In order to prevent premarital sex, Islam discourages young men and women from having relationships. Or at least from being alone together, which is hard to avoid in a relationship. So how are people supposed to get married? They have it arranged by their relatives.

I don’t know what to make of this tradition, which is still very much alive today. The NYT has an article on the NY scene: Tending to Muslim Hearts and Islam’s Future. On the one hand, I think it is deplorable that men and women do not gain the social skills to find their own mate. On the other hand, it seems to work–the divorce rate is much lower than in Western countries. Which camp is better off? That is more difficult to answer.

In Turkey people still enter assisted marriages. Not so much out of religious observation, but because of its residual effect of separating men and women. In the absence of a mating ritual (i.e., dating), people find themselves pressured into settling down by the time they reach an age ripe for marriage. Consequently, they are not as selective as their Western counterparts. I know couples that barely knew each other when they met. This makes a Western person think “Is that not like marrying a random person off the street?” Nevertheless, these marriages somehow work. My explanation is that these people simply try harder. In the West, people are used to fleeting relationships. Even marriages are not irrevocable. People in arranged marriages are not used to having a companion–for many it is their first and last time–so they value one more.

Another interesting topic: the turmoil of imperial disintegration. Are ethnically heterogeneous empires more susceptible to collapse? It is a reasonable supposition: the ethnic and religious diversity would provide strongs faults along which the empire would partition. If so, it is something of a conundrum: that which makes a country stronger (diversity), also makes it more likely to eventually collapse. The bigger they are, the mightier they fall. If my hypothesis is true, of course.

A recent article in the NYT, Strange City. Thankless Job. Heartless Russian Winter writes about how people from the corners of the former USSR are flocking to Moscow to avoid unemployment.

That is easy to understand: people who have been living under Communism can’t be expected to suddenly wake up with entrepreneurial talents. The interesting part is how people who lived in peace before the collapse have turned on one another. I think it is a defense mechanism; a way of justifying the separation, believing that the “other” people weren’t worth living with.