Graduating towards marriage? Attitudes towards marriage and relationships among university-educated British Muslim women

This paper examines educated British South Asian Muslim women's conceptualisations, experiences of, and attitudes towards relationships and contemporary Muslim matrimonial practices, and notions of love and 'Islamic' or 'halal' relationships. Following a brief critique of representations of 'arranged marriages', this paper explores the shift from parentally arranged matrimonial matches to the highly individualised and commercialised matrimonial events that now characterise the British Muslim matrimonial scene. The paper highlights tensions between beliefs that the possession of a degree for Muslim women confers greater choice in matrimony and is thus highly beneficial in order to 'secure' an appropriate matrimonial match, and lived realities around difficulties in meeting suitable partners as factors such as increased age or being 'over-qualified' become significant. I argue that static terminologies such as 'arranged marriage' are no longer useful when describing processes of social change that are fluid and subject to continual negotiation and renegotiation and are contingent instead, upon localised, personalised, religious and transnational interpretations and influences.