WHY OUR PARENTS BEHAVE AS THEY DO
DEALING WITH OUR PARENTS DECISIONS
Our research has provided
us with the reasoning behind why our parents make the decision they do about our marriages which are most often arranged or
forced marriages. To put it into one word; culture. There are a number of factors which affect the way our parents behave, of which culture is the dominant
one. As we mentioned earlier, in case you hadn’t already noticed, our parents feel they quite literally OWN us. As boys,
you are of the reasons our fathers have pride in the community, because having sons is seen as a personal
achievement and not an act of God.
The following details the factors which influence our parents:
1) Cultural Obligation
a) Patriotic
Mentality
Unfortunately our parents are super-glued to their culture. You cannot really blame them because, after all,
they grew up in that culture and in course it has shaped their mentality, hence the extreme patriotism.
Our research showed that the parents had adopted a one track mind when it came to their children’s marriages.
The vast majority could only see their sons and daughters marrying from Pakistan, and that was it. There was NO alternative.
For them the cultural pressure is IMMENSE. For them
it is a bit like ‘keeping up with the Jones’ except they are not just copying their neighbours buy buying a bigger
plasma TV or a flashier car, they are quite literally playing with their children’s lives. Why else would you marry
your daughter to someone you know very little about, even if it were their nephew.
b) Family Pressure
i) The main reason that our parents can only foresee
their children marrying one of their nephews or nieces is because the rishtay have been often been done years before
the marriage. The promises have been made to their brothers and sisters (your chacha’s, thaya’s, phuppo’s
khala’s and mamu’s) years ago. In Pakistani society, and most commonly in the villages, matchmaking is done
when the children are very young, sometimes when they are infants, as young as 5 years old. THIS IS TOTALLY AGAINST ISLAM.
Commonly,
they have made promises to their brothers and sister that they will marry their ‘Asghar’ with ‘Shazia’
when Shazia has finished college. Now we come to the crux of the matter. You see, now that they have made these promises to
their families, the besti would be too much to bear if the rishtay did not go ahead. We have always heard our parents ‘Loga
ki pata chalsi tha kitnee besti hosi, log ke aakhsan’ OR ‘assa loga ki moo dasne ne kaabel na renlagey’
(Mirpuri). It means that they care more about what people will say than the if Allah (SWT) has allowed or forbade a certain
action.
Here comes the sick part. If your rishta was done when your future
husband was say, 13 years old and now that he is 24 and has no education, no job, is a lofar and is not exactly Tom
Cruise in the looks department, your father will still happily marry you to him. Sorry, did I say marry, I meant IMPRISON
you to him. I said ‘will HAPPILY marry you to him’ because our fathers do not think
of our happiness when these marriages are forced upon us, it is only THEIR happiness in keeping that promise to his brother or sister which is important. To keep face in the family.
What a messed up culture! They are fearful of losing
their brothers and sisters forever if they don’t do this. There are hundred of examples where brothers and sister have
not spoken for YEARS because their children did not inter-marry. This is yet another un-islamic habit. It is quite ridiculous that you cut off, for sometimes DECADES, with your own flesh and
blood, whom you grew up with, just because your culture dictates these arranged marriages.
If they do not get their children married within the
family, their relatives and the baradari in general say things like ‘they had so many good rishtay in the family
and they went OUT’ and ‘there were so many good-looking girls in their family and they went OUT’. What is
‘OUT’? ‘Baaroo rishta karna’ or going outside the family for marriage is considering a huge
sin in our culture. We found that there is often a power struggle between the parents. The father will try his best to get
his children married to his side of the family and the mother will try the same for her family back home. The winner is determined
by the one who ‘wears the trousers in the household’. Winner?, I make it sound like a game. Well it is, where
the children are the pawns and the parents, the kings and queens. What type of parents would ‘play’ this sort
of game just out of zid (stubbornness) to beat their partner. The choice or feelings of the children are NEVER even
considered.
ii) Why the Pressure?
Feedback we received also highlighted a major problem with families and that was of blackmail. Our grandparents (Dadi,Dada,Nani or Nana), uncles
and aunts, mostly Chachay, Thayay and Phuppya, often resort to emotionally blackmailing our parents
into making these marriages happen. I must point out that this problem was more prevalent in the Mirpur District than anywhere
else. They will say things like:
‘We will never forgive you, and will disown you if you don’t make this rishta happen’
from grandparents
‘If this rishta does not happen then you can consider us as dead for you, we don’t
want to know you’
iii) Blackmail!
Oh yes! Blackmail, and emotional blackmail to be more precise. The old favourite, tried and tested
from Glasgow to Greenwich, guaranteed
to traps us everytime and some of us only realise what has happen when it is far too late. Emotionally blackmailing us into
accept these marriages. They use the same heartless tactics that their families used on them because it is their way or the
highway. Our parents say they will never ever forgive us if we disobey them. They will even give us Quran and Hadith to justify
it, and we are sometimes bowled over.
A major factor in what forces us to cave in and reluctantly accept is due to the fact that the vast majority
of us live in close family units (often crammed into small terraced houses) and are often working in the family businesses,
like A1 Pak Watan Superstore. We have nowhere
to run hence we give in to the pressure. Often Pakistani parents put so much pressure on us as children that we have been accustomed to never refusing any
orders they give us. It is their culture which makes them behave this way. This constant pressure from them often results
in so many of us running away from home, but still our parents do not realise the error of their ways. They are prepared to
lose their children forever than to be unfaithful to their backward culture!
The other point is that strange thoughts come into our minds like, ‘how bad can it be marrying from Pakistan’, ‘after all I won’t be the first, or the last’ or
‘so and so seems happy and she married from there’ or ‘he/she is my cousin so I can make the marriage work’
or ‘my dad says he has a masters degree, runs his own business and is Hafiz Quran’. Our
parents are very good at convincing us to marry whom they want us to spend the rest of our lives with because for them NO
is not an option. Many people who contacted us, especially, women, told us that they saw it as being disrespectable and an
act of disobedience to their parents if they did not accept their proposals.
Have you never thought why our parents don’t openly condemn Pakistani
society as morally corrupt and fully expose their corruption. How else will they convince you to marry from there. Most of
us are brainwashed into marrying from Pakistani, without even knowing it. The fact that our families are constantly quarrelling
and back-biting amongst each other seems to pass us by. You would think that we would run a mile from people who behave
like this, instead we are convinced to marry into people like them. We have seen and heard all our lives the horror stories
about women who married from Pakistan but it never stops us catching
PK786 to Islamabad to marry Mr Right.
c)
For Inheritance (Jaidad)
Research showed that there was a deeper ulterior motive
behind our parents wanting us to marry our cousins from back home. I don’t like this ‘back home’ expression.
How can Pakistan be our ‘home’ when we have never lived there. Anyway back to
the point. Our parents want their Jaidad (family inheritance) to stay firmly within the immediate family (Dadke).
What simpler way to guarantee this than to make their daughters the sacrificial lambs to the slaughter. What is unbelievable
is that our fathers will almost certainly end up fighting amongst their brothers over this land/property which is so precious
to them that can spare a few daughters for it. Truly shocking! I mean what on earth has that 2 kanal plot of land
near the chowk got to do with us living in Bradford!
Why not just throw your daughters to the lions, at least
the suffering will be shorter, whereas for a girl to be married to a Pakistani is a guaranteed lifetime of misery, abuse and suffering. I can’t help but think that this has a little bit to do with our parents feeling
of resentment and anger when the nurse told them ‘Congratulations Mr Khan it‘s a girl’. Is this why they
have no regard for their daughter’s feelings when deciding for them THEIR future.
2)
There is no number 2 because culture is the one and only reason. If you can imagine it like a jigsaw. Our parents have
planned OUR lives the way they would like them to turn out and it is mapped out like a jigsaw. When we do not obey our parents
orders it is like a piece of the jigsaw is missing. For most of our parents nothing would give them more pleasure than to
tell people that they married all their children from Pakistan.
Even when we feel our parents have given in and accepted it is just a ploy because they are always over-confident that their
children will HAVE TO eventually give in when the pressure is applied. In the end they almost always win.
It is not only totally
against the teachings of Islam but shows heartlessness
not to consider your children’s opinion when deciding who their intended LIFE partner will be. There cannot be a bigger injustice or infringement of a person’s liberty.
CONTRARY TO WHAT YOUR PARENTS MAY HAVE TOLD YOU, ISLAM DOES NOT MENTION
ANYTHING ABOUT MARRYING YOUR COUSIN, LET ALONE ENCOURAGE IT
It is a fact that the ONLY reason that these marriages take place is because they are cousins
and NOTHING else. There is no other compatible factor.
WE WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A FINAL AND CONCLUDING STATEMENT WHICH IS THAT IF A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF ARRANGED MARRIAGES BETWEEN PAKISTANI
NATIONALS AND BRITISH PAKISTANIS WERE SUCCESSFUL AND BOTH PARTNERS LIVED IN RELATIVE PEACE THEN WE WOULD NOT HAVE SET UP THIS WEBSITE BUT, AND IT IS A BIG BUT,
THE REALITY IS THAT THERE IS NOT ONE, I REPEAT NOT ONE WOMAN WHO CAN SAY SHE IS HAPPILY MARRIED. THE RESULTS OF OUR RESEARCH
WERE SO SHOCKING THAT WE FELT OBLIGED TO ACT.
WE ARE CHALLENGING THE ENTIRE BRITISH PAKISTANI COMMUNITY TO FIND US ONE WOMAN WHO IS HAPPILY MARRIED TO A PAKISTANI NATIONAL.
