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situation of female converts to Islam who had come as refugees from a community engaged in conflict with the Muslims is, in several respects, quite different from that of women who desire to remain with their husbands, not to mention those living in a society in which Muslims and non- Muslims co-exist peacefully. The muftis could have chosen to argue that this Qur’anic ruling is context-specific and therefore does not apply in the dramatically altered scenario of a Christian or Jewish woman who converts to Islam in the United States today.
    If one holds that Surah 60, verse 10 does not apply to the situation of converts in the West today, then the remaining Qur’anic evidence against women’s marriage to non-Muslims is twofold: the prohibition in Surah 2, verse 221 on marrying women off to those who associate partners with God, and the silence surrounding women’s marriage to kitabi s in Surah 5, verse 5. The prohibition of marriage to mushrikin in the former explicitly applies to both Muslim men and Muslim women. It cannot, therefore, be applicable to all “non-Muslims,” as many exegetes, both classical and contemporary, have assumed in the case of women. 61 Rather, it is accepted to stand in non- contradiction to the permission for Muslim men to marry women from “those who have received the book before you” in the latter verse. To view the same command prohibiting marriage to mushrikin as applying more broadly to women than
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    to men requires a significant interpretive leap, moving far beyond the verse itself. The prohibition of marrying women off to mushrikin in Surah 2, verse 221 does not by itself foreclose the possibility of permission for women to marry kitabi s. And although Surah 5, verse 5 does not explicitly grant permission for such marriages, there are numerous other instances in the Qur’an where commands addressed to men regarding women are taken to apply, mutatis mutandis , to women. 62
    If the Qur’an does not directly address the marriage of Muslim women to kitabi men, and if the presumptions about male supremacy and dominance in the home no longer hold, such that a female convert living in a majority non-Muslim nation is assured freedom to practice Islam in her home unen- cumbered (or to obtain a civil divorce independently if she is not), what rationale exists for continuing to prohibit marriage between Muslim women and kitabi men in the first place? My aim is not to construct a legal argument for the permissibility of such marriages but rather to highlight the weaknesses in most arguments against them, particularly their reliance on unspoken but fundamental assumptions about male dominance in marriage. These assumptions are no longer widely shared, or at least no longer broadly acceptable as justifications for the pro- hibition of intermarriage. At the same time, greater attention to the discussions surrounding men’s marriage to kitabiyya s in both hadith and jurisprudence suggests the relevance of taking context into account in both permission for and prohibition of intermarriage. There are cogent arguments to be made for con- sidering the permission to marry non-Muslims on the basis of factors other than gender.

    Conclusion

    Discussions of marriage among scholars, pundits and ordinary Muslims consist of a curious and continuously shifting mix of specific classical doctrines, isolated citations from Qur’an and hadith, and modern assumptions. Among Muslims in the United States, as in most Muslim-majority societies, classical models
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    for marriage no longer hold sway in numerous respects. Rules that allowed for fathers to contract binding marriages for their minor children of either sex no longer persist. Apologetic discourses stress wives’ sexual rights while downplaying the importance of wifely obedience. In fundamental respects, in social practice at least, the understanding of Islamic marriage has shifted. Yet there has not been