Religion, Race, and the Debate over Mut'a in Dar es Salaam

Abstract

Mut'a, or temporary marriage, is a contract between a married or unmarried man and an unmarried, divorced, or widowed woman that is religiously sanctioned by Shia Islam.' In the early 1990s, mut'a became the focal point of an intense debate in Dar es Salaam among the Khoja Shia Ithna Asheri Muslims, one of the most populous and prosperous South Asian (hereafter, referred to as Asian) minority groups in Tanzania.2 Although people who participated in this controversy were Ithna Asheri women and men from predominantly middleand upper-class backgrounds, the debate over mut'a involved complex differences and hierarchies based on gender, religion, race, and class, deeply rooted in the sociopolitical realities of Tanzania. In this article, I analyze this debate not to critically examine the institution of mut'a itself but to address (a) the manner in which processes at local, national, and transnational scales intersect to define the (hetero)sexist communal norms that regulate women's bodies in a particular context; (b) the ways in which women confront, defend, or negotiate the terms of this regulation; and (c) the implications of this regulation for women of different backgrounds in a place where gender hierarchies are enmeshed with religious, racial, and classbased distinctions. By discussing these processes I seek to con-