Arab culture may well have failed by not updating it's beliefs and cultural practices to suit the times we live in. One excellent example of this hypothesis is marriage.
In many Arab countries it is deemed better to marry someone from the same family or clan- often a cousin or other indirect relative, this is done under the premise that a family or clan member will have more in common, their upbringing and attitude to life will be more similar and they are guaranteed to be a 'good' person.
But does this thesis stand in a world where pre-marital relations no longer suffer the stigma they one had? Surely living with someone and intimately aquatinting yourself with their habits, ideas and beliefs is more reliable than taking the word of some distant relative that happens to share the same name?
The traditional retort to that is not all religious persuasions support the idea of premarital relations but that too should be put into it's context: before a time of contraception, families needed some way of assuring that the product of those close encounters would not end up unprovided for. And so the institution or legal agreement of marriage took place. One may go further as to day that it harnessed men's carnal urges into a more pragmatic alliance of families and interests- sex on the proviso that you brought something to the family and the girl. Surely we've moved on from that?
In many Arab countries it is deemed better to marry someone from the same family or clan- often a cousin or other indirect relative, this is done under the premise that a family or clan member will have more in common, their upbringing and attitude to life will be more similar and they are guaranteed to be a 'good' person.
But does this thesis stand in a world where pre-marital relations no longer suffer the stigma they one had? Surely living with someone and intimately aquatinting yourself with their habits, ideas and beliefs is more reliable than taking the word of some distant relative that happens to share the same name?
The traditional retort to that is not all religious persuasions support the idea of premarital relations but that too should be put into it's context: before a time of contraception, families needed some way of assuring that the product of those close encounters would not end up unprovided for. And so the institution or legal agreement of marriage took place. One may go further as to day that it harnessed men's carnal urges into a more pragmatic alliance of families and interests- sex on the proviso that you brought something to the family and the girl. Surely we've moved on from that?
I am not sure your point is exactly clear here...the institution of marriage doesn't fit the society we live in? I find that to be a load of bs. This isn't Arab vs Western culture because non-Arabs still greatly value marriage for many of the same reasons that Arabs do. Ahh..I might have completely missed your point but then again, I have never understood why people look down at marriage like it some backwards practice. Nor is it clear when exactly it became a fad to think that way.
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