The desire to find the ‘all-round’ partner has made marriage among British Muslim Iraqis unrealistic  
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“There is a marriage crisis in the Iraqi community. Both guys and girls need to make more of an effort with themselves.” 
I couldn’t agree more with what this friend said. However, what they meant and what I meant were not the same thing at all. Today, we are faced with more young, single, British Muslim Iraqis floating free while waiting for their perfect match to fall into their laps than we know what to do with. There has been an insidious change in our thinking and our values. We want to be 100 per cent certain without a shadow of a doubt that this is the best person for the best version of ourselves. So we wait. And wait. And wait. 
There is a marriage crisis in our community because we are waiting. Waiting to finish degrees, to move up in our careers, waiting for a house, to travel more, do more, live more, all before we tie the knot. Marriage seems to be the end point, something we all want but later, after, anywhere but here and now. We chase material things first because of a misplaced sense of individual development that we fool ourselves into thinking is necessary for marriage. We want to be the best we can be for our partner and we look for the partner that can do it for us. The worst of all is waiting until we’re ready, as if we will be wake up one day having acquired all the right qualities we need to make the most important decision of our life, and with this infinite wisdom we decide that we want someone who has it all and no less. 
There is a marriage crisis in our community because we want it all. Guys want girls who are young, beautiful (and not the subjective we-are-all-beautiful-in-our-own-way kind, but the objective if-I-asked-a hundred-random-people-they-would-all-say-you’re-beautiful kind), dress well, have degrees, can work for a living (but will give it all up to raise their kids), raise kids, cook like their mum, run a household, be the spiritual beacon of the marriage, share the same interests and do charity. Did I leave anything out? Probably. 
On the other side, girls are no better. They want tall, older but not too old, masculine but sensitive, funny but mature, clever but not geeky, kind but firm. Someone who gives them attention but not too much that they become clingy, who is brave enough to make the first move but not so bold that they’re sleazy, who dresses well but not like they’re trying to, who has a degree that girls can show off, money to spend on their weddings and rich parents to buy them a house. A man who likes art and poetry but who can change a light bulb and start a fire. The end result? Hopeless singles. 
There is a marriage crisis in our community because we don’t know what to believe anymore. We’ve lost faith in marriage, in our community and, worst of all, we’ve lost faith in our faith. The irony for us Iraqi Muslims is that Islam provides us with the guidance and spiritual motivation for partner selection and happy marriages, yet the last thing many of us turn to now is that religion. Qur’anic verses about marriage are stamped onto our wedding invites but not paid heed to. I can’t help but call out to you all to turn to our book, our prophet, his companions and his family and to take comfort in our Islamic ideology. 
For centuries our religion has protested the importance of family values, of modesty, generosity, humbleness, and faithfulness.  To be content with God’s will. To strive for the afterlife and spend this life serving God. To choose a partner acceptable in faith and morals who can hold your hand and guide you through the twists and turns of life and fight away the taunts and temptations of a material world. A partner who will love you for who you are and all you are, accepting your strengths as blessings from God and embracing your weaknesses as tests of their faith. A partner who believes that if something is broken you fix it, not throw it away. A partner who can help you raise a better generation of Muslims than our own and one who, above all, can walk with you towards the gates of paradise. 
There is a marriage crisis in our community but we can fix it, because we have one common tie that binds us all; our faith. It all comes back to that. One day we will realise that it doesn’t matter how we look, what we studied or where we live. One day we will take off our perfection-tainted glasses, we will lift the veils on our hearts and we will clear the clouds of doubt from our minds.  One day we will look for and we will see each other’s souls, we will appreciate the essence of who we are and we will fall head over heels in love with that.
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<pre>Image from: http://sarahcarlin.com/wedding-singer/</pre>
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On Unrealistic Love: Marriage Among British Muslim Iraqis

It is believed that comedy began in Ancient Greece around 450 BC and was defined by Plato as all exhibitions which have a tendency to excite laughter. The first form of religion began some time around 2500BC. Until recently the two have never walked hand in hand. Over the past few years a new generation of comedians has surfaced, one that aims to break down cultural barriers, correct misconceptions and bridge the ever widening gap between those with faith and those without. 
One example is the blossoming comedy show, “Allah Made Me funny” created by a group of American Muslim comedians in an attempt to counter the negative stereotypes and attitudes about Muslims and Arabs. The founder is Preacher Moss, an African American Muslim who set up the company to engage audiences in contemporary issues facing society through humour. He is joined by Mohammed Amer, a Palestinian refugee, who hopes to conquer ignorance and continue his aim of raising awareness about the hardships of being stateless. 
Former lawyer Azhar Usman was interested in waging peace through humour. Azhar Usman is also part of another unusual partnership with comedian Rabbi Bob Alper in their show entitled “One Muslim. One Jew. One Stage. Two Very Funny Guys” which aims to address the differences and similarities between these religions in a light hearted and most of all, peaceful way. However, as well as showing Americans that most Muslims are not radical extremists, the comedians also hope to take the show to Muslim countries to help the Islamic world gain a better understanding of America. With such a noble cause at heart it may be easy to agree that using religion as a tool for constructive humour is not as shocking as it seems. In fact, humour should bring us all together irrespective of race, culture and religion. 
The maddening thing for these comedians is that all their good work can be undermined by the fury and extreme reactions they provoke. For example the name of a teddy bear or the drawing of a cartoon ends up as fuel for claims that adherents of religion cannot take criticism. Hopefully by using comedy to encourage tolerance and understanding of faiths we can learn to laugh more and fight less. This is the intention of a comedy show called “A Muslim, a Mormon and a Jew Walk In to a Bar: The Comedy of Religion”. The show consists of a Jewish stand up comedian Lisa Geduldig, and perhaps the most popular Muslim female stand up comedienne, Shazia Mirza, famous for starting her show in an Islamic headscarf. They believe that comedy is the perfect way to make people laugh and think at the same time. 
The Mormon in this show is Bengt Washburn who defines himself as someone who has trouble following the rules of his faith, like drinking coffee. “There are a lot of rules for Mormons; no drinking, no smoking, no premarital sex, no coffee. In fact that’s the one rule that actually makes sense when you think about it. I mean, you can’t drink, you can’t smoke, you can’t have sex, why stay awake?” He believes that as a comedian the point is to expose a hidden irony that reveals the world in a different light. 
The purpose of using religion as part of comedy is not to destroy or vilify religion, but to encourage people to take it less seriously. This is certainly true of the last and most unusual example of a comic partnership entitled The Coexist Comedy Tour. Consisting of an atheist, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian and a Buddhist, this holy ensemble share a stage and happily make fun of each others beliefs and culture before sharing hugs and driving home together. It is definitely a novel approach to Inter-faith dialogue but one that seems to be well received by the public as they go from strength to strength. 
Humans have long fought, killed and angered one another over their religious differences, and that hostility has spawned generation after generation of segregation, prejudice and racism. It does not take much to realise that instead of using religion as a weapon, we can use it to wage peace. The key to this it seems is comedy. 
Although we have a right to satirize any religion, we also have a moral imperative to respect all faiths and beliefs. The truth is you can never please everybody. Conflict and disagreement make the world go round and it is this that encourages people like those mentioned above to make a stand and restore the peace, until the next time. For now, the unlikely alliance of religion and comedy seems to be working. The worry for these comedians though must be that some forget to keep laughing.

Can He Take a Joke?

I recently completed my psychiatry placement at medical school. The things we saw and heard were unlike anything medical school or even life, prepared us for. From depression and suicide to schizophrenia and elaborate delusions that control a person’s entire life; by the end I was happy if a patient just came in complaining of hearing voices. I always expected to enjoy this placement, what I didn’t expect was the strange effect it began to have on me. I found myself praying, a lot; constantly thanking God for my sanity and pleading to Him to protect it, like being mentally ill was contagious, which is ridiculous I know. It was a relief for me to have a God to turn to, to have my faith to alleviate my anxiety and protect me. So I began to wonder about the impact religion and faith has on mental health, and if I felt like my faith was helping me protect my sanity, maybe it could help patients regain theirs. I had no idea where to begin with this, but it turns out a simple Google search of “religion and mental health” revealed a world of research into this field. The 800 words I have here cannot do this vast area justice, so what I will do is give you a summary of the salient points and hopefully encourage you to read more. 
It became apparent that the relationship between mental health and religion has been debated for centuries. History shows that the first hospitals to be opened for the mentally ill in the 14th century were church funded and priest managed, and religious organisations were the first to offer care to these patients. In the 20th century Freud had an enormous impact on the field of mental health. He postulated that religion in fact caused mental health problems based on its neurotic influence, and he wasn’t alone. Wendell Watters, another well known psychiatrist, stated that religious beliefs were responsible for the development of low self-esteem, depression, and even schizophrenia. This stemmed from the notion that people struggled with the battle of moral perfection and a life free from sin to seek the approval of God. In fact, during much of the 20th century, mental health professionals tended to either deny the religious aspects of human life or consider religiousness as old-fashioned or pathological. 
Over the past two decades, a wealth of studies has uncovered a strong positive association between religiousness and mental health. The crux of the argument is that being religious or having faith can have a positive effect on mental and physical health through increasing optimism and providing a support system in the form of prayer, meditation and community inclusion as coping mechanisms. In a study by Koenig (2004) 838 patients admitted to the general medical wards were surveyed. Various religious and spiritual beliefs were recorded. The results revealed that religiousness and spirituality consistently predicted greater social support, fewer depressive symptoms, better cognitive function, and greater cooperativeness in patients. Patients who categorized themselves as neither spiritual nor religious had severer health problems and were more likely to develop other medical conditions on top of existing ones. 
The message here is that religiousness can strengthen various resources, including spiritual, cognitive, psychological and social. Not only do these resources have unique positive effects on mental health, they also interact with and reinforce each other. They could be beneficial enough to change one’s worldview and cognition from an apathetic one to a world with hope, warmth and meaningfulness. To see the world in this way may be helpful in keeping them mentally healthy during stressful and critical life events. 
It’s not only academics that have suggested this association. For centuries, philosophers, scholars and poets have also addressed this relationship. One example is Imam Al Ghazali speaking on the limits of wisdom in his Alchemy of Happiness where he says, “For instance, if a man ceases to take any concern in worldly matters, conceives a distaste for common pleasures, and appears sunk in depression, the doctor will say, “This is a case of melancholy, and requires such and such prescription… Thus far their wisdom reaches…” It does not occur to them that what has really happened is this: that the Almighty has a concern for the welfare of that man, and has therefore commanded His servants, the planets or the elements, to produce such a condition in him that he may turn away from the world to his Maker.” Again, it is suggested here that in times of physical, emotional or mental distress there is the need to turn to spirituality and faith as a means of comfort and support. 
So from these examples, and the hundreds of other studies conducted in this field, it is clear that there is a relationship between religiousness and mental health. The question is, so what? What do we do with this association, how do we use it? Deep in the virtual layers of Google I uncovered campaigns by scientists to incorporate religiosity into the treatment of the mentally ill. To ask all patients what their religious background is, what their faith and spirituality levels are and to then use that information in conjunction with their medical treatment. The problem is encouraging the medical profession to welcome this, to move away from the notion that religion and faith has no place in science and medicine. 
At the moment I couldn’t tell you what this all means. I have more questions now than I did before I started swimming in this deep ocean, mainly what about the millions of mentally well healthy people out there with no faith? What’s their secret to sanity? And can we use religion to treat the mentally ill? Or is faith just one protective factor against mental illness? I do know this however; my increased religiosity during my psychiatry placement was not ridiculous and unwarranted. Since the 20th century we’ve come along away to accepting the impact faith can have on all aspects of human life. The mere fact that there is a vast world of research into this field proves there is interest, there are people taking notice of this association and working to find out more. While the way forward in all scientific research is more research, I’m happy for now just to watch this field unfold, to see where this all goes and eagerly await the outcome. 
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Ayia Al-Asadi