REFLEC TION
By Islam Channel Senior Producer Yeota Imam-Rashid. Follow Yeota on Twitter: @Ye0ta
I
remember once whilst browsing through a card shop looking for a wedding card, I came across one that read,
‘Marriage – it’s not a word. It’s a sentence’. I stopped for a moment to ponder about its meaning; did this card really mean marriage is like a prison sentence? How bizarre! And how even more bizarre to present it to two individuals who were embarking on a journey of life together. It is not an easy decision for anyone to make. Yet, this then led me to think about how marriage is perceived in our society and the number of decreasing marriages taking place. In
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fact, statistics in the UK show that in 2014 just over half the population (51.2%) were married, a decrease from 53.8% ten years ago (according to The Guardian). So, can this perception of marriage be changed? Well, according to Harry Benson, Research Director of Marriage Foundation and a thinktank that promotes marriage claims: “If we want more of our young two-parent families to succeed as couples, the older generation have got a lot of encouraging to do”. Would parents, in ‘advising’ or ‘encouraging’ their children to marry, really help increase the likelihood of young adults getting married? I highly doubt it. Not if people’s perception of marriage is neg-
Ilma Magazine / Issue 18