[GOTFIVEONIT]

What is gained and what is lost in America?

By Abdur Rehman, Urdu Times, 11 March 2004.

Translated from Urdu by Muhammad Jehangir.

It was 1996. After offering Friday prayers, I saw a man sitting in a brand new Lincoln outside the mosque. He seemed to be waiting for someone. I had the feeling that I knew him. He came out of his car all of a sudden and moved towards me. He called me by name, shook my hand very warmly and introduced himself. He refreshed my memory, reminding me of the small clothing store he owned in Karachi (Pakistan) where my family used to shop. He told me he had a big business and a house in a posh neighborhood and invited me and my wife for dinner the following Sunday so we could talk.

When we arrived for dinner, instead of taking us inside through the front door, he took us through the garage to show us, with great pride, four late-model cars – a Lincoln, a BMW, a Montero and a Honda Accord. He showed us the entire house, which was expensive and tastefully decorated.

I congratulated him on his business successes, but when I asked about his children he became sad. With tearful eyes he said he had three sons and a daughter. “My daughter married a white American and my eldest son married a Mexican. We don’t see much of him, but my two other sons who are in college are still single and live with us.” For him, America is a cruel country: “Look, this country has snatched my two children from me. What should I do with wealth when I am deprived of my family? I will repent coming to America my whole life.”

Countless Pakistani families living in this country face similar tragedies. The new generation of Pakistani Americans are lost in this society; they are completely oblivious of their culture, values, customs, traditions and religious identity. Greed for wealth has created a gulf between parents and their children. The younger generation are lost in this open society because they are obsessed with becoming wealthly and negligent of rearing their children properly.

Marriage has become a huge problem for Pakistani immigrants here. While parents want to marry their children according to their wishes, the kids want to choose their own life partners. Besides, in the United States, when a person becomes 18 years old, they become legally independent and parents can no longer control them.

After interviewing several parents, it became evident that whenever a marriage proposal comes for a daughter, the girl usually rejects it, waiting for her ideal man. The same thing happens with male youths. The problem is especially acute with those who have U.S. citizenship. Young women simply reject a Pakistan-born partner on the grounds that she cannot live with him due to differences in thinking. Conversely, males holding U.S. citizenship prefer Pakistan-born girls.

Another problem is the expectations families have for a daughter’s partner: they aspire to marry them to a doctor or an engineer, knowing full well that this cannot happen for every girl. Marriage proposals for girls come only when they are young. As they become older, the proposals stop coming; prospective families know that the girl’s family expects too much. The girls become middle-aged and unfit for marriage.

Because well-off Pakistani immigrants avoid mixing with their middle-class compatriots –consequently, middle-class Pakistanis stay away from them – the marriage problem is more acute in the upper class. Although they have a lot of wealth and send their children to the best schools, they don’t pay much heed to their children’s family future. Therefore, their sons and daughters marry on their own, without caring if their spouse is black or white. They have little religious education. As a result, they have gone astray, oblivious of their culture, customs, traditions and religion.

Pakistani immigrants in this country must interact closely with each other in order to tackle the complex problem of marriage. Such interaction would afford their children the opportunity to meet each other and build bridges of understanding. Unfortunately, there is no social center for the Pakistani community here [Houston]. Besides the one or two Eid Islamic festivals celebrated in the city twice every year, there are no programs to bring the families together.

Pakistani immigrants living here will also have to come out of their complexes of caste, creed and ethnicity and look for appropriate matches with others Pakistani Muslims; Islam allows this. Parents would be well advised to betroth their children to reasonable matches during their school years. Their marriages could be solemnized once their children reach universities. This would allow their children to concentrate on their studies as well as to develop greater understanding with their life partners.

Some parents do not want to talk to their children about marriage until their schooling is over. This thinking is also flawed. What would happen if they married a non-Muslim while in school? It is unreasonable to deprive your children of marriage for too long in a country where sexual material is abundantly and openly available over television, radio and the Internet. If they are studying medicine, they will be 30- or 32-years-old by the time they complete their education. This is not a big deal for the males, but getting an appropriate match for a female at this late age becomes very difficult. Even if such a person is found, he is usually a middle-aged widower or divorcee who is not acceptable to the girl. It is not unusual for women this age to abandon their plans for marriage. If the girls are betrothed during their schools years, this problem can be avoided.

Parents must always take into consideration the family background before betrothing their girls. They must also take into confidence the elders of the community, contact local mosques and Islamic scholars to make sure that they are seeking a relationship with honorable people and not become victims of fraud. Besides, at least one distinguished personality of the city must be made a witness to it so that if any future any dispute should come between the two families, it can be amicably resolved.