^ Plus lineage is patriarchal in Somali society. Somalis discount half-breeds regardless of whether the father or the mother is Somali. Damn! I just realized we are natural racists. I have no dispute with that(Somali racism) either. After all, we wouldn't be Somalis if we were mixing bloods of others into our own. We survived for too long and were isolated community by choice. There is some exposure now to outsiders but nothing threatening to our identity yet. Maintaining the purity of the gene pool is important. So we don't become extinct as unique ethnic group in east Africa.
Actually, to say we were a closed ethnic group and never intermarry with others is false. Somalis have always intermarried with other Muslim groups, including Yemenis, Omanis, Indians, Persians, Oramos, and Afars. Of course those marriages have been a small number, but whenever we came into contact with other Muslims, we've intermarried them.
It was non-Muslims that we didn't intermarry in the past, and if a Somali woman married a non-Muslim man, she used to get ex-communicated and no longer regarded as part of the family. When people say "gaal baa qaba" or "gaal bey guursatey", every Somali who hears that responds in shock.
That said, there are Somali men and women who are marrying gaalos. There are those who live or involve with gaalo in relationships that are outside of marriage, and I don't see anyone making threads about them. I do question the motive behind the issues raised about Muslim revert men who marry Somali Muslim women. Perhaps the agenda is something else but the reverts are just being scapegoated!
Let us not forget that these girls were either born or raised in the west. Their names are Somali, their parents are Somali, but everything else about them is western. And if the mosques they attend are dominated by non-Somali Muslims, they'll marry from those Muslims. Keep in mind the mosque is different than a church. In Christianity, one can't go to every church unless one is a remember there. There is a reason why black churches are segregated from white churches, and there are ethnic based churches. In Islam, the mosque is integrated, and Muslims don't have to belong to certain mosques based on their ethnicity. Therefore, a Muslima whose ethnicity is a Somali but grew up in the west will marry a Muslim man from the west irrespective of ethnicity. Again I am going back to my earlier point: These girls are Somali in name, their parents are Somali, but everything else about them is western. And if they are marrying Muslim men from the mosques, we should say alhamdulillaah. Imagine the women who marry gaalo. Kawaran kuwa gaalada kula jira relationship xaaraan ah. A chaste Muslim Somali woman who marries a fellow Muslim man, irrespective of ethnicity, should be supported and not discriminated since she is in a halal marriage!
One last point I want to add, Somalis are not like Kurds, Pakistanis, Turkeys, and some of other ethnic groups who would kill their daughters if they marry outside of their ethnic groups. We're more tolerant, and this is an area where those girls don't worry about the consequences. Life is not hanging in the balance when a Somali woman marries out, whereas in other ethnic groups that I mentioned, bot the girl and her husband are in danger of being killed if that marriage is not accepted.
Sorry about the long post!
