Muhammad Ali, a 40-year-old engineer from Sabratha in western Libya, has gone from an energetic and cheerful person to an alcoholic and drug addict since the Amazigh parents of his beloved Maram, 32, refused to allow her to marry Ali because he is an Arab.
“You do not know how much we love each other,” says Ali who was devastated, especially since he and Maram had planned for their future for over four years.
With the exception of a few cases, Amazigh in Libya refuse to marry their daughters to Arabs.
Unrequitted love
Muhammad Ali, a 40-year-old engineer from Sabratha in western Libya, has gone from an energetic and cheerful person to an alcoholic and drug addict since the Amazigh parents of his beloved Maram, 32, refused to allow her to marry Ali because he is an Arab.
“You do not know how much we love each other,” says Ali who was devastated, especially since he and Maram had planned for their future for over four years.
With the exception of a few cases, Amazigh in Libya refuse to marry their daughters to Arabs.
Unrequitted love
Having suffered for decades of marginalization and oppression, the Amazigh have grown more attached to their identity and language. Although statistics vary, Amazigh constitute nearly 10 percent of Libya’s population. Most live in the Nafusa Mountains, Zuwarah and Ghadames, including the Tuareg and Awjila people. Having lived in Libya for 4,000 years, Amazigh speak Arabic and “Berber” with varying accents.
Maram became so depressed by her parents’ rejection of her beloved Ali, that she attempted suicide. Living in Nalut, Maram says she and Ali did everything they could to convince Bal’eed (her father) to agree on their marriage, but to no avail.
Maram recalls how Bal’eed beat her, locked her inside the house and cut off all means of communication to prevent her from seeing or speaking to Ali.
Ali says he brought imams and elders from his tribe to convince Bal’eed, but “nothing worked.”
Fear of diluting Amazigh culture
Bal’eed finally decided to force Maram to marry a relative to bring her relationship with Ali to an end. When Ali found this out, he visited Bal’eed one more time to ask his approval, but Bal’eed called the police which made Ali pledge not to come to Maram’s house again.
Bal’eed says he is Maram’s father and he knows what is best for her. “This way we maintain our Amazigh origins,” says Bal’eed. “Our traditions obligate us to do so and that is that.”
Maram was forced to marry her relative. “I will never forgive my father for what he did,” whispered Maram in her mother’s ear on her wedding day.
Matriarchal traditions
Ali’s mother says Ali’s life has taken a downward turn. He refuses to listen to anyone suggesting that he lead a normal life and forget about Maram. Ali, according to his mother, has turned to alcohol and sleeping pills.
Amazigh human rights activist Suleiman Qashout says Amazigh care about identity, culture and heritage, and these can only be maintained through mothers, since they are the foundation of the family.
The only reason Amazigh prevent their daughters from marrying Arabs, says Qashout, is because mothers are the ones responsible for teaching children Amazigh and educating them about their identity, culture and heritage. There is also a social reason where Amazigh families, like most Libyan tribal and urban families, traditionally betroth their children to the children of other Amazigh families in a common-law engagement to be married when they are adults.
Also, marrying Arab women is socially unacceptable among Amazigh, so Amazigh men are obligated to marry a relative.
Unmarried women
Unlike Maram, Intisar Mohammad, a 43-year-old Amazigh woman from Yafran, was able to convince her parents to marry an Arab, yet the union led many of her relatives to disown her. She does not blame them. Nevertheless, she says, “I decided to listen to my heart.”
Only one Amazigh family lives in Ajdabiya, 900 kilometers east of Tripoli, according to a resident there. The family of two brothers and seven sisters moved during childhood because of their father’s job. A source in Ajdabiya who wishes to remain anonymous says the father refuses to marry his daughters to Arabs despite the large number of men asking to marry them because his daughters are beautiful, he says. “My daughters are not for marriage.”
The father allegedly takes his daughters every summer for two weeks to his hometown in the Nafusa Mountains and offers them to their Amazigh cousins, says the resident, but only the youngest has gotten married while the others are still single, though most of them are over 40.
Sharia not as strict
“From a religious point of view, nothing forbids marriage between Arabs and Amazigh,” says marriage official sheikh Abdurrahman Trabulsi. “It is only customs and traditions that Berbers have committed to since time immemorial.”
Trabulsi advocates for doing away with these customs, warning of “serious consequences,” including high rates of bachelorhood or clandestine marriages.
Social researcher and activist Aziza Kabawi concurs with Trabulsi. In 2000, she says, over 3,000 Amazigh women over the age of 30 were still single. The number is on the rise and this year it has run as high as 3,800 women in Nalut, Jadu, Kabaw and Zuwarah – all in western Libya.
The situation however is completely different in Yafran, also in western Libya. A big proportion of Amazigh women have married Libyan Arabs, a fact that Amazigh in other cities find extremely offensive.
