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Family Matters
The notion of the tribe in its oriental or occidental guises has drawn
some
comment. In short there is little to compare between tribes East and West
beyond superficialities, marriage practice being the arbiter. Marriage
custom
in the West varies within a band of acceptability. Great freedom of choice
reigns. In the Muslim custom of cousin marriage, a man marries his father’s
brother’s daughter. Why?
Where the family is the primary social group and social and political
relationships are delicately interwoven, the family is important. A Muslim
family is usually defined as a group of brothers and other male relatives.
These trace their origins back to a single progenitor, the father of the
tribe. Witness the succession complexities of the House of al Saud, the
Saudi
royal family. Loyalty and unity are paramount virtues. Loyalty and unity
are
to the other male relatives, which raises the thorny issue of marriage.
Any
woman marrying into this male group has the potential to splinter off
one of
the men, her husband, and so break up the family unity. A man who marries
his
cousin does not marry outside of his family, greatly reducing the risk
of
division with his kin.
Enter the burka, worn by women exposed to men outside of their extended
family. Why would anyone wear a bag over her head? Yet in rural Afghanistan
few women veiled, even during the Taliban. According to Shar’ia law
they
don’t need to; they are related to everyone in their village. In
the cities
things were different. Urban women were forced to veil due to the abundance
of unrelated males daily confronting them. It is a strange custom,
reinforcing the very tribalism at the heart of unrest throughout the region.
As long as loyalty to extended family – the tribe – supplants
loyalty to a
larger identity, factionalism is the norm. Osama Bin Laden’s goal
was a
pan-Islamic unity, cutting across tribalism and nationalism. However flawed,
his goal cannot be faulted for lack of scale. Even had he succeeded,
however, could the grand tribe he envisioned have found unity in the darkness
behind its enormous veil?
James Clark
Ed Fowler
713-961-5645
efowler@mrds.org
Millennium Relief & Development Services
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(c) 2002 Millennium Relief & Development Services, vol. 2 no. 10
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