To be upset that I was not told I was breast fed by my aunt?

[Evieanne]

So in my family’s religion and culture, breast feeding a baby who isn’t yours still forms kinship and re establishes part of who you cannot marry and who you’re allowed alone with from the opposite sex even within family and who can help marry you off.

In my case, as a baby I was Breast fed by my dad’s sister and I became my aunt’s milk daughter and I am the milk sibling to all of her aunt’s children - so my cousins from my aunty, through me being breast fed, became immediate family to me and are just like my biological siblings. so her male children can no longer marry me and can be alone with me and can be my guardian when I marry as they are considered my brothers.

So it is a huge thing in my family’s religion.

It took my parents a while to conceive, and they used a clinic to finally have me. There were concerns as to whether I was biologically both of my parent’s daughter, but they loved me anyway and said they didn’t want to know. My mum breast fed me a couple times just in case I wasn’t biologically hers and kept me bottle fed after that, so I know I am the mahram of her brothers and her dad. My aunt breast fed me when my parents took me to Pakistan as a baby to make sure there was no way I wasn’t blood family to my aunties and uncles on my dad’s side because my parents are related and there was no cheating, they were wanting to protect family ties. I don’t know why they just didn’t do a dna test.

But they kept this from me and I found out because my mum and my aunt had an argument about it and I was told by my mum I couldn’t be alone with any of cousins from my dad’s side unless female and I asked what about the cousins from this aunt who breast fed me, they’re my brothers ffs!!

Birth certificates mean nothing with IVF. You could be conceived with a double donor and your mum is still your mum on your birth certificate and if married her husband goes down as dad, he doesn’t need to be present in the registry office of married to the woman who gave birth.

I stress this : some muslim women, not all will find this an important barrier. That paper wouldnt have been written in 21st America if it were not the case. Religions create some stupid rules - yes, defensive posters will rush to give the "context" of such rules and perform the twisty manoeuvre- and some poor suckers do try to live up to them.

That's absolutely not the case.

The number of men and women in the world is roughly equal, though men hold a slight lead with 102 men for 100 women (in 2020). More precisely, out of 1,000 people, 504 are men (50.4%) and 496 are women (49.6%).

Top 10 Countries With the Highest Sex Ratios (Males per 100 Females - UN 2022):
1 Qatar — 266
2 United Arab Emirates — 228.2
3 Bahrain — 163.8
4 Oman — 157
5 Kuwait — 156.1
6 Saudi Arabia — 136.8
7 Maldives — 136.3
8 Sint Maarten — 115.2
9 Bhutan — 112.5
10 Equatorial Guinea — 112

OP I'm so sorry you've been so horrifically abused by your family. It's unthinkable what you've been through and no wonder you still feel so controlled by them. Your mother should be in prison for her abuse of you. It's heartening to hear that you are planning to leave and live with your friend. I second the advice to speak to Muslim Women's Network for their guidance

If only I had a dollar for all the times I heard the "there are more women than men in the world" nonsense as justification for polygyny! Please dont embarass yourself this way.

As happened when Islam was a young religion! That's why the 4 wives thing came in, and the rules around it are very strict. Unfortunately, yet again, you see men twisting the religion for their own ends. 4 wives was never meant to be always and forever and it's not Sunnah. It was a solution to a problem that came about from A) Islam being young, B) men dying in battle C) because Muslims were nomadic, there were many females left without support. That's also when social security and child benefit started being paid, as there were women with children who found it hard to work, due to the nomadic nature of the life in Arabia.

Good job! But facts will not convince true believers.

Speak to someone outside of your family. Be that at a Mosque or the Women’s Network linked above.

Your family do not have your best interests at heart.

Absolutely do not marry a cousin - you need a wider gene pool

Do move in with your friend.

Good luck

And its justification, in the face of none of that being the case any more, for continuing is……….

I think I understand how it must feel to find out that you might be completely wrong about who you are and your place in your wider family. I can understand the reluctance to press for answers, too. I also have violent parents and would avoid this sort of situation because I might not survive it!

I'm not Muslim, but I would definitely ask my priest to help me in this situation, so I can see the value of a trusted senior member of the community involved. Your Imam should be able to keep your confidence in the early stages, and maybe intercede on your behalf later on if necessary(and I suspect you might be less likely to be harmed if someone senior is keeping an eye on you, but that will depend on the Imam, I suspect). If you are unclear about confidentiality, you could make sure of that before telling him the details.

When you say this about your mother;

And I used to comment that I wasn’t my mum’s baby and she said if I wanted to know my real mother I could ask, I just chalked it up as a joke between us because we joked about our younger siblings and every family does it but now looking back at all the abuse nothing makes sense.

do you think that means she would actually tell you the truth if you asked, or was she just taunting you?

"Beautiful and protective"...you keep believing that!! Have you read the news about women in Afghanistan recently??? It's not beautiful OR protective.

This is like a bit like Meghan Markle's interview with Larry King. She gushed vacuously about Rwanda's parliament having a large number of female parliamentarians. Only progressive if the genocide hadn't wiped out a large number of males.

And the community policing starts. How do I report that post?

I believe it was of it’s time and because the practice can’t be ‘cancelled’ so to speak because it was part of the message passed down to Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) nowadays the practice of plural marriage really is the elephant in the room within families and society.

Yes it happens but quite often it’s done in secret and when it’s done openly people generally are uncomfortable with the subject. And it’s common that when the marriage is above board families just don’t welcome it and different factions develop.

Done.

@mirax On iphone there is a “ Report post” option.
Will be for other phones/ laptops too.

I didn’t understand the post you want to report- assuming it’s the sound a language makes, and that OP is being threatened?

What are you hoping to get out of posting on this forum. Do you think you will get sound advice from people who know nothing about your culture. This is a pointless thread and the whole IVF and embryo thing just sounds like a tall story. Are you sure people around you are not winding you up?

I'm not sure because none of the Muslim men I know have any interest in having more than one wife, and my husband says I'm a handful all by myself 🤭

I did watch a strange but mesmerising docu that followed a family of fundamentalist Mormons, and the man had 4 or 5 wives, although only one legal wife and lots of kids. Interesting but heart-rending as the first OG wife had to divorce him so that he could marry a different wife as there could be only one legal wife.

Honestly? I stopped watching it because this husband fella came across as quite arrogant and kind of off in some way. I always felt like I needed a shower after watching, so I don't know why any man, Muslim or not, would want more than one wife!

I'm not sure because none of the Muslim men I know have any interest in having more than one wife

Ive heard men say that only to hear they did go on to have a second wife. I’m not saying they were lying when saying they would never have a plural marriage but as life goes on they change their mind. Some are then open about it and others aren’t.

OP, I suggest you note down contact details for useful organisations and ask for this thread to be deleted. As for religions and women rights, I don’t believe any religion is 100% for equality between men and women.

Exactly.

It's roughly 50-50.

In fact a geneticist told me that slightly more males are born .... Because slightly more males will die doing risk taking things than females.

The countries with skewed male to female ratios practice female infanticide in various forms.

I found the button, thanks. Op's post makes for uncomfortable reading for some muslim MNetters, I get that. But you dont get to shame and admonish her for her for dishonouring her parents after she has revealed the extent of her abuse and for talking about her religion when it has a large impact on her life and she hasnt in fact dissed it in any way. She wants to be a good muslim and follow the rules, I get that. She may receive good advice from asian or muslim women's advocacy groups but all the people telling her that Mn is not the place are wrong in a way too. OP lives in the UK, it is good for her to realise how far what she has been taught to fear is divergent from mainstream views, that life outside her family/community may in fact be easier than she assumes. Please, let's not shove her back into a tiny community box.

No, bit some are worse than others.

And the ones where men have built in multiple sexual partners in marriage while the women don't have that option are most definitely not along the best.

Their only option is to divorce ....and then do they even get custody of their own children?

When one sex has an option for multiple concurrent sexual and life partners and the other does not.... They are not equal.
Enough of the delusion from certain quarters

Second aggressive attempt to shut up the OP. I rest my case.