Islamic Racism in Selecting Marriage Partners

Here is the ruling on Arab Muslim women marrying Non-Arab Muslim men from a very popular classical 14th century legal text from the Shafi’i school:

m4.0 A SUITABLE MATCH (KAFA’A)

m4.1 Suitability concerns lineage, religiousness, profession, and being free of defects that permit annulling the marriage contract.

m4.2 The following are not suitable matches for one another:

(1) a non-Arab man for an Arab woman (Umar Barakat (d.1890): because of the hadith that the Prophet said, “Allah has chosen the Arabs above others”)

(2) a corrupt man for a virtuous woman

(3) a man of a lowly profession for the daughter of someone with a higher profession, such as a tailor wanting to marry a merchant’s daughter

(4) or someone with a defect that permits annulling the marriage for someone without such defects

Being wealthy has nothing to do with suitability, nor does being elderly.

m4.3 The marriage agreement is invalid whenever a guardian marries his charge to someone who is not a suitable match for her, if done without both her acceptance and the acceptance of all who are eligible as guardians and are on the guardian’s level of relation to her. But if both these parties agree, then the bride’s relatives further from her than the guardian may not object.

m4.4 When the father or father’s father see that the best advantage is to be served by marrying a young boy (or girl) to someone, they may do so, though they are not entitled to marry the child to someone with a physical defect that legally permits annulment of the marriage.

m4.5 If a person is foolhardy or continuously insane, but needs to marry, then his father, grandfather, or the Islamic magistrate may marry him to someone. If they grant permission to the foolhardy person to marry himself, his marriage is valid, though if he does so without their leave, it is invalid.

Al-Misri, Ahmad ibn Naqib. Reliance of the Traveller (‘Umdat al-Salik). Amana Publications. Beltsville: 1999. 523-524.

http://www.amazon.com/Reliance-Traveller-Classic-Islamic-Al-Salik/dp/0915957728/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231582600&sr=8-1

* Arabs are considered better than the other races, are they?