Love in the Middle East: The contradictions of romance in the Facebook World

Abstract

Romantic love is a social fact in the Muslim world. It is also a gender politics impinging on religious and patriarchal understandings of female modesty and agency. This paper analyzes the rise of love as a basis of mate selection in a number of Muslim-majority countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey where we have conducted Web-based anonymous surveys of Facebook users. Young people increasingly want love in their married lives, but they and the communities in which they live remain uncomfortable with the mating practices through which such love has traditionally been achieved in the Western world. The paper explores the religious contradictions and the gender politics of modern heterosexual love.

Critical theory, authoritarianism, and the politics of lipstick from the Weimar Republic to the contemporary Middle East

“…population that uses FB-known as the penetration rate-varies by country. Algeria and Egypt have the lowest penetration rates while Turkey, Palestine, and Tunisia have much greater rates (see Friedland et. al., 2016).…”

“… 15 In an earlier study, we also found that support for the hijab has absolutely no relationship to the pursuit of love as a criterion of spousal choice (Friedland et al., 2016). …”

“… 3 Some of the results of this survey have already appeared in Friedland et al. (2016) and Sotoudeh, Friedland, and Afary (2017).…”

“…Researching the intimate relations of young Muslims in MENA, we wondered whether we could compare the relationship between gender and authoritarianism in Europe in the 1920s to the relationship between gender and political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at the turn of the 21st century. In 2012–13, we used Facebook (FB) banner ads in seven Muslim-majority countries to survey the young and computer-literate populations of Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey as well as those living in diaspora (Friedland et al., 2016). 2 There is very little survey information about the intimate sexual and romantic behaviors of contemporary young Muslims, whether practicing or by birth, either in the Middle East or within emigrant communities.…”

Introduction to the special issue on the Frankfurt School and religion

“…Afary and Friedland's article, "Critical Theory, Authoritarianism, and the Politics of Lipstick: From Weimar Republic to the Contemporary Middle East," draws upon studies on authoritarianism pioneered by Fromm in 1929 and Adorno in 1950, with an emphasis on questions concerning the link between the decline in patriarchal authority, the rise of feminism, and masculine control over women's bodies. Basing their work on Facebook surveys that they conducted between 2012 and 2013 in seven Muslim majority countries and in the diaspora, Friedland, Afary, Gardinali et al, (2016) compiled over 19,000 responses to questions concerning "family, sex, religion, and democracy." Like Fromm's 1929 survey, they accounted for religious affiliation and class in order to explore links between monist absolutism and authoritarianism with views on makeup and women's empowerment.…”