Keeping It Halal by John O'Brien

Author:John O'Brien [O'Brien, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, General, Islam, Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Minority Studies, Popular Culture, Sociology, Sociology of Religion, Children's Studies, Islamic Studies
ISBN: 9780691197111
Google: H8mXDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-08-06T03:34:27+00:00

THE SYMBOLIC AFFINITY OF ROMANTIC

LOVE AND ISLAMIC DEVOTION

In addition to designating Islam as a guiding cultural framework and specifying limits on physical intimacy, the young men who engaged in the “keeping it halal” model of dating shared a third practice in common: a consistent emphasis on the similarities between romantic teenage love and pious Islamic devotion. In the course of their relationships, Yusef and Salman regularly described their strong feelings of romantic love and their yearning to maintain Islamic standards of behavior in ways that articulated a likeness between these two emotional states. This experienced and expressed compatibility between teenage romantic emotion and Islamic ethical commitment kept these relationships and the “keeping it halal” model attractive to Yusef and Salman, even amid other challenges.

During the same car ride when Yusef told me about his dating life for the very first time, he also shared with me that the same relationship he had been so excited about had recently come to an end. He spilled his feelings on the matter:

Yusef says, “She called me last month and said that she didn’t want to do it anymore. That it was too hard. She didn’t want to be disloyal to her family. That she wanted to be a good Muslim. So I was like, ‘Whatever, OK. I understand what you’re saying.’ So now I just need to focus on my schoolwork more, and not be so distracted. I mean, I was on academic probation. My GPA slipped, so I had to go back to summer school to pick it back up.” I say, “That must have been really hard when she did that. It must have hurt a lot.” Yusef says, “It hurt so much, John. . . . I mean, I had never felt that way. I think I really loved her, you know. . . . I cared for her so much. And we never kissed or hugged or anything like that. Even though I wanted to kiss her sometimes or hug her or hold her hand, but I could just catch myself. But I cared for her so much. I’ve never cared for someone so much. Like, if she was falling, I would run to catch her. Like, if she had a scratch, I would run to get a Band-Aid and take care of it. Like, as if she was my child.”

For Yusef, the emotions bound up with romantic love were closely intertwined with his expressed commitment to Islamically appropriate behavior. In this conversation, he articulated the feelings of romantic love and religious commitment at the same time and as emotionally similar. This comes across most clearly in the way in which he combined his caring feelings for this young woman (“I cared for her so much”) and his sense of commitment to halal behavior (“We never kissed or hugged or anything like that”). This fusion of romantic devotion and religious devotion seemed to provide Yusef with experiential proof that both emotions could be part and parcel of one life and one activity.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.