Muslim Minority of New Zealand in Global Context: Demographic Perspective

Yaghoob Foroutan

Abstract

This article focuses specifically on the population of Muslims in New Zealand, and highlights their demographic and socio-economic characteristics in a worldwide comparison. Globally, Islam is the fastest-growing religion and Muslims are the second largest religious group. In particular, the population of Muslim migrants in the multicultural and westerns societies is also remarkably growing fast. This also applies to the multicultural setting of New Zealand where have witnessed a substantially increasing growth of Muslim population during the recent decades. Holding a wide range of ethnic and religious groups from throughout the world as well as a variety of Muslims from different parts of the Islamic world, the multicultural field of this study serve as a unique human and cultural laboratory to approach properly the key research objectives of this analysis. The discussion is mainly based on the customized data of population census. This article specifically addresses the main demographic and socio-economic patterns and differentials associated with the population of Muslims in this multicultural context in a global comparison. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 2017, 37 (4): 511-519.

Ethnic Differences in the Attitudes and Practice of Consanguineous Marriage among Kurds and Turks in Uromiyeh District, Iran

Hatam Hosseini, Amir Erfani

Abstract

Despite the spread of modern familial values and norms and the rapid pace of modernization in Iran, kinship marriages remain a common practice among some ethnic groups, including Turk and Kurd. This study is informed by modernization and development idealism theories to examine factors associated with the practice and attitude of Kurdish and Turkish women to consanguineous marriage, utilizing data from a representative sample of 768 ever-married women residing in the district of Uromiyeh in Iran. The results indicated that consanguineous marriage was more prevalent among Kurds rather than Turks, and Kurdish rather than Turkish women held more positive orientations to consanguineous. Multivariate results showed that being a Kurd than a Turk was strongly associated with the likelihood of practicing kinship marriage and having positive attitudes to consanguineous marriage, while the levels of modernization and development idealism showed no or weak association. The results suggest that ethnic belonging can reinforce consanguineous marriage regardless of being modernized or holding modern development ideals. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, Vol. XLV, No. 3, PP. 389-403. Click here to get the paper.