SHAFAQNA- Interracial marriages in the Muslim community have been steadily on the rise during the past ten years, according to recent studies conducted by American Muslim Poll.
American Muslims are moving beyond familial and cultural expectations to identify partners with parallel experiences and comparable values. Based on data from the 2019 American Muslim Poll on interracial marriages across faith groups and racial groups within the Muslim community, nearly 1 in 5 Muslims report being married to someone with a racial background that differs from their own, Aboutislam reported.
Muslims currently rank higher than then Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, White Evangelical, and other faith counterparts. According to a study done in 2019 by the ISPU, Muslims in the 30-49 age range are slightly more likely to participate in an interracial marriage compared with those in age ranges 18-29. However, there remains a significant decline in interracial marriages amongst Muslims 50 and older. Based on this study, there is no statistical difference, as it relates to age between Muslims and non-Muslims.
There is a statistical difference among Muslim men and women rates of interracial marriage in comparison to people from other faiths. Muslim women are more likely to marry outside of their race than Muslim men, according to the most recent study conducted by American Muslim poll. There remains a discrepancy in data, as an analysis study was conducted last year which indicated that men were twice as likely to marry outside of their race.
Shannon Landry, is a Caucasian American woman who resides in Atlanta, GA with her husband Sarfraz Sattar, a Pakistani American. Shannon said, “My husband and I didn’t consciously choose an interracial marriage, however, we‘re both looking for someone with integrity and we found this in each other,” Shannon Landry told AboutIslam.net. According to the American Muslim Poll, Black Muslims break societal trends by being 16% less likely to marry outside of their race than their non-black counterparts in the public.
Youssef Chouhoud believes Black Muslims are about one-third as likely as non-Black Muslims to marry someone of a different race. They are twice as likely as their non-Black faith counterparts to marry someone of a different faith. It remains an open question whether interracial marriage is associated with a narrowing of social distance between Muslims and the broader society, a phenomenon commonly referred to as “integration” or “assimilation, ispu told. To be sure, recent scholarship has cast doubt on the link between intermarriage and assimilative attitudes.