Nikoh (Tajikistan)

Nikoh 🇹🇯
Location: Tajikistan
Definition: Informal Islamic marriage ceremony
Keywords: Tajikistan – Central Asia – FSU – Religion – Islam – Marriage – Wedding – Informal Welfare – Opportunity
Clusters: Domination – Amoral familism
Author: Madina Gazieva
Affiliation: PhD Researcher at Dublin City University, Ireland

By Madina Gazieva, PhD Researcher at Dublin City University, Ireland

Nikah or nikoh, or marriage ceremony is a mandatory practice in Islam, performed across the Muslim world and in countries with Muslim minorities, and does not involve an official, civic registration. Its popular social acceptability as evidence of a legitimate union between a man and woman can pose challenges to the regulatory attempts of the state, particular in relation to polygyny.

Aqd al-nikah in Arabic, or more common in Central Asia nikah or nikoh, is a religious marriage ceremony of the Muslim legal tradition recommended to live an exemplar life (Borisova, 2021; Helie & Hoodfar, 2021; Petersen, 2021). Nikah, literally translated as ‘contract of coitus’, is a civil contract between a man and a woman legitimising their union, outside of which their relations would be considered as sin. The practice is performed across Muslim populations (from North Africa to Southeast Asia), including in Muslim-minority countries, within both Shi’a and Sunni Islam (Bredal, 2018; Helie & Hoodfar, 2021). Although not a strict requirement, the nikah is usually facilitated by an imam or mullah and in Sunni Islam is performed in presence of two male witnesses. A nikah is a purely religious ceremony and does not require an official registration (Helie & Hoodfar, 2021; Petersen, 2021). The Twelver Shi’a sect additionally permits nikah mut’ah or sigheh, a temporary ‘marriage of pleasure’, commonly practised in Iran. The ceremony is performed without witnesses, creating a union where the woman receives a sum of money from the groom (Tremayne, 2006).

Nikah’s relation to the state is less straightforward than in historically Christian communities. In the West, certain religious institutions were integrated into secular practices, where the state regulates such passages of life. Marriage was institutionalised and now serves as a lever for social and economic organisation. In several European countries, failing to register a nikah marriage is considered illegal (Moors et al., 2018; Probert & Saleem, 2018).

In Muslim-majority countries, widespread regulation of nikah took place over the course of the 20th century with the adoption of European legal codes. Prior to this, registration was not enforced, such as in the Ottoman Empire or the former European colonies, where the handling of religious affairs was characterised by non-interference (Edgar, 2006; Martykánová, 2009). Unregistered marriages were labelled as urfi or customary, and only socially recognised. Despite the overall success of regulation, urfi marriage was side-lined, perceived as a way to hide from society (Moors et al., 2018).

During the Soviet Union and following the Great Terror, the central government made concerted efforts to institutionalise religion and synchronise it with Soviet ideology (Edgar, 2006). For Islam, this entailed the establishment of the SADUM (Sovet po delam religioznykh kul’tov pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR). The SADUM, was the official Soviet muftiate, a group of Islamic legal authorities who were led by a family of Muslim scholars based in Uzbekistan and whose activities were focused on Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. To foster a modern image, the SADUM developed a progressive and heavily bureaucratised ‘Soviet Islam’. It criticised Central Asian wedding customs, taxed sadaqqa, and required the registration of mosques, imams, and nikoh ceremonies with the ZAGS. (Tasar, 2017). Despite these attempts, several rural families continued to perform unregistered nikoh marriages for polygyny or to marry their children before the legal age, registering only once the wife was old enough (Harris, 2000).

Presently, an official Central Asian marriage typically involves a nikoh, the state registration (ZAGS) and a tui, a traditional celebration organised for the community. In Tajikistan, marriage practices are heavily regulated, requiring a bride and groom’s medical checks, evidence of a marriage registration from ZAGS, and official approval to perform a nikoh (Borisova, 2021). Since the fall of the Soviet Union, nikoh has been tied to several legal initiatives. Firstly, in 2007 the Tajik government introduced a new law on tanzim, rites regulation which set limitations on expenditures and number of celebrations of the wedding. Despite this regulation and many Tajiks agreeing to limiting wedding-related overspending, families continue breaking the tanzim laws. Marriage, in traditional Tajik communities is a key element of social life, whose successful execution is a way to secure bonds between two families and assert one’s standing in the community (Borisova, 2021).

Furthermore, during the Tajik civil war in the early 1990s, security concerns for young girls led families to give away their daughters to ensure their protection. For men, in turn, the state of war offered the opportunity to access women without societal control, leading to increased coercion and performance of nikoh without tui (Roche & Hohmann, 2011). Despite being outlawed in Tajikistan, during the civil war polygyny increased due to the imbalance in the sex-ratio. With over 50,000 deaths, poor economic conditions, social and psychological vulnerability, there was a shortage of husbands. Getting a second wife by means of nikoh, was a way to mitigate these devastating effects (Cleuziou, 2016), leading to its normalisation. After the war, the practice utterly grew because of Tajik male migration to Russia, which contributed to high divorce rates as men found new wives there (Cleuziou, 2016; Thibault, 2018).

Traditionally, divorce is executed by simply saying ‘talaq’ (‘repudiation’) three times. Among migrants to Russia, talaq is often pronounced through text messages, a practice outlawed in Tajikistan since 2011, as well as Iran, Tunisia, and Indonesia among others (Brenhouse, 2011; ‘Number of Divorces Grows in Tajikistan’, 2020). The high migration and divorce rates had tragic repercussions for rural Tajik women, who traditionally live with their in-laws while their husbands are away. This makes them vulnerable to domestic abuse resulting in women committing suicide, often with their children (The Conundrum of Tajikistan’s Female Suicides, 2018). At the same time, polygyny can offer women an alternative to widowhood by becoming second or third wives, or toqal as they are called in Kazakhstan. A second marriage can mitigate a woman’s economic hardships, improve her social status, and provide a form of companionship (Thibault, 2018). In her analysis of polygamous relationships in Tajikistan, Juliette Cleuziou argued that instead of condemning it, the practice should be analysed through the ‘prism of ‘sexual–economic exchange’ … [which] better highlights the complexity of the ‘patriarchal bargain’ (Cleuziou, 2016: 77). However, the illegality of polygyny does not allow women to access financial support for themselves and their children, leaving them subject to talaq without the protection of the law (Cleuziou, 2016).

Given the secrecy of nikoh without ZAGS, Tajikistan has no official statistics on the practice, nor on the prevalence of polygyny (Najibullah, 2016). One of the few official statistics is the divorce rate of one in every eight couples in a population of over eight million, indicative of an approximate ratio of potentially problematic outcomes (‘Number of Divorces Grows in Tajikistan’, 2020). Most scholars research the practice through interviews and ethnographies, and the extent of nikoh without ZAGS can be gauged through exposure to locals (Borisova, 2021; ‘Number of Divorces Grows in Tajikistan’, 2020; Roche & Hohmann, 2011; Thibault, 2018). Still, the tensions posed by nikoh are felt across European countries with Muslim minorities and beyond, where people engage in non-registration for a variety of reasons, only some of which are related to polygyny. This led to calls by scholars for more flexibility within European legal approaches to adapt to societal practices that continue to persist (Probert & Saleem, 2018). Social acceptability of nikoh can thus be seen as a form of resistance to secular, ‘external’ mores, acting both as a source of salvation and oppression for women.

Funding

This research was realized as part of the EU Commission Horizon2020 MSCA Innovative Training Networks (MSCA-ITN) project MARKETS: Mapping Uncertainties, Challenges and Future Opportunities of Emerging Markets: Informal Barriers, Business Environments and Future Trends in Eastern Europe, The Caucasus and Central Asia, Grant agreement ID: 861034.

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