I Do, I Don’t, I Don’t Know: A Study on Inter-religious Marriage in an Iraqi-Shi’a Muslim American Community

Abstract

In living in heterogeneous Western societies, Muslim immigrant communities are surrounded by individuals from a host of different religious backgrounds. This paper examines the willingness of the Iraqi-Shi’a Muslim community of Dearborn, Michigan, to marry individuals from four different groups, namely another sub-branch of Shi’a Islam, another branch of Islam, the “people of the book” faiths, and those not part of “people of the book” faiths. The paper will test whether spending more time in the United States will make individuals more susceptible to the idea of marrying outside of their sub-branch of Twelver Shi’a Islam. In order to answer this question, the participant community has been divided into two waves, with interviews being conducted with 25 participants from each wave. The results reveal that the first wave is more interested in marrying outside of their sub-branch and religion, while the recently arrived second wave appeared more resistant to the idea of such intermarriages.