought that sexual activity, especially penetration, before marriage was okay. The idea that sex before marriage is bad, is mostly projected to God’s will, but also with the reason of pregnancy or with the reason of bad ideas from society. For the sexual non-active informants there is a clear line in students who think holding hands and touching is not good and others who think kissing is okay. This is mostly seen for the women. Jade was the only male informant who thought that kissing and touching hands are little mistakes.
39
4. Family, Love and Sexuality
The explored religiosity of the students is tightly connected with family influence on love and sexuality. The interconnection of love and sexuality was measured by questions about expectations, rules and advice from their families, how they coop with these and whether they can talk with their family about love and sexuality. The fact that all informants live with one or both parents makes that they all have some degree of parental guidance.
4.1 Bad parental relations and 3ib shuma elik (shame on you)!
Four out of ten women did not talk with their parents about love. Three of them had developed different religious beliefs from those of their parents, and only one still followed the religious life of her parents. This last informant, Nesrine, said that she could talk with her parents about love, but that they did not open the subject to not make her feel uncomfortable. The other three informants all had poor relationships with their parents. Sukaina even said: “They are assholes.”.
A bad relationship with parents intersects with the change in students ideas about religion and how much they talk with parents about love. This was demonstrated by three women, Nour, Hala and Sukaina, who were three out of five female informants who disagreed with their parent's ideas of religion, had bad relationships with them and did rarely talk with them about love and sex. This difference in beliefs probably made it less valuable for these three students to talk about love with their parents since their views are so different. As Hala, the woman who returned to Shi’ism in her own volition after becoming an atheist, said: “My parents would be okay with talking about love, but my opinions about religion are very different from theirs.”
The parents of all three stipulated rules about love and sexual behaviour, but all three claimed not to do anything with the advice of their parents. Nour said: “I can’t get out the house without a lecture of my dad. My parents tell me not to get close to anyone and stay virgin till marrying. I don’t like their advice. They yell and fight. I have to save up, so I can run away when I find someone openminded.” So, because their advice came in the form of rules, the discussion was not productive. In the case of Sukaina, her sister arranged her a date with a man under pressure from her parents who thought that she was a lesbian. After
40 this experience, Sukaina always told her parents very clearly to mind their own business. Hala said she ignored the advice of her parents because she felt it was unwanted interference in her relationship with her boyfriend.
Nesrine was the only informant with a good relationship with her parents who claimed to not talk with any of them. She said that she could, but that her parents did not start the conversation not to make her feel uncomfortable. She stated that she takes their advice and rules, but within limits. “I have to respect what my parents want, but if they told me not to see him (her boyfriend), I would fight.” So, having a good relationship with parents obviously helps students to take advice as will be shown later in this chapter.
Four out of nine male students did not speak with their parents about love. All four of them considered themselves not to be close to their parents. Three of them had different religious beliefs than their parents and only one, Jade, stated he was following the same religious beliefs as his parents. Although Jade was not talking with his parents about love, they did discover he was sexually active. “One day my family saw me with love bites, so they knew I had sex without even telling them. They asked me ‘Shu hayda? (What is that?)’ and I told them; ‘Shu muskil? (What’s the problem?) Every man can do it.’ My father was angry and told me ‘3ib shuma elik! (shame on you!) You are a bad guy!’ I did not respond, and it did nothing to me. He was irrational. It had no influence.”
However, all four informants did not talk with their parents about love and sex, three of them declared that their parents had set rules. Amir and Ahmed were told not to have sex before marriage. Amir’s parents said this in an interesting way: “Treat her like a sister and nothing more.”. Jade was told not to play with women and to be serious in a relationship. The other informant, Husseyn, had a poor relationship with his parents and because this hurt him, he was not open to discussing this subject during the interview. He did, however, tell that his parents were very religious, and he could under no circumstances tell them that he became agnostic.
Of the nineteen students eight did not talk with their parents about love, of whom seven of these declared to have a bad relationship with their parents and six of them had different religious beliefs to those of their parents. It seems for these students that a bad relationship and not following the religion of their parents did not help the students to communicate
41 with their parents about love and sexuality. No direct relations can be found between sexual activity and not speaking about love.
This study shows that different religious beliefs between students and their parents are a major factor in the failure of communication with parents about sexual behaviour and love. Also, bad student-parent relationships are a contributing factor to a lack of communication about love and sexuality, and furthermore these disturbed bonds cause a lack of acceptance of parental advice.
4.2 Let’s talk about love, but not about everything.
Six female students had spoken with their mothers about love. Four of these women were part of the five women that still follow the religious beliefs of their parents. These four women were not sexually active, and their behaviour was in line with their parents’ main rule, this being no sex before marriage. Fatima and Meryem also agreed with the idea of their parents that they should not touch and kiss a man. These were also the only two women in this research who were wearing the veil and abaya. Yanna and Mouna did kiss and hold hands with men, even though their parents did not agree with this. They did not tell this to their parents.
Ghada and Imane were sexually active and both spoke with their respective mothers about love. Ghada came to talk about love with her mother but would never consider talking about her sexual activity. She was a woman that had sexual relations in a mut’a arrangement, and after this, she could not relate to Shia religion anymore. Her parents did not yet know about this religious change. Imane was the only student who was able to talk openly and joke about dating with her whole family, including her mother and father. Perhaps a factor in this feeling of communication is that Imane had been raped. “The second guy I dated, raped me to let me be with him forever. He threatened me to tell everything to my parents and other people. I thought my parents would kill me, if I would tell about the rape, but when he broke up with me, I was so emotional that I had to tell the entire story to my mum. My dad knows, but we never discussed it.”
Women who followed the religious beliefs of their parents were not sexually active. However, for men this was different. Two out of three men that followed the religious
42 beliefs of their parents were sexually active. Kamal discussed this with his parents and Karim hid this information. Kamal’s mother and father are divorced and had different views on this subject. His father told him to do whatever he wants, but to check with the woman whether she was comfortable to have sex with him. His mother found his girlfriend’s shoes in the bedroom and told Kamal to stop having sex and said that God forbids this behaviour. “She says for example: ‘People who have sex before marriage stay with the poor.’”
Five men spoke with their parents about love, of which only Kamal and Hadi also spoke with their parents about sexuality. Hadi, who was no longer having the same religious beliefs as his parents, could talk however freely with his parents. He was having a very good relationship with his father, who allowed him to talk about any topic. “Imam Ali said; ‘If you have a son, treat him like a friend’ My dad does this. I have freedom, but I should not do wrong things, like steeling. My sisters are not allowed to have sex before marriage. It is illegal.”
Mahmood, Karim and Fadi talked with their parents about love but not about sex. Mahmood was not sexually active, so he did not hide anything. Karim and Fadi, however, stated to be sexually active but hid this information for their parents because they knew their parents would not agree. Fadi said about the way he dealt with this hiding of his sexual activity: “I know how to answer their questions.”
Considering the sex of the parent, three of the five male students that spoke about love, spoke with both their mother and father about the topic. Only two claimed to just talk to their mothers about this subject. So, for men, it was more likely than for women that they spoke with their father about these topics, but also for men mothers play a more prominent role than fathers in these conversations.
As for the women, male students who shared their parents’ beliefs put more value in sharing their romantic experiences with their parents than students that had other religious beliefs than their parents. Karim, Meryem and Yanna, all directly emphasised that a love relationship must be open and not in secret. Meryem and Yanna said in a group conversation that it is a good thing for a man you are in a relationship with to tell your parents, so he knows you are serious and you do not do bad things. ‘He will think when he hears that I told my parents about us, that I will not hide things from him either’ Yanna.
43
All informants admitted keeping certain details about their love and sexual activity private from their parents, irrespective of the nature of the relationship. This contradicts the comment of Yanna, Karim and Maryam who emphasised the importance of openness to parents. For example, Yanna did not tell her parents that she kissed a man and Karim was sexually active without telling. Informants that had the same ideas about religion as their parents tended to follow their parents’ rules of no sex before marriage. Especially for the women, but this was also the case for one man.
Mostly all students who had a good relationship with their parents took the advice of their parents into consideration. All eight informants that followed the religious beliefs of their parents had a good bond with their parents and saw their parents’ advice as important. All of them talked about love with their parents too, except Jade and Nesrine. Nesrine declared that she could communicate with her parents, but her parents did never ask, and Jade said his parents were not interested in this part of his life.
Most advice and rules were about physical lines for both men and women. For the women, all parents did mind their daughters to have sex, and three women said literally that their parents told them not to touch a man. Two women were literally told they should mind their voices and talk with a decent voice to not attract men. But not only women experienced restrictions on physical boundaries. Five out of nine men were directed by one of their parents directly or indirectly to have physical boundaries and not have sex before marriage and just for one man, his father thought that sexual activity was okay. However, these results show existing restrictions for man, the male students were more sexually active than their female students.
4.3 Marriage
“My mother expects me to get married. She tells me more than once a week: ‘Inshallah mnefrah fike, Inschallah mnefrah fike.’ My father was happy when I replied once that I did not want to get married: He smiled at me and said; ‘Yeah that’s my girl.’ He wants me to focus on my studies.” Imane (21 years old).
Marriage was a major expectation of parents. Seven informants, four men and three women, directly confirmed this during the interviews. The marriage referred to was not the
44 mut’a, but the long-term marriage. When informants did not directly talk about their parents’ expectations of marriage, most interviews had other parts where an expectation of marriage became clear. For example, as we had seen in previous chapters, the boundary of love before marriage was common among parents’ rules. This boundary involves an indirect expectation of marriage. Three informants said their parents had proposed that future partners should have the same religious beliefs. For three others their parents also had created an image of characteristics of future partners. This parental idea of partner choice emphasises the expectation of marriage. This quote of Mouna gives an example: “He should be from my religion and serious. He needs to be committed and not just passing the time. He needs to be willing to wait till I am in the age of marriage.”
The direct answers of students about parental ideas of marriage were or in favour or against marriage, or both. Parents could, however, internally disagree as shown in the text of Imane. If a parent was not in favour it did not entirely exclude the idea of marriage. As to be seen in this quote of Mahmood: “She (his mother) wants me most of all to become successful. So, I should postpone marriage.”.
Only Hala and Husseyn did not express anything that could be related to marriage expectations of their parents. Though, these informants did both not tell too much about their parents, since they both did not have a good bond with them and had problems with them according to their differences in religion. Both of their parents were strict Shia, so most probably their parents also have expectations of marriage. In conclusion, the quote of Amir seems to be true: “All parents like to have their children married and see grandchildren.”.
Of all the students, only Hala declared to be open for marriage at this moment. Stories about not yet being ready for marriage were more common in this research than students thinking about marriage in a short time. Fatima, Karim, Mahmood and Jade had stories in which they said to not yet be ready for marriage. Yanna and Sukaina did not agree with their parents’ ideas about marriage, and both said they were not sure whether they would marry and that they would also be happy on their own with pets. So, most likely all students’ parents like the students to get married, but this idea of marriage can be rejected or delayed.
45
4.4 Siblings
Fourteen out of eighteen students claimed to talk with their siblings about love and sexuality. Fatima is not included in these results since she is an only child. Nevertheless, she stated that she has a solid relationship with her cousin with whom she could talk about love. The advice and rules given by the students’ siblings varied from clear boundaries to the advice to experience sexuality. The students also varied in whether they were more likely to be the ones who give or receive advice and rules. The advice was also about behaviour, differing from the expected behaviour of the future partner to the behaviour of the students or siblings.
On the question whether informants talked with their siblings about love, six out of nine men responded that they advised their siblings about dating. Jade responded differently to this question and said that his sister helped him in his own love life. Kamal did not talk with his siblings because he did not want them to interfere and Karim did not talk with his siblings because they were too young. In general, respondents with younger siblings did not talk with them about love, except by giving them advice. For example for Maryam, her brothers were younger so she stated that she did not talk with them since they had no right to interfere in her opinion.
Among the female informants, only Nour and Ghada spoke about an advising role for their siblings. Ghada did not know how to reply to her sister if she would ever ask about love and sexuality because she lived in between two realities that did not correspond to each other. On the one hand, Ghada lives in a family where virginity is expected from her and her sister and on the other hand, she does not agree with this idea and is not a virgin anymore, of which her parents are not aware. Nour advised her brothers because she thought they were in wrong relationships. However, she knew that they do not accept her advice because they think she is inferior. In the answers of men who were advising their siblings, there was no such doubt about how to send their message or the way their message would arrive.
Given or received advice tends to go along with the religious beliefs of the adviser and the ideas society has. For example, atheist Husseyn would try to convince his religious sister to get involved in love and Fadi, who stopped being religious after he said to be brainwashed by Hezbollah, even encouraged his sister to have sex: “I would love her to have an
46 experience (of sexual activity).” Not very religious, but in God believing Ahmed said: “I told my sister she cannot love, but it is because of society, not because of religion.”. Almost the same answer was given by agnostic Amir who stated that he told his fifteen-year-old sister not to be home late and do wrong things. In the rest of the interview it is visible that Amir did not say this from a religious perspective, but because of parental rules and society.
For the more religious informants who talked with their siblings, the necessity of basic economic means of the future partner and the rule of no sex before marriage were returning subjects. For example, Mahmood advised his sister to find someone that respects her and can give her a good life, but she should not emphasise on whether he is rich. This advice of Mahmood is similar to the advice Imane got from her brother: “He wants me to find a guy with money and a degree.” This advice reflects on the idea in Lebanon that a man needs to take care of a house, a car and food for the children before marrying. However, as Imane responded to this advice: “For me, the emotional, physical and spiritual bond is more important.” Also, in this interview, Imane stated that her mother wants her to date a doctor rather than a businessman. So, this example shows a conflict between family values of the man as a caretaker and Imane’s expectations of a future partner.
Experiences of interference of siblings were not always positive. Examples of these are the stories of Ghada and Sukaina who both had negative experiences with direct interferences of their siblings. They were both believing, but non-religious. Ghada suffered interference from her brother who tried to break up a relationship she was having. She said this happened at a time when her brother was in “a mad religious phase”. Sukaina experienced interference from her sister when her family incorrectly suspected her of lesbianism. The male students did not address any direct interference of their siblings. Only Jade stated that his older, married sister sometimes checked whether a woman he liked was still single, but this was after he had asked her to do this.
Remarkably, the only three women that had good experiences of talking with their siblings about love were all still following the religion of their parents. This connection could be a coincidence, or it might be related to the fact that they and their siblings are not in different religious positions and this helps them to have good experiences of communication. The other two women, who were still with their parents’ religion, where Meryem and Fatima.
47
Fatima had no siblings, and Meryem only had younger siblings as shown before, so this explains why they did differ on the subject of talking with their siblings even though they also have the same religious beliefs as their parents.
For the male informants, there was no connection between following the religious beliefs of the parents and the experience of talking with siblings. From the three men who were still with the religion of their parents, two of them, Kamal and Karim, did not talk with their siblings. This might be related to the fact that they were both sexually active which is not in line with their parents beliefs. The other male informant following the religious beliefs, had a very positive experience of talking with his siblings, but he stated not to have experienced sexual activity.
So, similar beliefs with parents have a positive effect on students’ conversations with their siblings. The advice of siblings is taken more seriously when having the same religious beliefs, but this also depends on whether students were confirming to family ideas of physical boundaries. Male students in this research take a more advising role, and female informants are more likely to seek advice from their siblings. Also, women are more likely to have experienced direct interference from their siblings.
4.5 Interim conclusion
Parental expectations and their advice are mainly directed to physical limitations for relationships of their children. All female students were prohibited from having sex, but also some men were given this physical limitation, but to a lesser extent. This difference seems to go with the fact that more male students than female students were sexually active. However, there are also other factors like age difference and difference in religiosity that affect experiences of sexual activity, because as seen in the previous chapter, men in this research group were less religious.
The more the religious beliefs of the informants were in line with those of their parents, the more they accepted their parents’ and siblings’ advice and the more open they were to their family. This openness and acceptance can also be explained because they had fewer experiences of sexuality or that the bonds with their parents were better than the ones that did not believe in the same religion as their parents.
48
Communication with parents tended to depend on gender. Men were more likely to talk to their fathers about love and sexuality, whereas few women spoke with their fathers about this subject. However, when students talked about sexuality, the mothers played the most important role in this communication. Talking with parents about sexuality was however rare.
49
5 Discussion and Conclusion
In this discussion and conclusion, I will attempt to answer the main question: “How do Shia students at the Lebanese University in Beirut experience love and sexuality before the permanent marriage in relation to ideas, rules and expectations of religion and the nuclear family?”. While answering the main question, I will direct my results to current debates of love, sexuality, religion and family, which are mentioned in chapter two.
5.1 Love and Sexuality
The description of love from the students resonated with Hellen Harris’ seven components of love; a desire for unification with someone, idealisation of the beloved, exclusivity, intrusive thinking about the loved one, emotional dependency, recording of motivational hierarchies or life priorities and a powerful sense of empathy and concern for the beloved.97 These are all directly or indirectly apparent in the answers of the informants. Love was not described in connection with Western cultural ideas of individualism and its clash with cultural patterns as Michael Oghia found in a study among students at the American University in Beirut.98
All students, except one, experienced a story of answered love in their lives. They met in university, cafes, on the internet and by common friends. They went on dates to cinemas, malls and cafes. Meanwhile, they stayed in touch with the use of WhatsApp and Facebook. This thesis confirms the idea of Sotoudeh and others who claimed that social media has become an essential vehicle for the pursuit of love in the Muslim world. However, they concluded that men had more advantages of the internet99, but this research shows both male and female students using the internet to find a partner. Both women and men were equally keeping in touch with their partner, by use of the internet, by Facebook and with their mobile phones, which relates to the same conclusions of Bowen, Green and James for Morocco and Walter for Pakistan, that mobile phones are used to have a more romantic
97 Harris, “Rethinking Polynesian Heterosexual Relationships,” 102-03. 98 Ibidem. 99 Sotoudeh, Friedland, and Afary, "Digital romance," 437.
50 relationship.100101, because these phones improve the students’ ability to hide their relationships from their parents.
I am refraining from publishing percentages of sexually active students because my thesis is based on a small sample. In comparison to the research of Salameh and Barbour, my female students had a higher level of involvement in sexual activity, and for the men, it was almost equal to Salameh’s both studies. However, this research used the snowball-effect, so students tried to connect me to other students with an interesting story. This result of the snowball- effect was especially visible in contacting Ghada. A friend of her told me to include her in the research because she had a particularly interesting story of love and sexual activity.
Nevertheless, my research fits more in the results of Salameh and Barbour than to the results of Friedland and others, who state that both men and women are as likely to engage in premarital interactions102. More men were sexually active than women, but this could also depend on the sample, the age difference between the men and women I interviewed and the fact that my research is qualitative. So, it might be true that some women did not tell everything about their sexual activity or that men lied about their experience.
It can be concluded that sexual activity for women happened in a mut’a context or a forced context. For men, mut’a was also apparent, but they also had sexual experiences outside mut’a. Students’ views differed widely on the topic of mut’a, including whether the agreement was even legitimate. Other different views were focussed on the specific rules of mut’a. Only women declared to have experienced negative aspects of sexuality which were totally against their will. After these experiences they could not directly talk about this with family. Sexual harrasment and lack of posibilities to talk about these experiences, are serious issues which should be more widely investigated. Movements for women’s rights are on the rise in Lebanon, and this should improve the situation for future.
Following the ideas of the religion of the parents seemed to influence sexual activity with abstinence for women, for men this did not affect their sexual activity. Female students
100 Bowen, Green, and James, “Forbidden Romance in Morocco,” 238. 101 Walter, "Love at Your Fingertips," 6-11. 102 Friedland, Afary, Gardinaly, and Naslund, “Love in the Middle East,” 245.
51 were also stricter in other physical lines than man. Two women said not to be willing to touch a man. No man in this research said the same.
Political problems were seen in this research to affect love, sexuality, family and religion. The political problems are reflected by the economy, which made it difficult for students to afford a house. This difficulty is a factor which results in delaying the decision to marry and as illustrated before, it can also lead to the end of relationships.
The resurgence of conservative ideas affects family, religion, love and sexuality, with an effect of male supremacy103 as described in chapter two. Conservative influence on the students can be judged from the following examples from the research. Two female informants have been forced to wear the hijab. One of these women also claimed, it was not possible for her to leave the house except for going to the university. Also, for men, there was conservative pressure, illustrated by Husseyn who could not talk to his parents about becoming an atheist, because of a fear they would harm him. More research would be needed to state that these examples are due to conservative resurgence alone, as this research showed that a significant proportion of the young population is moving away from traditional religious beliefs and therefore conservatism.
5.2 Intersectionality of Shia Religion
In fact, eleven out of nineteen students had formed religious beliefs different from those of their parents who were mostly conservative. This difference influenced their relationship with their parents, visions of love and sexuality and the ability to talk with them about love. All students identified themselves as Shia but in fact, did not necessarily believe in God or the Shia practices. This identification confirms the idea of Ghandour that in Lebanon someone’s religion is part of personal and social identity and not a reflection of the level of religious involvement.104 This form of identification is present in many other parts around the world but is especially apparent in Lebanon because of sectarian divides and a history of wars because of these divides.
103 Hoodfar and Ghoreishian, “Morality policing and the Public Sphere,” 260. 104 Ghandour, Karam, and Maalouf, "Lifetime alcohol use, abuse and dependence,” 942.
52
Abdel-Khalek concluded that female students at the Lebanese University are more religious than their fellow male students105. For this research sample, this was at least true for Shia religion. Five women followed their parents’ religious beliefs and just three men were still in the same religion as their parents. Moreover, Hala found a new understanding of Shia Islam even though she did not follow the beliefs of her parents.
This research is, however, not able to measure the weight of religiosity of the students that did not follow their parents’ ideas and had their own interpretations of God. Furthermore, I was warned that the more religious students would not be willing to participate in the research, so this also contributes to the fact that a statement about differences in religiosity based on gender cannot be made.
Two conclusions of Friedland’s research became apparant during the research. The first was that all students wanted love in their lives, irrespective of their religious beliefs106 and the second was that there are discrepancies between norms and behaviour for Muslims. Two examples of these are, Yanna, who said that openness about love to parents was important, but later admitted that she hid the information that she kissed or touched a guy, and Hadi who said that sex before marriage was forbidden, but he did it anyway and he would always continue to do so.
5.3 Intersections of the Nuclear Family
Social learning theory of Albert Bandura is really important in this research with a focus on family effects. This theory stated that new behaviours are acquired by experiences and models of behavioural transmission, which are connected to punishment and reward. 107 This research was mostly about perceived possible rewards and punishments, but also showed experiences of rewards and punishment, such as the story of Amir, mentioned in chapter four, whose parents discovered his love bites. This research shows an inside perspective of how students perceived their parents’ rules, expectations and advice. Furthermore, this research shows how these rules, expectations and advice influence students, based on the information from the students.
105 Abdel-Khalek, “Happiness, health, and religiosity,” 3 and 9. 106 Friedland, Afary, Gardinaly, and Naslund, “Love in the Middle East,” 245. 107 Bandura, Albert. "Social learning theory,” 3-5.
53
Family advice and rules were mostly about physical boundaries, marriage and finding the right person, which focussed mainly on religion. Family advice and rules had more effect when students had a good bond with their parent(s) than when they had a disturbed relationship. This is related to religion since all students who were in line with the religious beliefs of their parents had a good bond with their parents. Religiosity also had a significant effect on communication. Only students who followed the religion of their parents, said that being open about relationships with parents was very important.
Eleven out of nineteen students were able to speak to their parent(s) about love. Communication about love was mostly with the respective mother, sometimes with the father and almost never about sexual activity. Only three out of nineteen informants talked about sexual activity, and only one of them was a woman, but she was a particular case since she experienced rape. Little communication with parents about sex, contributes to the conclusion of the research of Barbour and Salameh that stated that young people in Lebanon do not always have the information about sexual health and safe sex.108 The lack of sexual education in the Lebanese schooling system is something that was repeatedly mentioned during the informal talks.
The attachment theory, in which secure attachment to parents leads to more considerateness in relationships, is not directly to be found in this research. However, attachment to parents affected what information students shared with their parents and in what way they accepted advice. If students had a good relationship, they tended to share more and accept more of their parents’ advice and rules. The same counts for the contact with siblings. Whether this contact with family about love, leads to more compassionate and considerate relationships cannot be concluded from this research and should be further investigated.
This research found similarities with the research of Jaccard and others, which concluded for African Americans that a warm, caring relationship with at least one parent is connected to delaying sexual contact. Women, who followed their parents’ religion tended to have a good bond with their parents and took their advice concerning sexual abstinence. On the other hand, men having the same good bond with their parents, did not always follow their advice
108 Salameh et al., “Attitudes towards and practice of sexuality,” 234.
54 concerning abstinence, because some were sexually active. There is neither a relationship to be seen between sexual activity and parental contact for the students that were not following their parents’ religion.
This research seems to validate the idea of Casanova that individuals that fit in sexual norms are rewarded and those who do not, are subject to negative sanctions. As we see, students who fitted into the norms of their parents had better contact with their parents. Furthermore, students who did not fit into these norms experienced loss of support and had less contact with their parents about love and sexuality. However, we do have to acknowledge that ideas of sexual norms varied considerably among parents, as the father of Kamal supported him in sexual relations, the fathers of the other informants were however harsh about sex before marriage.
So, this research contradicts to the statement of Barbour and Salameh that sexual experience for males is encouraged but prohibited for females109 because it shows that also men are prohibited from having sex before marriage. However, for men, it is more likely that sexual experience is accepted since some men could talk about this. Sex before marriage was never accepted for women, except in the case of Imane, but this was a specific case since her first sexual experience was rape.
This research is an exploration of the interconnections of family and religion on experiences of love and sexuality from Shia students at the Lebanese University. However, it was mostly focused on ideas, rules and expectations of religion and family as they were perceived by the students. Further research could go beyond the student perspectives by focusing on visions of parents and of religious spokesmen on students love life and sexual experiences. Further research could also explore other aspects that affect love and sexuality, such as peer pressure, changes in women’s rights, media and contact with people of different religions. A small population of Lebanon is taken in consideration in this research, so a similar research to another religious group would be helpful to better understand the effects of family and religion on love and sexuality in Lebanon in general.
109 Barbour and Salameh, “University students regarding contraception," 396.
55
5.4 Final Conclusion
Differences in gender, religiosity and nuclear family relations affect students’ their experiences of love and sexuality. Religiosity and nuclear family were researched from the perceptions of students with a focus on rules, expectations and advice. As for religion as for the nuclear family, these rules, expectations and advice were mostly, but not only, focused on physical boundaries.
Sexual activity is tightly connected to religion, parents and gender. For the female students, abstinence is more likely when students still followed the religion of their parents. Religious ideas have a role in first experiences of sexual activity of female students. Women’s first sexual activity was either experienced in the form of sexual abuse, as for one informant, or either in a religious framework of mut’a, for the two other female students that had experiences of sexual activity. For men, there is no direct relation to be seen between having the same religious beliefs as their parents and abstinence from sex before marriage. Besides, for men sexual activity was not necessarily in a religious perspective of mut’a and no men said to have experienced rape.
Students who shared religious beliefs with their parents and confirmed to norms of physical behaviour were more likely to have a good bond with their parents. However, more than half of the students did not share the same beliefs as their parents, and this seemed to contribute to the fact that a significant number of students, eight out of nineteen, could not even communicate with their parents about love, let alone talk about sexuality. Almost every student, however, declared that their parents had rules or expectations about love and sexuality. In these rules, limitations of physical contact were dominant for both men and women. However, these limitations were stricter and more followed among female informants, who also tended to follow the religious ideas of their parents more than the male informants.
56
Bibliography
Abelove, Henry, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, ed. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Abdel-Khalek, Ahmed. “Happiness, health, and religiosity among Lebanese young adults.” Cogent Psychology 2, no. 1 (2015): 30-38.
Aspya, Cheryl, Sara K. Vesely , Roy F. Oman , Sharon Rodinec , LaDonna Marshall , Ken McLeroy. "Parental communication and youth sexual behaviour." Journal of adolescence 30, no. 3 (2007): 449-466.
AUBulletin Today. “Lebanese Women a Diminishing Marriage Market.” Accessed September 26, 2017. https://staff.aub.edu.lb/~webbultn/v8n2/article21.htm
Azar, Mathilde, Thilo Krole, and Caroline Bradbury Jones. “Lebanese women and sexuality: A qualitative inquiry.” Sexual Reproductive Healthcare 8 (January 2016):13-18.
Bandura, Albert. "Social learning of moral judgments." Journal of personality and social psychology 11, no. 3 (1969): 275-279
Bandura, Albert. Social learning theory. New York: General Learning Press, 1971.
Barbour Bernadet, and Pascale Salamah. “Knowledge and Practices of University students in Lebanon regarding contraception.” Eastern Mediterrenean Health Jounal, 15, no.2 (2009) 387-399.
Ilkkaracan, Pinar, ed. Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East: Challenges and Discourses. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Bowen, Donna Lee, Alexia Green, and Christiaan James. “Globalisation, mobile phones and forbidden romance in Morocco.” The Journal of North African Studies 13 (2008).
Butler, Judith. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Frishkopf, Michael Aaron, ed. Music and Media in the Arab World Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2010.
Cranny-Francis, Anne, Wendy Waring, Pam Stavropoulos, and Joan J. Kirkby. Gender studies: Terms and debates. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.
DeWalt, Kathleen M., and Billie R. DeWalt. Participant observation: A guide for fieldworkers. Plymouth: Altamira Press, 2011.
Dibeh, Ghassan, Ali Fakih, and Walid Marrouch. "Decision to Emigrate amongst the Youth in Lebanon." International Migration 56, no. 1 ( February 2018) 5-22.
57
Di Peri, Rosita, and Daniel Meier, ed. Lebanon Facing The Arab Uprisings; Constraints and adaptation. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017.
Evers, Jeanine. Kwalitatief interviewen: kunst én kunde. Den Haag: Boom Lemma, 2007.
Eid, Joseph. A Lebanese Couple on Beirut’s Ramlet al-Bayda Beach. November 8, 2016. AFP. https://www.lebanoninapicture.com/pictures/a-lebanese-couple-were-kissing-on-ramlet- elbayda-beach.
Friedland, Roger, Janet Afari, Paolo Gardinali, and Gambria Naslund. "Love in the Middle East: The contradictions of romance in the Facebook World." Critical Research on Religion 4, no. 3 (2016): 229-258.
Furman, Wyndol, B. Bradford Brown, and Candice Feiring, ed. The development of romantic relationships in adolescence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Ghandour, Lilian A., Elie G. Karam, and Wadih E. Maalouf. "Lifetime alcohol use, abuse and dependence among university students in Lebanon: Exploring the role of religiosity in different religious faiths." Addiction 104, no. 6 (2009): 940-948.
Giddens, Anthony. The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies. Oxford: Polity Press, 1992.
Hager, Anna. “Lebanon is more than a notion, more than a country. It is a message: Lebanon as a model of Christian-Muslim relations.” Journal of Beliefs & Values (2017): 1-10.
Hélie, Anissa, and Homa Hoodfar, ed. Sexuality in Muslim contexts; Restrictions and Resistance. London and New York: Zed Books, 2012.
Herzog, Hanna, and Ann Braude, ed. Gendering Religion and Politics: Untangling Modernities New York; Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Holmes, Jeremy. The search for the secure base: Attachment theory and psychotherapy. New York: Routledge, 2014.
Jaccard, James, Patricia J. Dittus, and Vivian V. Gordon. "Maternal correlates of adolescent sexual and contraceptive behaviour." Family planning perspectives (1996): 159-185.
Jankowiak, William R., and Edward F. Fischer. "A cross-cultural perspective on romantic love." Ethnology 31, no.2 (1992): 149-155.
Jankowiak, William, R., ed. Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience? New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
Karam, Jeffrey G. “Beyond Sectarianism: Understanding Lebanese Politics through a Cross- Sectarian Lens” Middle East Brief, no. 107 (2017).
58
King, Ursula, ed. Religion and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1995.
Kottak, Conrad Phillip. Cultural anthropology: Appreciating cultural diversity. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.
Kraidy, Marwan M. Communication, Society and Politics: Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public life. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Kury, Helmut, Evelyn Shea and Slawomir Redo, ed. Women and Children as Victims and Offenders: Background, Prevention, Reintegration. Springer Cham, 2016.
Lassander, Mika. "Grappling with liquid modernity: Investigating post-secular religion." Post- Secular Society (2012): 239-67.
Neuman, W. Lawrence. Understanding Research. Boston: Pearson, 2016.
Nynäs, Peter. Religion, Gender and Sexuality in Everyday Life. New York: Routledge, 2016.
Padilla, Mark B., Jennifer S. Hirsch, and Miguel Munoz-Laboy. Love and globalization: Transformations of intimacy in the contemporary world. Vanderbilt University Press, 2007.
Pajares, Frank, and Tim Urdan, ed. International Perspectives on Adolescence. Connecticut: Information Age Publisching, 2003.
Passerini, Luisa, Liliana Ellena, Alexander C. T. Geppert, ed. New Dangerous Liaisons: Discourses on Europe and Love in the Twentieth Century, New York: Berghahn, 2010.
Radawi, Rana, ed. Intercultural Communication with Arabs: Studies in Educational, Professional and Societal Contexts. Singapore: Springer, 2015.
Salameh, Pascale, Ramy El Zeenny, Joseph Salamé, Mirna Waked, Bernadette Barbour, Nina Zeidan, and Isabelle Baldi. "Attitudes towards and practice of sexuality among university students in Lebanon." Journal of biosocial science 48, no. 2 (2016): 233-248.
Seidman, Steven, Nancy Fischer and Chet Meeks London, ed. Introducing the New Sexuality Studies. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Shehadeh, Lamia Rustum. "Gender-relevant legal change in Lebanon." Feminist Formations 22, no.3 (2010): 210-228.
Sotoudeh, Ramina, Roger Friedland, and Janet Afary. "Digital romance: the sources of online love in the Muslim world." Media, Culture & Society 39, no.3 (2017), 429-439.
Spradley, James P. Participant observation. Long Grove Illinois: Waveland Press, 2016.
59
UN Women. “Parliament Repeals Rape Law.” Accessed September 18, 2017. http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2017/8/news-lebanon-parliament-repeals- rape-law
Walbridge, Linda S. Without forgetting the imam: Lebanese Shi’ism in an American community. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996.
Walter, Anna‐Maria. "Love at Your Fingertips." German Research 38, no. 2 (2016).
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sexuality: third edition. New York: Routledge, 2010.
World Health Organization. Defining sexual health: report of a technical consultation on sexual health. Geneva: WHO, 2006.
60
Appendix
Table of informants.
Informants Age Area
Women Yanna 19 For privacy reasons, this column is intentionally left blank. Maryam 18 Hala 21 Ghada 21 Sukaina 20 Mouna 18 Nour 24 Fatima 18 Imane 21 Nesrine 20 Men
Ahmed 20 Hadi 22 Karim 21 Mahmood 21 Kamal 24 Fadi 23 Husseyn 20 Amir 20 Jade 22
61