The Debate Over Muslim College Students Getting Secret Marriages

This question is in “an evolutionary moment right now,” Asifa Quraishi-Landes, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies Islamic constitutional theory, said. Recent publications have made an effort to explore the many kinds of relationships and marriages that Muslims experience, whether or not they are recognized according to traditional Islamic law. “Tying the Knot,” “a feminist / womanist guide to Muslim marriage in America,” published in the spring of 2022 by a group of female Muslim scholars, including Quraishi-Landes, takes on topics ranging from mut‘a marriages—the temporary partnerships practiced by some Shia Muslims—to interfaith marriages, L.G.B.T.Q. marriages, and polygynous marriages, in which men have multiple wives, although the latter are rare among the estimated three and a half million