DD (21) plans to get married and move abroad

[Thatonesong]

My DD is 21, she's a lovely, sociable, smart girl. She studied sports science and is now doing her MSc in Sports and Exercise Medicine. She entered into a new relationship in January, the man is 28 which to me feels like a notable age gap at 20/21, but I appreciate others may feel differently. He is from the Middle East and has made it clear he plans to move home. He proposed to DD at the start of the month, which felt quite fast since they'd been together for maybe 10/11 months at the time, but we congratulated her, she seems happy and airing our opinion is only likely to cause upset.
Tonight DD came over for dinner, without her partner. She told us she is planning to get married in the summer and then move to his home country with him in the autumn after she graduates. I asked if she has a plan for once she is there career wise and she said maybe some sports coaching but he can afford to support them both. This felt like a red flag to me as I don't want her to be fully reliant on anyone else to just survive. She was also honest and said having children is high on her priority list and she "doesn't want to wait until she's older and too tired to be an active mum". I felt a bit gobsmacked tbh, but just said she should spend some time thinking about if this all what she really wants or if she is doing it because it is what he wants/feels pressured.
Since she left I haven't been able to stop crying, my partner thinks we need to have a harsher word with her, note the risks more plainly, such as difficult getting a divorce, likely not possible to have children there, break up and move back here with them (due to The Hague Convention) etc.
I know she is an adult and entitled to make her own choices, but 21 still feels very young!
AIBU to be so concerned? What do I do?

haven't read the full thread but I would be very concerned if this was my DD. I have fire alarms going off in my head just reading this.

Is she a beautiful blonde?

"More good women have been lost to marriage than to war, famine, disease, and disaster"

And esp in Middle Eastern countries. Please talk to her.

I would make her aware that if they have children and she wants to leave the country/divorce the children will not be coming with her.

Im also assuming she has already reverted to Muslim or plans to and understands the cultural differences, from being raised in a western country.

you’re in a really difficult position, you can’t tell her what to do and can’t stop her. Keep the lines of communication open.

And this is why I tell my 13 year old never ever to marry or get involved with some like this. You read so many horror stories of children being stolen by the fathers and taken away to their country. My kids know the dangers now. You need to have a very serious conversation with her, repeatedly until the message sinks in. Show her worst case scenario.

Id encourage her to have a couple of years to enjoy married life then try for a baby. (Aka work out of quatar is for her before she gets stuck there)

Very Islamic
I read the quran in lockdown and found it to be vile
Men are meant to support women who do not work and are not allowed to mix with men
Before long he will be telling her to be muslim, wear hijab pray 5 times a day
He will want muslim kids which is a totally different way of life and culture
The Quran cheerfully says a wife has to obey a husband who is allowed to hit his wife and have 3 other wives

The Quran and the bible are roughly on a par in terms of women’s rights.

But far fewer people take the Bible seriously or live their lives according to it, that is the point.

If they don’t have any reservations about him, it’ll be because they barely know him. What they do know is that a man from a very different culture, that has very different expectations around the roles of women in marriage, is going to be taking their daughter to a country where she has zero rights over him or any children they have together, and she’ll have no way to escape if she ever needs to, nor any family around her to support her. Marriages are tough enough when you do have freedom and the law on your side; she’s going into the unknown and they have no idea how she’s going to handle that. And she won’t have her whole life ahead of her at 40. She’ll be bound by religious and cultural expectations that will place all sorts of limitations on her. As a parent, could you really not think of a single reason to be concerned for your daughter as she goes off to start this new life?

And as for that other nonsense you’ve put about the religion, that is utterly ridiculous. Any family would have concerns about their child, and their grand children, being involved in a religion that is so completely alien to anything that they are familiar with. Do you think a Muslim family would be over the moon that their child would be converting to Christianity and raising any grandchildren as Christians? Do you think a Catholic family would be fine with a conversion to Mormonism? Or Hindus being fine with a conversion to Sikhism? Of course they bloody wouldn’t. It’s not prejudice against Islam, it’s a human reaction to anything that is different from their own status quo.

One thing I notice about this thread is that there seems to be an assumption that if the marriage doesn’t work out, the daughter should just be able to whisk the children away from the country where they’ve grown up, & away from their family there, & everything they know, & just return with them to the UK. It’s like a default assumption that she should be entitled to take them- and that if she can’t do this it’s just barbaric & oppressive - where does this assumption come from?

Obviously if a marriage breaks up one of the parties should not simply be able to move children to the opposite side of the world- this restriction is not oppressive! (Imagine if a father could legally just snatch his children away from the UK, to say the US, on divorce.) I think the assumption that it is oppressive, if the country being left is a Middle Eastern one, reflects something really unpleasant.

In this case the daughter just needs to accept reality. If you move to a different country & bring up children there, as citizens of that country, going to school there, family & friends there, the other parent there, then you’re not just going to be able to whisk them away if you decide you don’t like it. And that is entirely justifiable. So you need to be really, really sure before you go that you’ll like it enough to spend much if not all of your life there.

OP’s daughter sounds very foolish.

Get her to watch “Not Without My Daughter”. Not exactly the same scenario but shows what a shit show she could end up living in. Why she would choose to live in a place with such poor female rights shows her absolute naivety and immaturity.

True, but the laws in the UK surrounding the protection of women, the division of assets and the custody of children don’t take the Bible into account when deciding whether a woman can have a divorce or not.

But the difference is very few interpret the Bible literally these days. That is not true for the Qu’ran. Christian countries don’t stone people to death.

(I’m not white or Christian btw)

I don’t think people are saying she should. It’s just a mistake a lot of women make when marrying men from abroad because they don’t think about it and in as far as they do assume they could just “come home”. It would be the same in Australia or the US etc.

This is extremely worrying, especially as she plans to have children asap. She could end up trapped there in very difficult circumstances.

You're definitely not BU to be concerned.

Obviously the OP takes that tack she will just totally alienate her dd, possibly irreparably

Thankfully. But saying the Quran is ‘vile’ - it’s no more vile than the Old Testament.

This would worry me too OP. And I actually think having kids young, then getting a career started, can be one of the best models for women if the circumstances allow for it. Especially women who want to stay home with their kids for the most part, which I think is a very valid approach to childrearing.

The thing of course that is most worrying is that if she were to do this in the UK, she would have her family nearby to keep an eye on her or to support her, she would have the law to protect her, and society generally that would support her rights and those of the kids.

It is really different potentially in a place where those things aren't true. I also think that there is a real possibility she may find living in the ME is a real culture shock, and she may find it lonely, which will create it's own pressures on the relationship.

I do think you should have a talk with her OP, but I would first take the time to calm down, and also find out more about the laws and what things are like in the specific country she is intending to live in.

And I would not present it as a personal commentary about her boyfriend. But rather, a good % of marriages fail. In the UK, her interests would be protected, finanically (not as well as they ought to be, but there are protections) and in terms o the children. This is not the same in X place, in these specific ways. No one plans to get a divorce, but it is common enough to warrant some though. If that were to happen, if she could not leave with the kids, how would she support herself without family? Could she end up stuck? What rights would she have to see the kids at all?

Tell her you will always support her but being so far away, there will be real limits to what you can do.

Ask her to consider that once her kids are older, a career might still be difficult (if that is in fact the case, it may not be depending on where they would be.)

I also might suggest that before they marry, that she visit for a period of time that would allow her to see what life would be like there and meet his family - they are likely to be very involved in her life and she will depend on them in many ways.

Perhaps start by cheerfully asking her how she wants to celebrate her last Christmas, as you presume she’ll be converting to Islam. If she is surprised and says no, you can probe into whether that’s her assumption or if she and her fiancé have discussed this already.

And ask lots of interested questions about life in Qatar, what home will look like, where her in-laws live, what his sisters’ lives are like. What the rules are, how she thinks she’ll cope with male guardianship etc. How the children will be brought up, her plans to learn the local language.

open her eyes to the reality and make her do some research of her own. Don’t let her brush you off with anything vague, push the point that you’re interested and it’s important she should be too, if she’s going ahead with such a big move. Get him round for dinner and ask him similar questions in front of her. Basically be nosy and enquiring but always in an brightly interested and engaged way, because, you know, there’s so much new stuff to learn and understand here in this exciting life event isn’t there?

Getting married so quickly, hardly knowing him, never having lived with him, is madness, quite apart from the added complications that come with moving to Qatar.

I would be very careful in your DD’s position there was an OP posting from Dubai a few months ago, unable to get her unborn child and herself out of the country - after being punched in the face by her DH. I am not for one second suggesting all middle eastern men would behave that way, the issue is, if they do the law is on their side, not your DD’s.

OP, you gut instinct is 100% right. She is in grave danger if she goes through with this marriage.
Qatar is as bad as Iran and Saudi Arabia when it comes to sharia law and how conservative it is. As the wife of a Muslim man, she will be his property once she is married. She will not be able to divorce him and keep her children. Her passport will be siezed if she tries to escape.

Please refer her to the stories of Betty Mahmoody- give her a YouTube video of the trailer for ‘Not without my Daughter’ and Nuriyah Khan whose marriage broke down and she very nearly became imprisoned for attempting to escape from her marriage.

She should under no circumstances convert to Islam because she will no longer have protected status as a Christian and won’t be protected by the British embassy or any other western embassy.

Please realise that a relationship with a Middle Eastern Muslim man means volatility and possibly violence. He has chosen a young and innocent younger woman for a reason because he thinks she will be easier to control and that she is pure and nubile.
She will most certainly become bored, lonely and depressed over there. It’s not like she’s going to live in an expat community and sheltered from the culture and religion, she’s going to be embedded in it- trapped.

Please stop this nonsense before it’s too late.

—From a secular Middle Eastern woman who has intimate knowledge and experience of the religion and culture.

The issue though is she will likely not be able to stay there herself in that scenario. She will have to leave, but won't be able to take them, So effectively leaving the marriage means abandoning them..

A valid point.