Only Touch Relatives
With regards to males, if Muslim Women can Only Touch Relatives then what is the limit? Would your 4th cousin far removed count? Would your brother-in-law or father-in-law count as well?
As far as I know, they can only shake hands with immediate relatives (husband, father, brother, etc).
This is what I found:
QUOTE |
The most common reason given for such men never shaking hands with Muslim women has to do with the Islamic religion. A woman has few rights in a traditional, male-dominated Muslim society. Under the instructions of Islam, a woman is to be kept under submission and "protected" from all men she is not married to or a part of her immediate family. A Muslim man is therefore taught to never to touch a woman he is not married to, also with the possible exception of his close relatives. |
Even though this may be the perception, it become the rule in conservative rural traditions and the rest of the time it is intimidation.
With my Trini-Iranian friends (california and canada), no such boundaries existed with other group but with Pakistanis, Somali, Indian Muslims, they tended to be exteremly formal on all occasions. Even Lebanese Muslims are very informal so perhaps the closer one is to a Westernized world view, there is less formality.
With insulated groups and their home cultures, they seem to be more formal because they may not be exposed to other cultures, even with in their own culture!
With Persian culture, there is Azeri, Georgian, Arab, Turkic, Kurd so more of a cultural mix than say Somali.
Perhaps we keep in mind the cultural context within Muslim culture, be it Arab, Iranian, Pakistani, Turkish or Afghani (still in the stone age, so to speak)!