Converts, Marriage, and the Dutch Nation-state: Contestations about Muslim Women’s Well-being

In the Netherlands, transnational marriages and Islamic marriages concluded prior to a civil marriage are hotly debated in the public domain. These marriages are perceived as not only bringing the ‘wrong’ kinds of migrants to the Netherlands – those with little education and few skills – or as involving the ‘wrong’ kind of Muslims, such as the radical or salafi-oriented, but also as harmful to Muslim women’s wellbeing. Policy makers and politicians have come to associate these marriages with child marriages, cousin marriages, and polygamous marriages, which, in turn, are considered indications of forced marriages. Attempts to limit marriage migration and to further criminalize Islamic marriages are presented as measures that will strengthen Muslim women’s wellbeing.

In this chapter we analyse the tensions between how politicians, policy makers, and other state agents problematize transnational Muslim marriages and how female converts to Islam experience the concluding of such marriages. Drawing on long-term anthropological fieldwork with converts in the Netherlands, we show that converts themselves quite regularly opt for concluding an Islamic marriage, which is often simultaneously transnational. These women view an Islamic marriage as important for their ethical, relational, and material wellbeing, and may have good reasons not to conclude a civil marriage first.