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Teaching Love: Gender Roles in Swahili Islamic Marriage Advice
Love is often described as an important part of Islamic marriage, but men and women are not always taught about love in the same way. This study examines 71 Swahili-language Islamic marriage advice booklets written over nearly 90 years in East Africa and compares them with oral marriage advice given to Muslim women in Zanzibar. The research shows that written marriage advice, usually written by men and often given to men before marriage, frequently tells husbands to love their wives. Women, however, are more often taught how to encourage, maintain, and protect their husbands’ love through their behavior, speech, care, and emotional efforts. By analyzing how the Swahili verb “to love” (-penda) is used, the study reveals a consistent pattern: men are more often portrayed as the people who love, while women are portrayed as the people responsible for making love last. Although many texts describe love as mutual and desirable, sustaining love is often assigned to women. These patterns appear across different historical periods, even as ideas about marriage, sexuality, and romance have changed. The findings suggest that gender inequalities are reproduced not only through laws and social institutions but also through everyday teachings about emotions, relationships, and married life. The study shows how religious advice shapes expectations about love, marriage, and gender, and how emotional responsibilities can be distributed unevenly between husbands and wives.
