TY - JOUR AU - Al-Sharmani,, Mulki AB - Abstract This article studies the conclusion and registration of marriage among Finnish Muslims from three interrelated angles: mosques, individuals, and the state. Drawing on interview data from imams and their assistants in eight Helsinki-based mosques, state officials at the local registration office, and selected Muslim women and men, as well as decisions and documents concerning the recognition of marriage in different state institutions, the article analyses how ‘marriage’ as a civil and religious institution is framed and how the legality of marriage is constructed in these discourses. It is concluded that rather than being opposing binaries, registered and unregistered, or state and religious-only, Islamic marriages are interconnected in different ways. Furthermore, the question of intersectionality was found relevant to Muslim marriages, as diverse factors, such as transnational family ties and the gender of the individuals involved, affect the ways in which legality of their marriages becomes recognized or contested. 1. INTRODUCTION This article examines the conclusion, registration, and legality of marriage among Finnish Muslims from three related angles: mosque discourses on, and their role in, marriage conclusion; practices of selected individual Muslims; and the policies and work of state institutions that are concerned with the registration and validity of marriages. The analysis draws on interview data from imams and their assistants in eight Helsinki-based mosques, state officials at the maistraatti (ie the local registration office), and selected Muslim women and men, including decisions and documents concerning the recognition of marriage in different state institutions. We investigate how the discourses and practices of Muslim marriages are shaped by the particular Finnish context, where religious and cultural rights of communities are affirmed and governed by state policies. Thus, mosques and their members, when registered as religious communities, can exercise the right to maintain their norms and values, for example, through the work of concluding religious marriages.1 Drawing on the theoretical ideas presented in the law in the everyday life scholarship,2 we focus on how the legality of marriage becomes constructed in the discourses of these different actors: state institutions, mosques, and individuals. This article is divided into four sections. First, we describe our methodological approach and the field research and data that informed our central arguments. Second, we examine marriage practices in eight mosques: we begin with introducing the legal framework for marriage and then proceed to describe the profile of the selected mosques and the actors who carry out the work of concluding marriage. We examine more closely the mosques’ work on marriage conclusion and analyse the ways in which legality of marriage becomes constructed by mosque interlocutors. We shed light, in particular, on how mosques make use of the ‘legal space’ provided by the state and partake in the work of regulating marriages, as a form of internal governance, on one hand, and as a strategy of negotiating a larger role and authority vis-à-vis the state, on the other hand. Third, we examine the choices that selected Finnish Muslim women and men make for their marriage conclusion, their motivations, and the meanings they attach to these choices. We show how individuals’ decisions—to register a religious marriage, enter into a religious marriage and register it at a later time, or not register it at all—are shaped by their needs and the particularities (and constraints) of their living circumstances at the time of marriage. For example, individuals’ marriage conclusion practices can be influenced by factors such as whether they are students, in transnational relationship, do not have the resources for one kind of marriage or the other, need the (moral) support of their families for their marriage, etc. These various motivations denote couples’ pragmatic approach towards marriage conclusion. But interlocutors give meanings to their choices that also reflect how they differently negotiate the normativity of their religious tradition. We note, in addition, a current trend among Finnish Somalis, in particular, towards concluding and registering religious marriages, usually through licensed mosques. We tentatively contend that, based on interviews and informal discussions, this trend was much less prevalent a decade ago. We see it resulting or at least facilitated by the current and concentrated efforts of Somali mosques to promote registering Islamic marriages, from a religious and ethical standpoint. Lastly, we turn to the state practices to examine the multiplicity of legalities present in state law and norms that govern marriage. On the state institutional side, the maistraatti is the central state authority responsible for several functions relating to the confirming and registering of family relationships, and most civil marriages are concluded in the maistraatti.3 We examine how the legality of a marriage may become interrogated or contested as part of bureaucratic registration processes in which the marital status of an individual is defined for diverse purposes. In addition to the registration practices of the maistraatti, we examine court decisions on the annulment of paternity. These cases shed light on how the legality of the marriage becomes constructed in the process of the annulment of the paternity based on the pater est—presumption, ie paternity established directly by marriage. These cases offer a novel perspective on the complex and, at times, contradictory and fluid process of the constitution of a legal marriage. Furthermore, taken together, the different discourses on legality present in state law reveal how this complexity hits, particularly, those couples and families whose relationships are transnational or were formed in a transnational context. In Finland, this transnational aspect is particularly pertinent to Muslim families and, thus, affects the diverse ways in which the legality Muslim marriages become constructed in state law. 2. RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY A dictionary would define ‘legality’ as the quality or state of being legal, meaning that the issue at hand, in this case marriage, adheres to the law of the particular jurisdiction in question. For example, ‘legality’ of marriage in state law is often distinguished in European public discourses and policies from ‘legality’ of marriage according to religious law. However, the notion of ‘legality’, as something being defined as ‘legal’ or having the authority of law, is complex and socially constructed and derives from the interplay of legal norms and their social interpretation and practices. In legal anthropology, for example, rigid analytical divisions between state and no-state or official and non-official institutions, and the ‘legality’ they are assumed to bestow or lack, are questioned, and, instead, law’s operations and concepts have been studied as socially and culturally constituted processes.4 In legal studies, the notion of legality and its complex social construction has also been examined. According to Ewick and Silbey, legality is something that ‘manifests itself in diverse places, including but not limited to formal institutional settings.’5 Legality is understood here as ‘an interpretative framework and a set of resources with which and through which the social world … is constituted.’6 Rather than being something that rigidly follows from one particular norm, ‘legality’ is, thus, something constructed and mutually defined by the various sources of authority. In this chapter, we adopt a similar approach. We study law (whether state or religious) not as fixed entities of rules but rather as meanings and norms negotiated and enacted through the work practices of mosques and the maistraatti, on one hand, and the marriage conclusion choices (and their meanings) made by individuals on the other hand. Up until recent years, only little research existed, which shed light on Muslim marriage norms and practices in Finland. However, since 2013, more extensive research on the theme has emerged under the Academy of Finland project ‘Transnational Muslim Families in Finland: Wellbeing, Law, and Gender’. A recent study from this project, for example, examined how Islamic family law and norms on spousal roles and rights are being revisited by Finnish Somali women and by some mosques, as part of efforts to live ethical Muslim life and to navigate life as migrants and religious minorities.7 Another study published under the same project researched how marriage and spousal relations, again among Somali Muslim migrants, were being shaped by couples’ transnational family-based networks, ties, and practices.8 Moreover, a third study from the project researched the family dispute resolution work undertaken by five main mosques in the Helsinki area, shedding light on the challenges that these religious organizations confront and which arise in part from lack of structures and mechanisms for coordination with relevant state and third sector organizations and the mosques’ circumspect authority in issuing religious divorcees.9 Our research in this article builds on and adds to this emerging scholarship. In particular, our research is informed by the previous findings with regard to the marriage aspirations, choices, and practices of Finnish Somali Muslims (they being the largest Muslim community in the country). We also build on the research done on the work of mosques in family dispute resolution work as these results (Eg the discourses underlying the work of mosques) inform the research questions we are investigating in this research, particularly relating to the role of mosques in shaping the marriage practices of individuals. The further contribution of our research is that we delve into the issue of marriage conclusion from three angles (state, mosque, and individuals) and examine what it illustrates about the meaning and complexities of the multiple legalities governing its status. Because we study the legality of Muslim marriages in Finland in various sites and from different perspectives, our methodological approach could be described as multi-sited ethnography.10 Tracing the components and meanings that construct the legality of Muslim marriages, we cross different institutional and social spaces and draw on broad research material and several sets of data.11 The first set of data includes data from interviews conducted jointly by the two authors with the imams and other staff members of eight mosques.12 These mosques were selected for a number of reasons. They are well-known mosques frequented by many Muslim communities in the greater Helsinki area. Taken together, they cater to the diverse Muslim groups in the Finnish population (ie Somali, Afghani, Iraqi, Iranian, South Asian, North African and Middle Eastern, native Finnish converts, and Finnish Tatars). Moreover, they range from old to new in terms of the history of their establishment and service. Furthermore, the majority of the eight mosques (five) carry out a considerable work of marriage conclusion, issuing of religious divorces, and family dispute resolution. The other three present examples of mosques that either discontinued or hardly undertake marriage conclusion work because of limited resources and, hence, are also relevant to our analysis in order to understand their challenges with respect to the work of marriage conclusion. The first set of data also includes conversations and interviews conducted by the first author with maistraatti staff members and other relevant state and civic sector actors such as lawyers at the legal aid, child supervisors, and NGOs. The interview data are complemented by documents and cases from maistraatti and courts, collected by the first author. We also draw on data collected from our on-going interviews with 10 Muslim women and men from different ethnic groups13 and informal discussions with individual interlocutors in mosques, state institutions, and Muslim communities. We conducted the above-mentioned research in the period from February to July 2017. Lastly, our second set of data is drawn from research on family lives and religious and legal understandings of individual Muslim men and women, conducted by the second author in the period from 2013 to 2017.14 3. MARRIAGE IN FINNISH MOSQUES A. Marriage, Law, and Religion in the Nordic and Finnish Context: A Case of Joint Governance The Finnish state has historically considered religious communities to be important in the celebration of marriage, and the state actively supports their role in this process. Unlike some other European states,15 the Finnish state has so far not viewed religious marriages as problematic, and Finnish law includes no provisions that would, for example, penalize religious-only marriages or require that a civil marriage be concluded prior to a religious one.16 According to the 2008 Act on the Performing of Marriage Ceremonies (Laki vihkimisoikeudesta, 2008/571), registered religious communities may upon request obtain a license to conclude legally valid marriages from the maistraatti.17 These marriages are immediately legally valid without further acts of registration, although the marriage certificate needs to be presented to the maistraatti so that it can be inserted into the population register. The precursor for this law is Article 14 in the Marriage Act (Avioliittolaki 1929/234). Already in its early days in 1929, the Marriage Act provided that a marriage may be concluded in a religious community, upon a license granted by the Government. This was initially intended to accommodate the role of religious communities in marriage conclusion as recognition of the traditional position and central role of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, which as recently as in 2017 had a membership rate of 70 per cent of the Finnish population. By granting registered religious communities the right to conclude marriages, Finland follows the lead of several other European countries.18 The conclusion of marriages in the Finnish context can thus be understood as an example of accommodation and joint governance of state and religious communities. Contrary to some other European states such as the Netherlands,19 Muslim marriages have not been the focus of much public debate in Finland—with the exception of a few sporadic news articles, reporting mainly about the Sharia Councils in Britain, and occasional interest in the matter expressed by tabloids.20 In April 2017, Jani Mäkelä, an MP of the right-wing populist party, True Finns, publicly criticized the Finnish state for financially supporting the Islamic Council of Finland, which undertakes legal counselling in family matters and applies Islamic law. MP Mäkelä also addressed the matter in a written question to the Parliament, in which he asked how the Finnish state will secure that only associations committed to following Finnish law will be granted public support. The lack of wider polemic can be explained on one hand, with reference to the historically firm relations between the Finnish state and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. The institutional position of the Church comes close to a state church:21 the membership rate in the Church has historically been high (over 70 per cent at the end of 2016), and the vast majority of marriages are concluded by the priests of the Church, with these marriages being automatically considered legally valid. Equality between different faith communities requires that same conditions apply to all religious communities and, by the same logic, to other religious marriages too. On the other hand, Muslims have no historically established position as the ‘racialized other’ of the Finnish national community. Finland has historically been a working mother society, in which women instead of migrant workers were the main supply of labour force in low-paid jobs.22 To the extent that we may speak of any colonial history in the Finnish context, the ‘colonial subjects’ of the Finnish national community, in fact, were the indigenous people of the Sami in the north and the Roma minority. The oldest Muslim community in Finland is the Tatars, whose presence in Finland dates back to the beginning of the 19th century when Finland became part of the Russian Empire, after having been part of Sweden for centuries. Their story of integration is one of success and prosperity in the sense that they have managed to establish a strong socio-economic position through business and trade, and their religious ‘difference’ from the Christian majority is not revealed by any visible ethnic, racial, or cultural difference.23 Presently, the Muslim population is approximately 60,000–65,000 and comes from diverse ethnic background. The largest Muslim community are the Somali refugees and their families (over 18,000), who first started arriving in the country in the early 1990s. Other Muslims include migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, South Asia, North Africa, and, recently, Syria. Perhaps, another reason for the lack of much public debate about Muslim marriages in the country is the relatively small and recent research on this area. In 2007, the Finnish League for Human Rights published a small survey on the family values of Muslims living in Finland,24 but issues of marriage conclusion or registration were not highlighted as problematic in the report. In 2016, the League published a report on honour-based violence and its prevention and combating in Finland.25 In this latter report, unregistered marriages were highlighted as possible sites for forced or child marriages. So far, however, shocking cases involving abuse of religious marriages, for example, in the form of forced marriages, have not been reported in the Finnish media, and the issue of religious marriages has largely remained outside the public debates.26 The legalization (and governance) of registered religious marriages has been particularly relevant for religious minorities such as the Muslim population whose size has increased considerably since the late 90s. Mosques that are registered as religious communities, by and large, make use of the legal provisions providing the possibility to acquire state recognized authority in concluding marriages by obtaining the license to conclude marriages. According to the statistics of the maistraatti, there are a total of 17 Muslim religious communities that are licensed to conclude religious marriages (Maistraatti, Data and Statistics 2017). Of the eight mosques in our sample, seven are licensed to conclude marriages, although one of them no longer conducts this work because of limited human resources. The remaining two mosques, owing to their fairly small size and limited resources, have not sought to obtain a license. Religious and state authorities are intertwined in the case of religious marriages, as a certificate from the maistraatti showing that there are no statutory impediments to the marriage is required even when the marriage is concluded by a religious actor.27 The certificate, which expires after four months, is taken to the religious authority that concludes the marriage, and any marriage concluded without this certificate will not be recognized legally. Furthermore, the maistraatti is responsible for inserting the details of the marriage into the population register, so after the marriage has been concluded, the marriage certificate needs to be taken to the local office of the maistraatti for registration. In addition, the maistraatti is the state institution responsible for governing religious communities’ marriage licenses; it both grants the licenses to conclude marriages and supervises the communities’ exercise of this authority. Presently (August 2017), individual members of 53 different registered religious communities hold a total of 838 licenses to conclude marriages.28 B. Profile of Mosques and Marriage Conclusion Process The eight mosques researched for this article serve diverse Muslim populations. One of the mosques serves the oldest Muslim community in Finland, the Tatars. Two of the mosques are frequented by Somali immigrants. One of the mosques primarily serves Shia Muslims from Iran, Afghanistan, and South Asia. Two mosques are frequented by immigrants from a South Asian country, whereas the remaining two mosques are multi-ethnic and serve different Muslim communities including Finnish converts. The mosques are located in different neighbourhoods, and their premises vary in size and resources. The oldest of the religious communities was established in 1925, four were established in the early 1990s, one in 2011, another in 2013, and the newest was established in 2016. The mosque serving Shia communities follows the teachings and doctrines of Shii jurisprudence, having specific ties to religious seminaries in Iran. The other mosques, while broadly speaking follow teachings of Sunni jurisprudence, do not categorically or consistently identify with one particular school of Sunni jurisprudence. The mosque imams have varied religious training. Some hold formal degrees in Islamic religious sciences from Muslim-majority countries (eg Malaysia) or have been educated in Islamic religious sciences in private religious institutions in Europe. Some hold degrees in humanities and social sciences or in businesses and engineering from Finnish universities. Notwithstanding these different paths of formal education, almost all imams have been closely mentored in Islamic religious sciences by older religious scholars (sometimes from their own families and sometimes not) with whom they have had close teacher–student relationship for a long time (in the home country or in Finland). The majority of the imams are middle-aged and first-generation migrants, although one was in his 20s and was born in the country. The annual number of marriages conducted varies according to the size of the community served by each mosque and its human resources. For instance, two of the large mosques, which serve predominantly Somali families, conduct 30–50 marriages annually. These marriages are all legally valid and registered since these two mosques have a policy of concluding only legally valid religious marriages. Another licensed mosque, which serves a heterogeneous Muslim population, concludes 40 marriages per year. Most of these are religious-only marriages, ie not recognized by the state. According to the imam of this mosque, the reason why some people only want the religious ceremony is that the investigation of marriage impediments can be a lengthy process that involves obtaining documents from abroad, sometimes from countries that do not issue reliable and legally recognizable documents. Thus, these individuals prefer to marry religiously first and then legally later at once they have secured all the required documents. The services provided by this later mosque reflect the population it caters to, who, in this case, is heterogeneous and includes refugees and asylum seekers facing difficulties in providing the documents required for concluding legally recognized marriages. The Shia mosque, which primarily served individuals with Iraqi and Iranian background, concludes about 40–60 marriages per year. According to the imam of this mosque, half of these are religious-only unregistered marriages. Similarly, couples who enter into such marriages, the imam explained, are often those who face difficulties in obtaining the required documents for registering marriages either because their home countries lack the institutional structures that would facilitate this process (eg Afghanistan because of the war and multiple movements of Afghani refugees) or because these individuals lack legal residence status in Finland, which makes it harder for them to access state institutions. For other couples, religious-only marriage serves as a form of halal relationship or ‘engagement’ before they are finally officially married in the eye of the Finnish state. The difficulties in providing required documents have been noted in maistraatti as well. According to Finnish law, an intended spouse who is not a Finnish resident has to provide a certificate on his or her marital status, which has to be legalized in the country of origin and translated into Finnish by an authorized translator, along with a valid passport or other travel document. Asylum seekers often have no such documents available, which, in practical terms, mean that they cannot access legally recognized marriages at all. The staff at maistraatti reported that they face this problem in their work on a daily basis. There are a few mosques, on the other hand, that conclude very few or hardly any marriages (whether legally valid or only-religious). The President of the Tatar religious community and the imam of the Tatar mosque, for example, reported that they concluded only five to seven marriages in the last decade. The small number of marriages in this well-resourced and licensed mosque is the result of the small number of the Tatar community (about 600 persons). Other contributing factors may be the growing number of mixed marriages among the community and the tendency of some couples to opt for only a civil marriage. The remaining three mosques, for the most part, refer requests for marriage ceremonies to the larger mosques because they lack adequate human resources to undertake this work, and two of these mosques have not even sought to obtain a license in the first place. The mosques follow several similar steps when concluding marriages, whether these are religious-only or legally valid religious marriage. These steps have to do with meeting the requirements of concluding a marriage contract according to schools of Islamic jurisprudence. The steps are: entering the agreed dower (mahr) owed to the bride by the bridegroom in the marriage contract, having two male Muslim witnesses to the contracting of the marriage, ensuring that the bride has a guardian (the father, uncle, grandfather, or brother) who is present at the ceremony29 or whose knowledge of and consent to the marriage is ascertained by the mosque, and having the bride and groom exchange the offer (ijab) and acceptance (qubul) vows that are normally recited in Islamic marriages. In addition, mosques have developed Islamic marriage contract forms where personal information about the couple (eg name, age, nationality, marital status, and address) is entered in addition to information pertaining to some of the Islamic elements of the marriage contract as aforementioned (eg mahr). These Islamic marriage contracts also have Qur’anic verses on marriage and its intent (ie affection, mercy, and tranquillity).30 In addition, mosques that conduct legally valid registered marriages have also developed an additional form, where the personal information about the couple and acknowledgment and date of the concluded marriage are also recorded. It is this latter form that is sent to the maistraatti; in some cases, by the mosque and, in other cases, by the couple. Marrying couples are also given a copy of the Islamic marriage contract, while all mosques keep records of these contracts. Mostly, the marriages that imams conclude take place in the premises of the mosque. One mosque reported that they do not conclude marriages in any other premises as they ensure that Islamic norms on, for example, prohibition of alcoholic beverages and decent dress-code are followed. C. Constructions of Legality and Authority in Mosque Discourses In general, the people we interviewed in mosques considered it important that religious marriages that are concluded through the Islamic ceremony are also legally recognized by the state. Thus, they, on the whole, adhere to the legal requirements of marriage registration. However, the diversity in the ways in which the imams of the different mosques see the issue of registration of Islamic marriages is noteworthy. Three of the mosques, for instance, have a strict policy of only concluding legally valid marriages. Thus, these mosques send away individuals who come to them for marriage conclusion but do not have the necessary document verifying that there is no legal impediment to their marriage. In fact, the mosques normally send such couples to individual religious scholars who can conclude the marriage for them or to other mosques that do not uphold a similar policy. While these mosques do not consider Islamic marriages that are not legally recognized by the state as religiously invalid, they articulate a discourse that hierarchizes Islamic marriages and favour ones that meet the state’s requirement of registration. Interestingly, the discourse of these mosques is based on both religious and non-religious arguments. For instance, the imam of one of these mosques, one that has the largest number of Somali members, explained that their concluding only legally valid religious marriages is motivated not only by the goal of avoiding potential problems with state institutions but also by the religious goal of upholding one’s agreement towards others (ie the mosque’s and Muslim Finnish citizens’ responsibilities towards the state), citing the Quranic verse 3:76, which urges believers to honour the vows they make to others. The imam of the second mosque, which also predominantly serves Somalis and Muslims from Arab countries, explained that their policy of concluding only legally valid religious marriages is part of a larger organized initiative that the mosque has been spearheading since 2011 to reform Somali Muslim families’ (flawed) religious understandings and cultural practices, which, according to the mosque, contribute to marital disputes on the hand and their marginalization in the larger society on the other. These understandings and practices include negligence of husbands towards their wives or their domineering behaviour towards them and negligence of fathers and their poor parenting. Failure to register one’s marriage, particularly when there are no legal impediments such as lack of residence or proper documents, is seen as being connected to such failures that precludes, according to the mosque, men and women’s cultivation of an ‘ethical self’ that upholds agreed-upon norms and laws in society. The initiative of this particular mosque to reform and support families has also been shaped by the mosque’s transnational connections with a loose network of religious actors such as the Federation of Muslim Organizations in Brussels and individual scholars of Somali and Middle Eastern backgrounds in the UK and Sweden. This network of religious actors have been working with the mosque (through annual conferences in Finland and elsewhere in the continent) to promote modern Muslim sensibilities and practices that are Islamically grounded but, at the same time, are comfortable in claiming and enacting membership and belonging in their respective European societies.31 Lastly, the President of the Tatar religious community explained that their policy of concluding only legally valid religious marriages is also based on their organized efforts, as the oldest Muslim community, to integrate successfully into the Finnish society and to distinguish themselves from some of the recently formed Muslim communities, which they saw to some extent as having failed to reconcile their religious and cultural tradition with their diasporic life and membership in the Finnish society. The other mosques reported more mixed views and approaches towards registration of Islamic marriages and their role in this process. On the whole, there is still preference for legally valid Islamic marriages. For instance, the imam of one of the mosques, which for the time being does not have the state authorization to conclude marriages, reported that they conclude religious marriages only after the couple showed the state certificate verifying that there are no legal impediments to their marriage. Our interlocutor in another mosque explained that their recent decision to cease all marriage work, despite their having marriage registration license, is partly motivated by the challenges of inadequate human resources and partly to avoid the potential problems of concluding religious marriages that do not meet the state requirements of legal recognition. On the other hand, the imams of two other mosques that conclude substantive number of marriages, some of which are religious-only, see their providing this latter service as an integral part of the mosque’s religious duty to help Muslims lead a pious life, especially as they serve Muslims who are seeking to enter into Islamically licit marriages but lack the proper documents for registering these marriages. But again, these mosques also stressed that they point out to the couples that their marriages are not legally valid in the eye of the state. In other words, state registration of Muslim marriages is still seen as important to avoid potential problems with state institutions. The discourse of possible problems that may follow to individuals or the religious community as a result of concluding unregistered and unrecognized marriages seems to reflect a form of power relationship where the desired modified behaviour is produced by self-governance instead of repressive forms of state power.32 However, instead of mere self-governance according to the wishes of the state, this integration of state authority with religious authority seems to offer mosques reward in that it seems to speak of a kind of mutual reinforcement: as the state grants the mosque a sense of legal authority it simultaneously grants the religious community a recognized space for exercising religious authority. In our interlocutors’ narratives, legality and authority emerge as socially constituted and connected to several intertwined systems of meaning-making, rather than separate institutions such as ‘state law’ or ‘religion’.33 This kind of interrelationship could be explained also with the concept of productive power, which highlights the interactive side of power relationships and the fact that power is embedded in the structures of social action.34 The intertwining of religious and state authority is particularly evident in the mosques’ call for authority to grant divorces. Mosque imams’ sense of lacking authority has been reported in previous studies, for example, by Liversage and Jensen.35 Similarly, we observed in our recent study on dispute resolution work in mosques that imams feel they needed a stronger authority in divorce matters.36 In line with our earlier study, the mosques in this research also reported that state authority would be important in order to strengthen not only their legal but also their religious authority, which can be contested in difficult divorce cases. According to them, the legal authority would render the religious divorce process less like a non-binding consultation and more like legally enforceable decision. In the Shia mosque, an alternative solution to the problem of women not being able to obtain divorce is sought in the practice of having couples enter stipulations (including the wife’s right to divorce) in the marriage contract. These stipulations are printed on the Islamic marriage contract automatically, so that the couple could just circle which ones they want to include in their marriage contract. The perspective of productive power also renders visible the varied positionality of the mosques. The mosques are different in terms of their resources and the resources of the populations they cater to. This also means that they are differently able to access a productive and authority-increasing power relationship vis-à-vis the state. The mosques’ differentiated access to resources and state-based authority indirectly results in a form of hierarchical relationship among them. This hierarchy is partly reflected in the division of labour among them with regard to the conclusion of marriages, meaning bigger and better-established mosques delegate the work of concluding legally invalid (and, thus, potentially problematic) religious marriages to smaller mosques, and vice versa. Furthermore, unequal access to resources and authority is also reflected in the diverse and even critical stances of the mosques regarding some questions in relation to the state. While those mosques that serve well-established communities want to emphasize their relationship with the state, other mosques, which are regularly attended by individuals with irregular residence status, tend to make the point that they are offering services to those regarded as non-belonging by the state and who otherwise cannot perhaps marry at all. In one of the interviews, for instance, the position of Muslims in Finland and the continuous requirement of integration were addressed explicitly by the imam of one of these smaller- and less-resourced mosques. The imam found the public discourse of integration nearly offensive in that it builds on the idea that people who have lived in the country for years or have been born there are still not integrated. The continuous demands to integrate thus question their belonging to the country. Rather than to talk about integration, this imam argued for the inclusion of mosques and emphasized that it is important that mosques be seen as serious collaborators and civic actors. 4. MARRIAGE IN PRACTICE: INDIVIDUAL STRATEGIES AND LIVED REALITIES A. Marriage Practices and Motivations In a study on Muslim marriage practices in the Netherlands,37 Moors notes how a nikah may be used pragmatically for various purposes such as legalizing a relationship that parents do not accept and limiting the damage by pretending the marriage was accepted or nikah can be used to give the impression of parental control even when the bride and groom had already made the decision about concluding the marriage. Contracting a nikah was also a strategy used by people who did not want to go public with their relationship but felt the need to get married to be together.38 Moreover, Moors and Vroom-Najem, in a study of marriage conclusion practices of Dutch Muslim converts and the political debates around Muslim marriages, argue that individuals often choose to live in unregistered marriages and find it extremely difficult to understand why such marriages should be a problem in a country with liberal family laws and where the majority way of life is cohabiting without or prior to marriage.39 The authors highlight that individuals they interviewed often considered it important for their well-being to be able to conclude the religious marriage prior to the civil marriage. In our study, we also found that choices about marriage conclusion are made primarily on the basis of the needs and priorities of individuals at the time of the marriage. For example, couples who at the time of marriage are at a certain stage in their lives when they are ready and committed to establishing a marital home and life are more likely to register their marriages. Couples who are unsure about the relationship or are prioritizing other commitments at the time of marriage, on the other hand, tend to enter into unregistered religious marriages. The first marriage of a female interlocutor, for instance, took place more than a decade ago. This marriage, which lasted a year, was not registered. At the time, the interlocutor was 18 and both she and her husband were students. Moreover, they studied and lived in separate towns and spent only the weekends together. Contracting unregistered religious marriage made sense to the interlocutor, her then husband and their families, because, on one hand, it allowed the couple to be in a religiously licit relationship while, at the same time, not committing to a more established marriage relationship (with its ensuing administrative and financial costs and implications) given that, at the time, they were still students with limited means and resources. The interlocutor explained this rationale as follows: Mulki: You did not register the marriage? Interlocutor: No, we were students, we lived in two towns and we only stayed together on the weekends. It was easier to do nikah only but not bother with registration. And my family knew. For this interlocutor, not registering her marriage served pragmatic purposes; it meant she and her first husband did not have to incur the costs of setting up a marital home. It also meant that their relationship was more like a licit engagement where she could negotiate with her spouse postponing having children until she finished her studies. In her second marriage more than a decade later, however, this interlocutor was keen to register her marriage. Again, a number of urgent practical reasons motivated her choice. This time, her new husband lived in another country and contracting a legally valid marriage was an essential pathway to ensuring that her husband could join her in Finland. Furthermore, the couple started a family and being in a legally valid marriage was seen by the interlocutor as necessary for accessing services and rights as a married mother of a toddler daughter. For this interlocutor, the issue was one of practical needs and different priorities at different points in the life cycle. In another case, and while reflecting on the breakup of his marriage, a divorced male interlocutor noted that his ex-wife’s reluctance to register their marriage should have been a telling sign for him about her lack of commitment to the relationship. While his first marriage, which resulted in two children, was registered, his second wife did not want them to register their marriage. Initially, at the advent of their married life, this choice was linked to the wife’s goal of focusing on the completion of her studies. However, the interlocutor noted that, even after his wife finished her studies and got settled in a permanent job, she was still not keen on registering their marriage. Thus, the wife’s reluctance to register the marriage, coupled with their conflicts over their financial resources and the wife’s financial commitments to her extended family, was viewed by the interlocutor as an indication of a shaky marriage. By contrast, registered marriage was implicitly viewed by this interlocutor (and others) as the basis for more established and stable relationship. Another female, divorced interlocutor and the mother of several children entered into an unregistered religious marriage with a man from the Somali community. While the interlocutor’s first marriage to the father of her children was registered, she opted for an unregistered second marriage. Again the unregistered marriage was viewed by the interlocutor as providing her with more flexibility and opportunity to get to know the new husband better and if need be opt out of the relationship more easily and with fewer costs to her children and herself. Opting for a flexible relationship for the time being, however, did not mean that the families of the couple were not informed and involved in the process. Rather, it meant the interlocutor could make certain choices about her married life that were more suitable for her family situation. One choice was not to cohabit with the husband. The interlocutor thought this was beneficial for her children as it gave them time and space to know her new husband better before he became a constant part of their family life. The interlocutor also noted that this kind of relationship meant that she was able to have more leverage in the marital relationship and not to have to take on the role of a traditional wife who took care of her husband and deferred to him. Interestingly, after several months of marriage, the wife opted out of the marriage as she felt that the husband was jealous, possessive, and not responsible enough. But are these women who are opting for unregistered marriages in a particularly vulnerable position with regard to their access to divorce? It is noteworthy that women’s overall access to religious divorce in the Finnish context (whether the marriage is registered or not) is restricted since husbands in Islamic jurisprudence have the right to unilateral repudiation, and women can only secure divorce with the consent of the husband or negotiate for it, often through the mediation of family members or the mosques. However, in the divorce cases we researched, the women (whether they were in registered or unregistered marriages) on the whole were able to secure divorce. This was, particularly, the case when women had the support of their families and in the case of unregistered marriages, when the family was informed and approving of the relationship. Women’s financial autonomy also facilitates their negotiation for religious divorce (Eg when women have their own homes and incomes). Finally, we found that marriage conclusion practices are also shaped by the needs and lived realities of transnational couples. One female interlocutor met her Finnish Somali husband when she was still living in the home country. Contracting a religious-only marriage made sense to the couple in the first few years of their relationship: the wife worked and lived in Somalia, while the husband lived in Finland and travelled frequently to the home country for his work with an international organization. However, after several years of married life across multiple national borders, the couple decided that they wanted to live together in Finland. It was then that they embarked on the process of registering their religious marriage by remarrying officially in Kenya and having the marriage notarized by the Finnish embassy. B. Negotiating (Religious) Meanings of Marriage Conclusion Practices Our interlocutors’ choices for particular marriage conclusion practices, although motivated by pragmatic reasons, also entailed negotiating normative meanings commonly attached to these practices. For some, the religious aspect of the marriage conclusion process (rather than the state registration of it) is what has ethical and normative significance. One female interlocutor, for example, considered contracting an Islamic marriage in itself (without registering it) as the main constituent of the ethico-legal validity of her marriage relationship. According to this interlocutor, it was the rituals and their entailed meanings in the process of contracting an Islamic marriage that infused it with normativity. These rituals included: a religious scholar or mosque officiating the marriage, the two Muslim witnesses, agreeing on dower, reading relevant verses on marriage from the Qur’an. Registering the marriage at the maistraatti, on the other hand, was viewed as an important but, nonetheless, merely a state requirement needed to be fulfilled to facilitate one’s family life in the country. This view was shared by other interlocutors as well (both male and female). Interestingly, viewing the religious-only marriage as the one with ethically based normativity did not preclude some interlocutors from using it pragmatically and entering into marriage relationships to whose permanence they were not necessarily committed, as we saw in some of the data examples presented in the previous sub-section. But there were also some interlocutors who were suggesting that the ethicality of their religious marriages is also linked to their being registered with the state, thus articulating a discourse similar to that of the mosques. These interlocutors tended to be purposefully seeking pious lives through religious learning from multiple sources including mosques, online religious lectures, and published books on Islamic religious sciences.40 In the cases of divorce, interestingly, many interlocutors believed that obtaining both religious and civil divorce is important both ethically and pragmatically.41 Perhaps, related to the above point is a recent trend that we noted among Finnish Somalis: contracting an Islamic marriage and registering it at the same time. All married interviewees (18) in the Somali sample and almost all the divorced interviewees (nine of 10) were at the time of the interview or previously in legally registered marriages.42 The current prevalence of this practice could be related to the efforts of Somali-run mosques to promote the religious importance of linking both the contraction of Islamic marriage and its registration, which would point towards a shift taking place in the collective legal consciousness of Finnish Somalis. For other interlocutors, while they considered their being Muslims an important part of their identities, contracting an Islamic marriage has no religious meaning attached to it. For example, one female interlocutor (of Middle Eastern background) contracted a religious-only marriage with her Finnish convert husband to honour the wishes of her father, a devout first-generation migrant from the Middle East and his family in the home country.43 This interlocutor saw the choice she made as a practical way to secure the approval and support of her father and his transnational relatives so that she could live with her partner and get to know him better. Few years later, when the couple wanted to buy a home together, they contracted a civil marriage. The interlocutor’s rationale was that being in a legally valid marriage at that juncture of their lives was practically useful for the bureaucratic process of acquiring financial assets together. When the marriage ended, the couple got a civil divorce, but not a religious one. The interlocutor’s rationale was that a religious divorce is not practically necessary or normatively important to her on an individual level. Her father, on the other hand, keeps asking her to religiously formalize the civil divorce by having the ex-husband make a pronouncement of an Islamic divorce. On the whole, our findings are tentative and still need to be corroborated by more extensive research on a larger sample. Notwithstanding, our preliminary conclusions suggest that individuals’ decisions whether to conclude a religious only marriage or to register this union are shaped by their living circumstances and needs at different junctures of their lives. Still individuals’ marriage practices suggest, on the whole, a trend towards registering marriages. It is important, however, to underscore that the agency to exercise the choice of registering a marriage or not is not equally available to all, as some individuals may be unable to access the state legal system or make claims to legal rights with regard to marriage. This calls for attention to situations in which the question of the marital status and the distinction between a registered, legally recognizable marriage and an unregistered relationship can actually become definitive of the rights and responsibilities of the individuals. 5. MULTIPLE LEGALITIES OF MARRIAGE IN STATE LAW A. Legality of Marriage, Social Recognition, and Kin-Making in State Law Several state institutions in Finland, through their different practices, define, contest, and produce different meanings of the legality of marriage. A marriage as a legal status or as a family relationship may be defined differently and for different purposes, for example, by a court of law applying the Marriage Act, a social worker applying social welfare provisions, or immigration authorities applying immigrant family reunification rules. In addition to the important role of courts as producers of normative understandings of marriage, the maistraatti is the central state authority responsible for several functions relating to the confirming and registering of family relationships, and most civil marriages are concluded in the maistraatti.44 It is in charge of the investigation of marriage impediments; it is the body responsible for the recognition of marriages concluded abroad;45 and it confirms the juridical parental relationship between a father and a child when the mother is unmarried, which requires an investigation of the marital status of the mother. This multiplicity of functions and discourses of marriage regulation and recognition, present in state law and legal institutions, also points to the fact that legality is a complex construction not only when experienced in practice; even in the normative dimension of state law, legality is defined not only by unity but also just as importantly by diversity and discrepancy.46 According to Smart, much of the law’s work on regulating and recognizing relationships can be understood as ‘a practice of kin making or “kinning”’, by which she means that ‘in various ways law operates to create recognized and recognizable forms of kinship. While once these practices of kinning may have been largely imposed, in late modern times, they are more likely to be attempts to keep abreast of changing social and cultural practices.’47 From the perspective of recognition and kin-making, then, the diversities and inconsistencies, rather than an imagined unity of the law, are vital for its functions. In textbooks on family law, the legal uncertainties concerning marriage are often presented as being mainly about the status of the marriage as legally valid, void, or non-existent. While these categories are important, the reality of how a marriage may become defined as legally existing and recognized is, of course, a much more complex issue. In addition to cases in which the existence and legal status of a marriage is the main issue of the dispute, a marriage may become contested as a preliminary or incidental question, for instance, when the main dispute is about parental rights or distribution of marital assets or inheritance. Importantly, a decision made by an authority in a particular case is not necessarily always binding in other contexts. For example, in a ruling from 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the fact that a marriage was concluded only to circumvent the immigration rules did not render the marriage legally non-existent.48 The question of whether and under which conditions a marriage concluded in a religious ceremony can be legally recognized has become more urgent as European societies have become increasingly multicultural. Legal research particularly in the United Kingdom has demonstrated that the increasing plurality of religious and state legal frameworks, marriage customs, and ceremonies has resulted in a greater insecurity as to when a marriage exists legally.49 Jänterä-Jareborg has in a similar manner expressed concerns about the validity of the numerous marriages concluded in Swedish mosques in ceremonies in which the bride and groom are in different rooms at the moment of the marriage conclusion.50 If these marriages became contested, it would be uncertain whether they would be deemed existing at all as Swedish, and Finnish law alike, holds as a constitutive element of marriage that the question about the will to marry be presented directly to both spouses, who are both simultaneously present in the same room. While these considerations are important and might with time materialize into legal disputes in Finland too, our research shows little indication that these would be major concerns amongst Muslims in Finland, at least for the time being. Disputes about the validity of Muslim marriages or their legal existence have not been reported in Finnish courts, and none of our interlocutors mentioned this issue.51 This is not to say, however, that the issue of the legal existence of Muslim marriages would be irrelevant in the Finnish context. Our data show that the legal status of the marriage can sometimes be unclear to the couple themselves. The staff working at the maistraatti reported that they frequently face situations in which a couple would come to the office to have their Islamic marriage certificate legally registered but that the certificate would then be found lacking in some formal respect, for example, because it was issued by an imam who does not hold a license to conclude legally recognizable marriages. In these cases, it seems that people usually quickly re-conclude the marriage making sure that the required formalities are fulfilled this time. Of course, problems can potentially occur in this kind of cases if the marriage was originally concluded a long time ago with the impression that it was also valid legally, and the couple had dawdled with getting the marriage registered and only later found out that their marriage did not exist legally. Our interlocutors, however, did not speak of any concrete cases in which problems had arisen from failed registration.52 Transnational family relationships in general bring about challenges to the system of legal recognition of kinship structures. As Sportel, de Hart, and Kulk point out, the legal discourses and processes present in the ‘mundane work of documents and bureaucracy’ shape the ways in which relationships and statuses assume meaning as registered/unregistered or official/unofficial, impacting also how individuals opt between legal and non-legal forms of intimate relationships.53 This observation is reflected also in our data from maistraatti and courts. Smart’s approach to law as a practice of kin-making illuminates her argument that the primary purpose of law is not to impose particular kinds of family structures and regulate by means of normalization but rather to make room and provide for protection and recognition of relational realities. However, as law has not only one but also several rationalities and is complex and sometimes contradictory, it also empowers some individuals more than others. The regulatory and coercive effect of law does not hit everyone the same way but some are more exposed to its control and restrictive capacities. In our analysis, this was evident in that Muslim marriages often become legally problematized but often not directly because they are religious or Muslim marriages but because there are other factors, such as migrant history and transnational family relationships, contributing to them being framed as legally problematic. In the next section, we will look at examples how Muslim marriages become problematized in this intersectional view. B. The Issue of Intersectionality and Legalities Produced in the Discourses of State Law The interviews and the studied cases in the maistraatti and courts demonstrate that the control of the law is not symmetrical regarding all families. Instead, the complexities arising from the multiple and contradictory rationalities of the law tend to impact transnational families with ties to unstable countries in particular. The specific purposes for which the ‘legality’ of a marriage is investigated, recognized, and contested in each case direct and define the kind of information required from individuals concerning their identity and relationships and the processes in which this information is collected and defined as reliable or unreliable. Our interlocutors, in both mosques and maistraatti, frequently spoke of the problems individuals face when they try to collect the documents required for proving the family status and legality of identity and relationships. It is not clear, for example, whether a child born in Somalia to a father who resides in Finland will be registered in Finnish population register or which documents are required for registration, as documents issued by state or other institutions such as hospitals are generally considered unreliable. Other examples from the analysed case files show that, in cases of death of a spouse in Somalia, the widow or widower in Finland can be advised to file for a divorce only to have the marriage legally dissolute as the death certificate from a Somali hospital is considered unreliable. As noted earlier, our interlocutors in mosques reported that, for several individuals, religious-only marriage was in fact the only route to officiate the marriage owing to the difficulties relating to the obstacles in obtaining the required documents. The ‘legality’ of the marriage is related to the hierarchical status of the knowledge concerning the individual, defined by legal norms and official practices, and to the processes in which this knowledge is recorded in the official files at different junctures of the life of the individual. For example, a person seeking asylum is presently required to provide the documentation from the home country concerning his or her marital status before the certificate proving that he or she has the right to marry can be granted. However, if the person has been granted asylum, he or she will not be required to provide the documentation from the authorities of the home country. In these cases, it is sufficient that he or she gives a personal assurance, if possible witnessed by two people who know the person well. Furthermore, the lack of coherence with respect to the recognition of family relationships can be a cause of so-called limping marriages, but it can also form incentives to some practices that, otherwise, would not exist. For example, our data include cases in which child marriages were rejected on ordre public grounds and not registered in the population register, and the couple was advised to re-apply for the registration of the marriage after the minor spouse had reached the age of 18. These marriages remain limping as they exist in the countries they were concluded. Furthermore, non-recognition means that a child marriage forms no impediment to subsequent marriages. The principled decision not to recognize under-age marriages may, thus, factually enable polygamy in some cases. Another significant area where the issue of marriage arises has to do with the confirmation and registration of children’s family relationships. The maistraatti confirms the juridical parenthood between a father and a child if the mother is unmarried. If the marital status of the mother is unclear, the statement of the maistraatti about whether the mother is considered married or not is required before the examination, and confirmation of paternity can take place. The decision of the maistraatti concerning the marital status of the mother is, thus, a prerequisite for the investigation and establishment of paternity. In Finnish law, similar to most other countries, a firm statutory link is established between the marital status of the mother and the establishment of paternity. According to the pater est—presumption, provided in the Paternity Act (11(2015), the man to whom the mother was married at the moment of the birth of the child is automatically considered the de jure father of the child.54 If the mother was unmarried when the child was born, the paternity is established through a process of examination of paternity, which can be (and often is) a simple occasion where the parents tell the local child supervisor who the father is so that this information can be entered into official records. This expression by the man that he is the father of the child is called confession of the child. However, the process of the examination of paternity cannot be initiated if the mother is legally married, as the de jure paternity of the husband has to be annulled before another man’s paternity can be established. The strong position of the husband in relation to a child born to the wife also makes the knowledge about the marital status of the mother of crucial importance to officials dealing with paternity cases. The interlocutors (at the maistraatti) shared with us a number of problems relating to the definition of the marital status of the mother and, thus, to the competence of the child supervisor to conduct the examination of paternity. These cases often involve immigrant families and transnational family relations. In a recent study on the practices of maistraatti and the Population Register Center, Alastalo, Homanen, Kynsilehto, and Rantanen examine how foreigners are registered in the Finnish population register and how this information travels from the registers to official statistics. The authors note that in 2014, 17.4 per cent of migrants had their marital status registered as ‘unknown’ in the population register.55 As such, these cases do not necessarily concern Muslim families, but as most Muslim families in Finland presently show recent histories of migration, and their family relations often are transnational, the issues relevant to migrant marriages often overlap with Muslim marriages. If the mother is legally married but the father of the child is someone other than her husband, the consent of both the mother and the husband is required before another man may confess his paternity. If the consent of the husband cannot be obtained, either because the husband refuses to give it or because he cannot be reached at all, the paternity of the husband can be annulled only through court proceedings. In our research, a total of 64 cases of annulment of paternity during the time span of 2014 and 2015 were analysed in three district courts.56 On the basis of the names and other details of the parties, the vast majority of the cases involved either cross-border marriages or individuals with immigrant background. Only in a small minority of the studied cases were the mother and the man whose paternity was to be annulled, both ethnically Finnish majority.57 In most cases, the claimants were mothers. Legal aid was granted in nearly all cases. Twenty of the cases (ie 32 per cent) involved Somalis. In all of the cases involving Somalis, the biological father of the child (who presumably was also a religiously wedded husband of the mother) was involved in court proceedings, whereas in only few of the non-Somali cases was the biological father of the child involved.58 Typical for the Somali cases was that the mother and the husband had married abroad, usually in Ethiopia, Kenya, or Egypt, but the husband had either never been to Finland or had left Finland years ago. It was common that the whereabouts of these husbands could not be confirmed. The writ of summons was, therefore, published in the Finnish official journal, which is published in Finnish language. The paternity cases invite several questions that need to be addressed in further research. First, it was often, although not always, directly evident from the case files that the mother and the biological father were married religiously and shared a home together. In all these cases, the biological father was willing to be involved in the process and have his paternity established, which indicates that the relationship was considered permanent and legitimate by the individuals themselves. Was it then the case that they did not know that the previous marriage was not legally dissolved? In some cases, the mother stated that, since the application for residence permit to the first husband had been rejected, she had assumed that she was not considered married in the eyes of the state. Second, if they were not aware of the legal status of their marriage, is it because the state legal system has little relevance in their life or because the state system is too difficult for individuals to navigate? 6. CONCLUSION: RETHINKING THE INTERPLAY OF ‘OFFICIAL’ AND ‘UNOFFICIAL’ In this article, we have studied marriage conclusion and registration among Finnish Muslims from the perspectives of state policies and legal governance, mosques, and individuals. We examined how marriage becomes framed as religious and legal and what meanings these linkages have to different actors involved. We noted how the legal framework within which the process of marriage conclusion takes place provides a space for religious communities to have a legitimate and important role in this area. We also noted the manifold role of the maistraatti in the context of marriage conclusion. From the perspectives of the mosques, we noted that the integration of state authority with religious authority seemed to offer them a recognized position within the power hierarchies of the state. The different resources and other differences between the mosques also seemed to define their position in these power relations. From the angle of individuals, our research seems to confirm what previous studies have discovered: people deal with legal and religious discourses on marriages pragmatically and depending on their particular life situation. For some individuals, a religious-only marriage may provide a better or more appealing alternative than a registered marriage. However, these findings are tentative and need to be further researched. On the state institutional side, our examination focused on the maistraatti, which is the central state agency dealing with marriage and defining the marital status of the individual. Our research indicates that the diversity of marriage practices is visible also in the state institutional side which points towards a conclusion that the inherent diversity in the notion of ‘legality’ is not merely something that exists within or results from the legal reality and mundane practices, in which legal norms are interpreted and enforced in everyday life. Diversity, rather, is a defining feature of ‘legality’ even in the normative discourses of state law itself. We noted that the intersectional positionality of Muslims in Finland shows, particularly, in relation to the diversity of state legal discourses on marriage. Muslim marriages become a focus of legal control not directly as religious marriages but as a result of the complexity of marriage regulation and its relation to registration and borders of the nation. Our examination of the paternity cases indicated that paternity proceedings in particular are the site where the discourses of civil and religious marriages become connected through the question of legitimate descent. While the liberalization and individualization of family law has meant a detachment of the legal position of the child from the status of its parents’ relationship, the marital status of the parents still serves to categorize relationships, to legitimize and officiate them, and to direct the official gaze into suspect forms of relationships. All in all, the impact of intersectional positionality in law and how it affects the constructions of ‘legality’ in legal discourses is important to take into account in future research. Acknowledgement Sanna Mustasaari is grateful to her co-author who, as a senior researcher, advised and guided her during the research. Furthermore, in many respects the article draws on her previous research. Her contribution to this article is thus far more substantive than second authorship indicates. Footnotes 1 Mulki Al-Sharmani, ‘Muslim Family Wellbeing and Integration in Finland: The Role of Mosques’ in Marja Tiilikainen, Mulki Al-Sharmani and Sanna Mustasaari (eds), Wellbeing of Transnational Muslim Families: Marriage, Law and Gender (Routledge, forthcoming). 2 Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey, The Common Place of Law: Stories from the Everyday Life (Chicago University Press 1998) 23; Rosie Harding, Regulating Sexuality: Legal Consciousness in Lesbian and Gay Lives (Routledge 2011); Iris Sportel, Divorce in Transnational Families: Marriage, Migration and Family Law (Palgrave Macmillan 2016). 3 District courts may also conduct civil marriages. 4 Sally F Moore, Law as Process: An Anthropological Approach (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1978). 5 Ewick and Silbey (n 2) 23; Harding (n 2). 6 Ewick and Silbey, ibid. 7 Mulki Al-Sharmani, ‘Striving against the “Nafs” Revisiting Somali Muslim Spousal Roles and Rights in Finland’ (2015) 8 Journal of Religion in Europe 101. 8 Mulki Al-Sharmani and Abdirashid Ismail, ‘Marriage and Transnational Family Life among Somali Migrants in Finland’ (2017) 14 Migration Letters 38. 9 Mulki Al-Sharmani, Sanna Mustasaari and Abdirashid Ismail, ‘Faith-based Family Dispute Resolution in Finnish Mosques: Unfolding Roles and Evolving Practices’ in Samia Bano (ed), Gender and Justice in Family Law Disputes: Women, Mediation, and Religious Arbitration (Brandeis University Press 2017). 10 George E Marcus, ‘Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-sited Ethnography’ (1995) 24 Annual Review of Anthropology 95; Simon Coleman and Pauline Von Hellermann, Multi-sited Ethnography: Problems and Possibilities in the Translocation of Research Methods (Routledge 2011). 11 This research is conducted as collaboration among three studies. The first study, entitled ‘Governing Plurality: Marriage Practices and the Law’, is undertaken by the first author and is still ongoing. It focuses on the governance of transnational Muslim marriages and builds on the first author’s earlier work on Islamic family law in the Finnish legal context and draws on her doctoral dissertation (Rethinking Recognition: Transnational Families and Belonging in Law, 2017, University of Helsinki). The second study, undertaken by the second author (together with Dr. Abdirashid Ismail) and entitled ‘Transnational Somali Muslim Families in Finland: Discourses and Realities of Marriage’, studies the marriage norms and practices of Somalis in Finland; the interplay between marriage and divorce practices and the transnational family practices and ties of couples and families; and the ways in which women and men navigate multiple legal systems in processes of marriage and divorce. Under this study, the second author has been conducting ethnographic research on marriage and divorce practices of Somali women and men and on the multi-dimensional ‘family work’ that mosques undertake. Both studies are part of the Academy of Finland research project ‘Transnational Muslim Marriages in Finland: Wellbeing, Law, and Gender’, led by Dr. Marja Tiilikainen at the Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki. The third study, undertaken by the second author, is entitled ‘Islamic Feminism: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics’. It is funded by the Academy of Finland for the years 2013–2018, and it researches how contemporary Muslims in the transnational and national contexts of Egypt and Finland engage with their religious textual and legal tradition to address problematic issues pertaining to gender roles and relations, and their contestations over religious norms on marriage and divorce practices in light of their changing lived realities, and their acquiring new forms of religious knowledge. 12 The authors jointly conducted the interviews with mosques, but the second author led the research and took the primary role in designing the interview guides. We found these interlocutors through the previous research contacts and networks of the second author. 13 We draw on interviews completed thus far with four women from different ethnic backgrounds. 14 These data include, for example, interviews with 37 Somali Muslim women and men, conducted by the second author and Dr Abdirashid Ismail, life story interviews with five women (conducted by the second author); and a three-year ethnographic research by the second author of the programme activities of one of the researched mosques, for family well-being. The programme activities include marriage conclusion, family dispute resolution, seminars, and training workshops for youth, newlyweds, and parents. 15 For example, the Dutch state requires that a civil marriage exists before a religious one may take place. See Annelies Moors, ‘Unregistered Islamic Marriages: Anxieties about Sexuality and Islam in the Netherlands’ in M Berger (ed), The Application of Sharia in the West (Leiden University Press 2013); Annelies Moors and Vanessa Vroom-Najem, ‘Converts, Marriage, and the Dutch Nation-state: Contestations about Muslim Women’s Well-being’ in Tiilikainen, Al-Sharmani and Mustasaari (n 1); about the UK, see Ralph Grillo, Muslim Families, Politics and the Law: A Legal Industry in Multicultural Britain (Ashgate 2015). 16 See Moors and Vroom-Najem, ibid. 17 Founding a registered religious community is governed by the 2003 Act on Freedom of religion (Laki uskonnonvapaudesta 2003/453). A minimum of 20 (over 18 years old) persons are required for founding a religious community. A charter of foundation is made of the founding of a religious community, to which the by-laws of the community are annexed. The charter must be dated, and it is signed by the founders. The Finnish Patent and Registration Office make the decisions concerning registration. 18 Prakash Shah, ‘Distorting Minority Laws? Religious Diversity and European Legal Systems’ in Prakash Shah, Marie-Claire Foblets and Mathias Rohe (eds), Family, Religion and Law: Cultural Encounters (Ashgate 2014); Maarit Jänterä-Jareborg, ‘On the Cooperation between Religious and State Institutions in Family Matters: Nordic Experiences’ in Shah, Foblets and Rohe, ibid. 19 See eg Moors (n 15), Moors and Vroon Najem (in this issue), and Moors and Vroon Najem (n 15, forthcoming). 20 Mäkelä criticized the state for granting financial support to the Islamic Council of Finland and its legal board. According to Mäkelä, there is only one law in the country, and all attempts to apply religious law should be rejected. accessed 31 August 2017. 21 Juha Seppo, ‘Finland’s Policy on Church and Religion’ in Lisbet Christoffersen, Kjell Å Modéer and Svend Andersen (eds), Law & Religion in the 21st Century – Nordic Perspectives (DJØF Publishing 2010). 22 Anu Pylkkänen, ‘Transformation of the Nordic Model: From Welfare Politics to Gendered Rights’ (2007) 19 Canadian Journal of Women & the Law 348. 23 Antero Leitzinger, Suomen tataarit: Vuosina 1868–1944 muodostuneen muslimiyhteisön menestystarina (Finnish Tatars: The Success Story of the Muslim Community Formed in 1868–1944) (East-West Books Helsinki 2006). 24 Kristiina Kouros, Suomessa asuvien muslimien suhtautuminen perhearvoihin ja lainsäädäntöön 2017 (The Family Values of Muslims Living in Finland, A Report of the Finnish League for Human Rights) accessed 31 August 2017. 25 Saana Hansen and others, Kunniakäsitykset ja väkivalta. Ihmisoikeusliiton selvitys 2016 (A Report by The Finnish League for Human Rights on Honour-based Violence and Its Prevention and Combating in Finland) accessed 31 August 2017. 26 Since 2013, there has been more systematic research on the marriage norms and practices of Muslims in the country, which we will refer to in the course of the article. 27 The Finnish Marriage Act lists the following impediments to marriage: minority (age of under 18, s 4), a prior marriage or registered partnership that is in force (s 6), and immediate family relationship (descendants/ascendants, siblings and half-siblings, adoptive parents/children, s 7). Two people, one of whom is a descendant of the other’s brother or sister, shall not intermarry, unless the Ministry of Justice, for special reasons, grants them a dispensation to marry (s 8). Such a dispensation may also be granted for special reasons to a person under 18 years of age. Before the matter is decided, the custodian of the minor applicant shall be given an opportunity to be heard (s 4). In addition to being prohibited as an impediment to marriage, polygamy is further prohibited in the provision of the Marriage Act, which states that a divorce shall be granted without a reconsideration period in case of a marriage that was concluded, while a prior marriage or registered partnership of one of the spouses was still in force. In such cases of polygamy, the public prosecutor shall initiate proceedings for the divorce (s 27). 28 Of these 53 registered religious communities with marriage licenses, 14 were Muslim communities, which in total hold 27 licenses. Maistraatti, Data and Statistics 2017 accessed 1 September 2017. In 2014, all 33 new licenses to conclude legal marriages were issued. The license was revoked in seven cases, but the reason was not a sanction for an offence in any of the cases (personal communication). 29 For instance, mosque imams request from marrying couples that they have their absent guardians talk to them on the phone to ascertain the knowledge and consent of the former to the marriage. In the case of female converts to Islam, imams do not demand the presence of a guardian when concluding the marriage, particularly if the bride’s father remained non-Muslim. Some imams have also reported that, in such cases, they act as the guardians for the bride, motivated by not only conducting an Islamically ‘valid’ marriage but also by their sense of religious obligation to educate these brides, who are newcomers to Islam about their spousal rights according to Islamic jurisprudence, such as dower and spousal maintenance. See Al-Sharmani, Mustasaari and Ismail (n 9). 30 See al-Qur’an, Surat al Rum (ch 30), verse 21. 31 The second author has been studying this mosque’s initiative through a longitudinal ethnographic research since 2013. See Al-Sharmani (n 1). 32 Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976 (Picador 2003); Simon Purdy, ‘Surveillance, Knowledge and Inequality: Understanding Power Through Foucault and Beyond’ (2015) 8 The Hilltop Review 3. 33 See Ewick and Silbey (n 2); Harding (n 2). 34 Purdy (n 32). 35 Anika Liversage and Tina Gudrun Jensen, Parallelle rettsopfattelser i Danmark: Et kvalitativt studie af privatretlige praksisser blandt etniske minoriteter, Rapport 11:37 (SFI - Det Nationale Forskningscenter for Velfærd 2011) 128. 36 See Al-Sharmani, Mustasaari and Ismail (n 9). 37 Moors (n 15). 38 ibid; see also Anika Liversage, ‘Secrets and Lies: When Ethnic Minority Youth Have a Nikah’ in Shah, Foblets and Rohe (n 18) 171. 39 Moors and Vroon Najem (n 15, forthcoming). 40 See Al-Sharmani 2015 (n 9). 41 Mulki Al-Sharmani, ‘Divorce among Transnational Finnish Somalis: Gender, Religion, Agency’ (2017) 7 Religion and Gender 210. 42 Al-Sharmani (n 7); Al-Sharmani and Ismail 2017 (n 8). 43 The data collected so far from non-Somalis are quite small (two interlocutors). In our ongoing research, however, we are targeting more non-Somali interlocutors so that we can study further differences in marriage conclusion practices (and their meanings) among individuals of diverse ethnic and national backgrounds. 44 In addition, also district courts may conclude civil marriages. 45 In the Helsinki local office of the maistraatti, an estimated number of marriages concluded abroad and registered in the population register are approximately 900–1000 per year (personal communication). 46 Ewick and Silbey (n 2). 47 Carol Smart, ‘Making Kin: Relationality and Law’ in Anne Bottomley and Simone Wong (eds), Changing Contours of Domestic Life, Family and Law: Caring and Sharing (Hart Publishing 2009) 12. 48 Finnish Supreme Court, 26 May 2005, KKO:2005:84. 49 See eg Rebecca Probert, ‘The Evolving Concept of Non-marriage’ (2013) 25 Child and Family Law Quarterly 314; Rajnaara C Akhtar, ‘Unregistered Muslim Marriages: An Emerging Culture of Celebrating Rites and Conceding Rights’ in Joanna Miles, Perveez Mody and Rebecca Probert (eds), Marriage Rites and Rights (Hart Publishing 2015); Kathryn O’Sullivan and Leyla Jackson, ‘Muslim Marriage (non) Recognition: Implications and Possible Solutions’ (2017) 39 Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 22; and Vishal Vora, ‘English Marriage Law Discriminates against Minorities – Celebrants Could Change That’ (The Conversation, 2017) accessed 31 August 2017. 50 Jänterä-Jareborg (n 18) 98. 51 In general, only a small number of legal conflicts between family members ever enter the court room as litigation is limited by several procedural thresholds, such as the costs of court proceedings. 52 Perhaps, this has to do with the fact that the majority of our sample was Finnish Somalis who tended, particularly recently, to seek the services of mosques (rather than individual religious scholars) to conclude their religious marriages, and, hence, they may be increasingly adopting the discourse of mosques on the necessity of concluding validly registered religious marriages. 53 Iris Sportel, Betty de Hart, and Friso Kulk, ‘Transnational Families Navigating the Law: Marriage, Divorce and Well-being’ in Tiilikainen, Al-Sharmani and Mustasaari (n 1). 54 The Paternity Act (11/2015) contains the legal norms governing the presumption of paternity, the establishment of the relationship between a child and his father, and the annulment of this relationship. The New Paternity Act entered into force on 1 January 2016. The rules governing the pater est—presumption or the process of annulment of paternity did not change substantively when compared with the previous Paternity Act of 1975, so this article refers to the Paternity Act without distinction between the new and the old act, unless, there has been a change in substance of the norms. When the change has been only in the numbering of the sections, the correct section of the previous paternity act is announced in parenthesis, ie S4 of the Paternity Act (S6). 55 Marja Alastalo and others, Maistraatin tiskiltä tilastoksi: Ulkomaalaisten rekisteröinnin ja tilastoinnin käytännöt Suomessa. Tutkimuksia A 54, Siirtolaisuusinstituutti 2016 (The Finnish Institute of Migration 2016) 74. The number has increased rapidly during the past decade: from 5800 in 2005 to 31,500 in 2010, and to 56,100 in 2014. 56 The cases are 40% of the total 160 cases in the whole country. The studied courts were located in the cities of Helsinki, Tampere, and Turku, all of which have large immigrant populations when compared with the rest of the country. Helsinki District Court is the largest of the 27 Finnish district courts, and its jurisdiction has the largest Muslim and immigrant populations. 57 This is not a confirmed information but a hypothesis based on the names of the parties. In the Finnish context, this conclusion has some reliability as Finnish names are very distinguishable from other European languages. 58 The existence of the religious marriage was sometimes made explicit in the court file but sometimes left obscure. Based on our knowledge about the marriage practices of Finnish Somalis, it is most likely the case that the religious marriage existed in these cases. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) TI - Between ‘Official’ and ‘Unofficial’: Discourses and Practices of Muslim Marriage Conclusion in Finland JF - Oxford Journal of Law and Religion DO - 10.1093/ojlr/rwy029 DA - 2018-10-01 UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/between-official-and-unofficial-discourses-and-practices-of-muslim-IvEF4lxVRr SP - 455 VL - 7 IS - 3 DP - DeepDyve ER -