Collectivist Culture

Collectivist cultures emphasize the value of interdependent relationships and group loyalty. The goals and desires of the collective take precedence over individual goals and behaviors, and individual behaviors are shaped largely by group norms (Yoshioka, 2008). Within individualist cultures, the needs and rights of the autonomous self are highly valued, and personal choice and individual freedom are emphasized (McAuliff, 2013). In addition, Islam itself encourages a sense of community among people with the invitation to put ethnic, racial, and national differences aside and become involved in the Muslim community, what is referred to as the ummah (Springer, Abbott, & Reisbig, 2009). The ummah in this study may refer to first the extended family, followed by friends from the mosque and local religious leaders that provide support and guidance for the Muslim communities. The salience of collectivist values has a considerable impact on women’s decisions to stay or leave abusive marriages.

Hassouneh-Phillips (2001) explored American Muslim women’s experiences of leaving abusive relationships. She found that participants’ collectivist orientation shaped their thoughts, perceptions, and interactions. These women decided to leave their relationships only after severe physical and psychological sequelae, what is referred to as the point of saturation. As they moved toward the point of saturation, participants’ anticipation of family and community disapproval shaped their decision-making. The collectivist values also guide women’s decisions to seek formal and informal support. Findings from a survey of 202 Arab Muslim women suggested that a woman’s reluctance to seek help emerged from fear of family and community blame and judgment (Kulwicki & Miller, 1999).

The collectivist nature of the culture is well understood with respect to common cultural values of honor, integrity, and dignity. where a ‘good’ name and reputation of the family in the community may be contingent on the behaviors of the individual members. Ayyub (2000) described how South Asian Muslim women maintain a family’s honor if they comply and maintain their prescribed roles as a daughter, wife, and mother; any deviation from this standard can not only bring individual dishonor, but also disparage the entire family system. Given the stigma associated with divorce, upholding a family’s reputation leads some women to maintain the relationship despite the risk for safety and harm (Ammar, 2007; Hassouneh-Phillips, 2001). The stigma of divorce is related to the cultural notion of family as being central to society, and individuals are subordinates to both family and society (Hassouneh-Phillips, 2001). Therefore, members of the family, particularly women, are socialized to make all the necessary sacrifices to maintain family cohesiveness in protecting it from dissolution (Ayyub, 2000; Haj-Yahia, 2011). Taken together, the collectivist concepts are tied to notions of family privacy and secrecy which may lead women to keep family matters private. This can have implications for low levels of interest in seeking formal support from local agencies. Kulwicki and colleagues (2010) showed that IPV is regarded and treated as a private issue among their studied set of Arab Muslim women, reporting shame in bringing it into public view. This view contrasts with the mainstream perspective in Canada that emphasizes IPV as a public health issues that requires legal, social, and psychological remedies.

Faith and Religious Belief

The third theme of this study explores IPV in relation to faith and religious belief. For many women including Muslims, religion and faith are important aspects of personal identity. Individuals often turn to their religious beliefs and leaders for guidance when they are faced with IPV (Fortune, Abugideiri, & Dratch, 2010). Religion can provide a source of support, liberation, and healing. Yet, it may also jeopardize the vulnerable position of women in the context of IPV.

A belief system that condemns violence and oppression, and reinforces justice and liberation from abuse can increase a woman’s willingness to seek help and promote healing following IPV trauma. Conversely, belief systems that blame survivors, support abusers, and compromise the safety of women and children in the name of family cohesiveness create additional trauma, and inflict secondary wounds, the “secondary victimization” (Hassouneh-Phillips, 2003; Holtmann, 2016). Hassouneh-Phillips (2003) explored the role of spirituality in the lives of Muslim women IPV survivors. These findings underscored the complex role of religiosity as both a source of strength, but also an increase in vulnerability. Religion can provide Muslim women with an important means of coping with ongoing violence, while in other instances, it can also create barriers to safety.

Holtmann (2016) explored Muslim and Christian immigrant women’s IPV experiences in revealing that women’s religious beliefs which reinforce their responsibility for their partner’s violent behavior compromise immigrant women’s safety. Furthermore, the trauma of IPV challenges fundamental assumptions about self, others, and one’s relationship with God. Hassouneh-Phillips’ findings (2003) presented a continuum of spiritual pathways Muslim women may pursue following IPV traumatization. On this continuum there were two opposite endpoints—those who retained their original belief systems, and those who rejected them. In the middle were those who remained Muslim but chose to reinterpret doctrine that was already being manipulated to justify the violence. It is crucial that service providers and faith leaders understand the significant influence that belief systems have on women, abusers, and their faith communities.

Drawing on an intersectional lens, this study presents qualitative findings regarding intimate partner violence in the lives of some Muslim women. According to Lockhart and Mitchell (2010), intersectionality is a “theoretical framework, a methodology for practice and research, and a catalyst for a social and economic justice agenda to address social justice issues such as those affecting women in our society who experience intimate partner violence” (p. 17). Intersectionality is based on the well-known principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The intersectionality framework emphasizes that people have multiple and converging identities drawn from race, age, social class, sexual orientation, abilities, religion, spirituality, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship status, physical characteristics, culture, history, geographical location, and language, and should be seen as uniquely whole (Lockhart & Mitchell, 2010). An individual’s identity can best be understood through exploring the unique place that emerges at the intersection of these multiple contributors (Collins, 2010). Our understanding of female survivors of intimate partner violence are viewed as displaying compound sociocultural identities and group memberships that are significant in shaping their abuse experiences and their help-seeking behaviors (Lockhart & Mitchell, 2010).

Multicultural research on IPV is an emerging field, and there is relatively little research that pays particular attention to Muslim women IPV survivors. Social media has largely depicted violence against Muslim women through narratives of forced veilings and marriages and domestic homicides; these place Muslim cultures as inherently oppressive toward women. These fixed images further marginalize Muslim communities, discouraging them from societal involvement and impeding access to formal services.

The traditional feminist approach to intimate partner violence has largely emphasized the common experiences of women survivors in the interests of forging a strong movement to end violence. However, this approach has increasingly been questioned by scholars and activists who recognize the need to give voice to women whose experiences of abuse are underrepresented in the current IPV literature.

Service providers are at the forefront of support to survivors, and have invaluable knowledge regarding the variety of ways in which women generally, and Muslim women in particular, present to their communities. The aim of this study was to draw from the information offered by frontline service providers within domestic violence agency settings on Muslim women’s intimate partner violence experiences, and the ways in which these experiences shape women’s service utilization in response to the violence.

Theme 1: Immigration

Immigration status relates to five concepts. The first is a language barrier as experienced by immigrant Muslim women. The language barrier not only influences a woman’s decision to leave the abusive relationship, but also their access to relevant services. The language barrier also relates to the limited nature of the community by which a woman reports being understood, as evidenced by the participants’ comments:

• Residential counselor (Group A)
• • Most of these women come as newcomers and their husbands are the ones who speak the language so they are dependent on them, so that’s the thing and we need to be aware of it.

• Residential outreach counselor (Group A)
• • It is not easy to go to school and learn the language and deal with the immigration stuff and deal with Revenue Canada and all of those things.

• Residential counselor (Group A)
• • The structures of the services and shelters for Muslim women is difficult. The difficulty is the language barrier. For example, three times a week we get somebody to come in and interpret. And the rest of the time that voice is gone.

Participants also discussed the challenge of understanding how the social system operates and the way a woman reports the violence in the family while being knowledgeable about the law. This was supported by participant comments like the following:

• Relief/mental health worker (Group B)
• • You know when you have kids, the mother stays home for so many years not going outside of her environment, and now she is released to the larger community. Do you know if she has social skills? She wants to leave. She is going to basically live on her own. She needs lots of assistance to adapt, to learn the skills, to integrate, to be 100% independent. She needs lots of preparation, training and education to make that decision to leave the home or accept help, and to make that decision to leave that relationship.

Acculturation stress occurs when the demands of a new culture exceed a family’s coping resources. The cultural contrasts between the originating and settled countries, particularly in regards to gender roles and expectations, can result in acculturation stress, a contributing factor in the potential for violence. Service providers from both groups voiced this concern:

• Residential counselor (Group A)
• • There are extra barriers in seeking services. You know there is a lot of fear of losing culture, values and a belief system that comes with being Muslim.

• Relief/mental health worker (Group B)
• • As a community, we worship the family. The family ties and connections are very important; getting family together, providing, maintaining, and supporting the family as unit. How important it is for her to keep the family united.

Participants also discussed family stress due to the demands of cross-cultural parenting, especially when it is represented at the shelter and perceived as problematic by service providers. Participants in both groups described experience with this matter:

• Residential counselor (Group A)
• • A lot of women have children and these children are interpreting for their moms and they are the ones that give information to the service providers. That can create intergenerational conflicts. When the sense of control is lost for mom, mom does not have control because they rely so much on their children.

• Relief/mental health worker (Group B)
• • As a woman in a shelter, I know they are going to judge me based on my kid’s behavior in the shelter. If I am not a good mother, then they are going to call Child Protection Services. They can look at me as a stressed woman who is not able to take care of my children. It is too easy for the children to be removed from their mothers.

• Transitional outreach counselor (Group A)
• • The way the Muslim family raise their 16-year-old is different than the laws here allow. The laws here state that if you are 16 you can do whatever you want. This means that you can leave the house, you can be with whom you want. Whereas a Muslim family says no, you cannot leave the house. So how do you work with that? How do you work with the family to say she is allowed and the family says ‘no’ she is not allowed?

Participants also talked about immigration-related abusive behavior such as threatening the women with deportation or withdrawal of a residency application. Barriers include the citizenship status of being in a new country, fear of deportation, and sponsorship issues when it comes to reporting or leaving the violence. The following are some provider comments:

• Social worker (Group B)
• • I think some work should be done, because we do see women who do not have immigration papers. Some of them are sponsored by their husbands so they are very dependent on their husbands. If there is abuse, even if they call police, they often want to change their statement because they are afraid of deportation.

• Transitional outreach counselor (Group A)
• • They feel like they do not really have a choice but to stay because of their citizenship, as they are constantly being threatened “If you want to go with the Western law, I will send you back home and the children are here and children are Canadian”. They fear that they are going to be sent back home and the children will stay and they will not see their child anymore. This has a huge impact.

In summary, a woman’s immigration status is a key issue that shapes her experience of IPV. The experience of IPV is often complicated by immigration stressors such as language abilities, familiarity with the social and cultural system, citizenship status, cross-cultural experiences, and social integration.

Theme 2: Collectivist and Authoritarian Culture

This theme is focused on the impact of Muslim women’s collectivist orientation on their abuse experiences and help-seeking behaviors. The collectivist and authoritarian culture places a high value on collective needs and obligations as opposed to individual needs and desires. A woman’s collective is defined as her immediate family, family of origin, extended family, and cultural or faith community, where the priority is on their child’s needs and their family’s demands above their own wishes.

This belief is translated into a woman’s decision to remain in a violent relationship for the sake of the collective. The manifestation of collectivist culture on abuse results in the notion of “multiple perpetrator,” where women experience violence not only from intimate partners but also from the collective. In worse cases, the husband and wife’s collectives engage in conflict on behalf of the couple. Typically, women who decide to leave will do so only at the point when their family’s support is strong enough, or when their children are clearly no longer safe if the couple remain together.

Participants discussed the woman’s decision to leave in the context of their family of origin’s expectations and in balancing the real and perceived loss of family support if she leaves the abusive situation. The meaning code related to this theme also implies that the impact of collective abuse and the perpetrator’s allies are part of the equation in deciding whether the woman is able to leave. Participant comments supporting these are as follows:

• Outreach counselor (Group A)
• • It is not just their intimate partner who is abusive, there can be abuse coming from other people in his family. It is not just a man. It can be a woman in the family as well. We are always mindful of that. So, there could be multiple perpetrators or multiple people who can help him find her, get information to her, to scare her, or to change her mind.

• Program director (Group B)
• • Part of it, also depends on the cultural forces on a woman to not place her family at risk back home. Both families have to have some understanding and agreement around this relationship and be able to be supportive. When there is conflict with the couple in North America, there might be conflict in the families across the world, mother or father in West Asia or South Asia. Sometimes this is a family’s responsibility to keep the couple together so that the families have the responsibility to try to resolve that conflict.

Participants also discussed the value placed on family bonding and prioritizing children’s needs, as this relates to a woman’s response to the abusive relationship. Participant comments reflect the complicating presence of children:

In light of collectivist culture, a woman’s response to intimate partner violence is shaped by her collective’s expectations of her as a member of the collective. The fear of losing social support due to a violation of these expectations, both directly and indirectly, impacts a woman’s decision. Finally, abuse experiences are complicated through multiple perpetrators which creates systemic coercion.

Theme 3: Patriarchal beliefs and Customs

Patriarchy holds two concepts within the theme. The first relates to normalizing the nature of the hierarchy of dominance with the male as the primary decision-maker and caregiver to the family. This normalizes the view that males dominate within a patriarchal culture. This fact reflects the intrinsic belief that when it comes to violence, women are too often desensitized and normalize both its prevalence and impact. This sets up a cycle of instigation and violence followed by apology, which recycles in subsequent violent experiences. Service provider comments are as follows:

• Relief/mental health worker (Group B)
• • If the father is not around, then the brother steps in, and when sister gets married, then her husband will take care of her life even to the point of choosing her interests and friends.

• Relief/mental health worker (Group B)
• • The term [IPV] itself is new in their culture. Some understand that hitting is not acceptable and that it is considered abuse. Emotional abuse, financial abuse, those different kinds of abuse is not in the dictionary. She does not recognize it as abuse. Even rape within the marital relationship is not seen as abuse. If the husband is doing it, that’s ok.

• Residential counselor (Group A)
• • When a person is coming from a very oppressive culture that condones physical abuse, you perceive yourself as ‘less’ than, or being second to a man. It becomes just part of normal day-to-day life.

The second theme within patriarchy focuses on the fixed gender roles ascribed to men and women. In over-patriarchal settings, men are considered as an authoritarian figure in the lives of women. Violence is a result of learned behaviors rooted in gender inequality that dictates that men exert power and control and women accept and normalize violence. Women are supressed in their orientation in wanting to achieve independence and assertiveness. Men are not interested in seeking help external to the family as it is viewed as shameful to one’s masculinity. Violence is too often viewed as ‘keeping a woman in line’ thereby continuing her repression and suppression. Supporting comments from service providers are as follows:

• Outreach counselor (Group A)
• • The power differential that exists between a man and woman in the culture, or the perceived inequality, is a huge risk because lots of women feel that they are not worthy or capable of living on their own. They come from countries where their beliefs regarding men are that they [men] are superior.

• Relief/mental health worker (Group A)
• • These women grew up accepting that they are female, and a female should behave in certain ways, and this is your role in life. She has seen her mother and sister going through this. Everyone is treated in a similar way and they do not understand the fact that they are being abused by the males in their families.

Participants converged on the fact that IPV is rooted in patriarchy and gender inequality where masculine power is encouraged and transmitted across generations. Patriarchy leads men to justify abuse and unwillingness to seek help; women come to normalize and accept the violence as part of the patriarchy of the cultural.

Theme 4: Honor and Shame

Honor and shame represent the duality of the concern for the privacy and loss of reputation in the broader community. The collectivist cultural orientation directs that families place a high value on saving the family’s reputation. Disclosure of the abuse leads to losing status for the family resulting in the loss of social support for women. This is reflected in the stigma that is attached to being divorced, leaving a home, breaking up the family, and living as a single parent. Providers offered the following comments in support:

• Social worker (Group B)
• • They keep accepting the abuse just to keep their family honor because they do not want to be divorced. In the culture, divorce is not acceptable even though they know the abuse is not a good thing. They stay in an abusive relationship because they want to protect their family’s honor.

• Transitional outreach counselor (Group A)
• • If she has few friends, she might be worried about what other people will say about her as a divorced or separated woman or a single mom. There are always ways to blame the woman even if she has not done anything wrong.

Participants also discussed the notion of IPV as a private family matter:

• Outreach counselor (Group A)
• • I have worked with families who are very resistant to be engaged in outside agencies because the police or the Children’s Aid Society has been called. Often we are called in to attend a meeting to help with safety planning because of the cultural piece around sharing the secrets of the family or talking to outsiders about what is going on.

• Social worker (Group B)
• • They are also afraid to reach out because of the community and their children. They do not want a bad name placed on their kids who are coming from a broken family.

The themes of honor, shame, and collectivist culture are considerably intertwined across the data. A high value is placed on family honor because of the collectivist cultural orientation, where people in the community are very interconnected; maintaining a good reputation is a means of community acceptance and support. Personal identity is not completely differentiated from family identity. Thus, a failure in a marital relationship can be seen as failure of the immediate and extended family systems.

Theme 5: Religious beliefs

Two major themes emerged in regards to the overall influence of faith: The first is the understanding of faith and the meaning of the Muslim religion in the context of intimate partner violence. Misunderstandings emerge in part due to the complexity of not only the scholarly diversity in interpretations of the Qur’an as it relates to issues of hierarchy and dominance, but also cultural contexts depending on the countries of origin. Believers may take the word of a local imam who may hold a narrow, fundamentalist interpretation of the Qur’an, one that inhibits women from leaving an abusive relationship. Such an interpretation provides the base for a cultural imperative of male dominance and justification for violence. This fundamentalist interpretation may be adopted not only by the perpetrator to excuse the violence, but also by the woman to accept and normalize the abuse. Service providers relayed their experiences of such cases in the following comments:

• Outreach counselor (Group A)
• • I have worked with women who have been told by their imams throughout the years or by the religious people through the mosque that they need to go back, that they need to be a better wife, they need to do what they are told.

• Relief/mental health worker (Group B)
• • In one case, she shocked me when she mentioned Islam abuses women. I said, “In what way?”. She said, “Yeah, God said woman was created from rib , Adam’s rib , Eve was created from Adam’s rib so basically she is not a full person’. I said, “But she is a person”. She said, “In the Qur’an, God speaks to a man that he put them in power and he created us women as weak”. I said, “How you do you interpret that into accepting the abuse as okay? I understand a woman is created biologically and psychologically different than men, but why are you blaming God and religion? And did you read the Qur’an yourself?” She said “no”, [so I said,]”So, where did your education about the religion come from?” She said, “From my father and the religious school”.

Participants also discussed the diversity within the Muslim community, and the ways in which culture and religion are intermingled:

• Social worker (Group B)
• • First of all, Muslim women are very diverse. Sometimes what happens is, religion and culture are mixed up in many places. Sometimes people who come from Africa or Pakistan or other countries have a different understanding of religion because what happens is that religion and culture are mixed up and they do not know what is what. They just go with what they know.

In summary, the inferences drawn from religion can be used for men to justify abuse and for women to accept violence through patriarchal interpretations of the Qur’an and various cultural lenses. Participants agreed that the Muslim community is very diverse and religious teachings and cultural practices often are not properly distinguished.