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Cousin Marriage Is Not Choice: Muslim Marriage and Underdevelopment

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Cousin Marriage Is Not Choice: Muslim Marriage and Underdevelopment Cousin Marriage is not Choice: Muslim Marriage and Underdevelopment By Lena Edlund∗{ DRAFT { DO NOT ATTRIBUTE TO The Middle East has much going for it. ters the result is cousin marriage. It is strategically located in a mostly tem- Cousin marriage as a means of diverting perate zone. It has significant oil finds. Its resources from the bride to her male kin { population is young and in many cases well thus undoing a principal improvement for educated. Still, the Middle East has had women introduced under Islam: the bride less than stellar growth, a record it shares being the designated owner of the mahr { with the Muslim world at large. Once has to the best of my knowledge not been ahead of Europe, its failure to keep up is considered in the literature. longstanding (Lewis, 1993), suggesting that Cousin marriage also supports another the culprit is unrelated to a particular cir- signature feature of Muslim society: the cumstance, time period, or geographic re- subordination of the individual to the clan gion. (Lewis and Churchill, 2009) and the atten- This paper proposes that the problem lies dant suppression of individualism and mer- in the consent regime: marriage is sub- itocracy in favor of clan loyalty, conformity, ject to parental consent (namely, paternal and nepotism. or guardian). Formally, only women are Third, this marriage system which favors thus subjected. But to paraphrase, mar- men over women, the old over the young, riage consent that is half parental and half and the collective over the individual, hand- individual is all one thing or all the other. icaps economic growth. This paper makes three contributions. This explanation of the prevalence of First, it describes the specifics of Classi- cousin marriage or the Muslim World's lag- cal Muslim family law that effectively ren- ging behind the West and lately, East Asia, der Muslim marriage one of parental con- has to the best of my knowledge not been sent despite pronouncements to the con- previously advanced. trary. The distinction is important because relative to individual consent, parental con- I. Classical Muslim Family Law sent favors the old over the young; men over women (Edlund and Lagerl¨of,2006). Sharia law is Islamic canonical law based Second, the paper provides a novel expla- on the teachings of the Quran and the tra- nation for why cousin marriage is common ditions of the Prophet. It was formulated in the Muslim world where consanguineous in the first centuries of Islam. This forma- 1 marriage rates range from 20-60%. As tive period (Usual al-Fiqh) culminated in mentioned, the authority to marry lies with the 9th century. It was followed by a con- the father of the bride, but the marriage servative period of imitation (Taqlid). payment mahr belongs to her. This split In the 19th century, modernization de- bill may be what underpins the prevalence mands in the Muslim World led to the adop- of cousin marriage. Cousin marriage can be tion of Western legal systems but reform of viewed as a form of marriage by exchange family law was considered un-Islamic and in which the bride giver's reward is a bride exempted. in return. When two brothers arrange for More recent attempts to bring family law their sons's marriage by exchange of daugh- in line with modern ideas of gender equality and human rights have been met with solid ∗ Columbia University, [email protected] 1The inbreeding coefficient between spouses is that resistance and been branded un-Islamic. of second cousins or higher. This conservatism can be contrasted with 1 2 PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS MONTH YEAR the responsiveness of the law in other areas is undermined by two provisions. First, the { a contrast that underlines the political na- wali can dissolve the marriage.3 Second, ture of what is considered consistent with the above power of the father (or guardian) Islam (Mir-Hosseini et al., 2013). Thus, to contract a minor daughter into marriage Classical Law remains highly relevant in the by force holds even in the Hanafi school. Muslim World. Thus, an under-age bride can be married off Marriage, according to Classical Law, is a against her will, as long as she is contracted transactional and hierarchical relationship. by her father. Father's right, combined The husband owes the wife maintenance, with no effective minimum age of marriage, and the wife owes the husband conjugal so- supports a culture in which fathers have the ciety and obedience. By this is typically absolute right to marry off their daughters meant that the wife should grant the hus- regardless of age.4 band sexual access and not leave the hus- In sum, Classical Law gives the father the band's domicile without his consent.2 power to decides his daughter's marriage, The groom is required to pay the bride a but also designates the bride the owner of mahr, part of which can be deferred (paid the marriage payment mahr. All this power out at the dissolution of the marriage). The to no use? Cue cousin marriage. marriage payment is followed by the bride's taking up residence with the husband. II. Cousin Marriage The Muslim marriage contract requires the consent of the groom. By contrast, the The prevalence of cousin marriage in bride's consent is neither necessary nor suf- the Muslim world stands out (Korotayev, ficient. The operative consent is that of 2000; Vardi-Saliternik, Friedlander and Co- her guardian, wali. The rights of the wali hen, 2002; Bittles, Black and Govindaraju, are vested with (in order of priority) father, 2010). In Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the grand-father, or other male relative. Impor- rate of consanguineous marriage (the plu- tantly, a father (or grand-father) can force rality of which are between first cousins) a girl to marry, that is, he can contract her approaches 60%; in other Muslim coun- in a binding marriage without her consent. tries, the rate falls in the 20-50% range (Hamamy, 2012).5 Esposito (2001, page 16): \A dis- Frazer (1919) noted the similarity be- tinguishing feature of Islamic law tween cousin marriage and marriage by is the power that it bestows upon barter, a form of exchange favored in the father or grandfather, who can materially simple environments such as contract a valid marriage for mi- among Australian Aboriginals. Absent nors that cannot be annulled at other means of exchange, a man pays for puberty." his bride by providing an equivalent female In addition, even adult women cannot in return. For practical reasons, sisters are marry without the consent of the wali. at high risk of being thus used. If the ex- Three of the four Sunni schools are of the opinion that the guardian has the sole au- 3If it fails to conform to the doctrine of kafaa (equal- thority with respect to the marriage of his ity). For instance, a Muslim woman is not allowed to sane and major female ward if she is a vir- marry a non-Muslim man and a free Muslim woman cannot marry a Muslim slave. gin. Only if she has been previously mar- 4Pakistan is of the Hanafi school. In 1997 Abdul Wa- ried is her consent also required (alongside heed v. Asma Jehangir (PLD 1997 Lah 331), a woman's that of the guardian's). right to consent to her own marriage was affirmed. The Only the Hanafi school allows the woman ruling overturned a lower court's dismissal of the Hanafi opinion as a minority opinion (Yefet, 2009, page 357- to contract her own marriage, but this right 358). 5Its extensive practice through the generations has 2Whether the wife is also obligated to do domestic lead to elevated levels of autosomal recessive diseases work or even nurse her children, or can demand wages and congenital anomalies, consequences that are ob- for that has been debated (Mir-Hosseini et al., 2013, scured by high mortality/morbidity or under-served en- page 11). vironments, e.g., Corry (2014). VOL. VOL NO. ISSUE MUSLIM MARRIAGE AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT 3 change of sisters is possible between two un- similar, if less direct, exchange may under- related men, would kinship not make this lie cousin marriage. trade even more feasible? The money-saving aspect of cousin mar- But why would the materially much more riage (lower mahr) is well known. In fact, advanced Muslim society resort to cousin the lower mahr has been seen as reflect- marriage? The answer, I propose, lies in a ing (to the bride) a more beneficial mar- father's right to decide his daughter's mar- riage. By marrying in the family, or ex- riage combined with his inability to pocket changing sisters, a web of connections pro- the resulting bride price. As a subterfuge, tect women against abuse { the in-laws a father may seek a favor in return, a mo- are family or married to family (Bittles, tive discernible from the practise of gift- Black and Govindaraju, 2010; Jacoby and ing daughters to the rich and powerful.6 Mansuri, 2010; Do, Iyer and Joshi, 2013). But brides-as-gifts has sharply decreasing This paper offers a less benign interpre- returns, there are only so many powerful tation. Sharia makes the woman the owner men to go around. of the mahr, male guardianship { via cousin A more common variation would be to marriage { erodes its value. have a man give a daughter in marriage against the promise of a bride in return, III. Growth possibly at a future date. The ability to enforce such promises can be challenging The Muslim world did very well in its first and here family comes in handy.
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