Abstract Identity construction involves drawing a rhetorical boundary between one’s own group and others. Using data gathered from Finnish online forum for Muslims, I study how the practice of temporary ( mutʿa ) marriage is used to mark Sunni Shiʿa Muslims. Here, examine devices by combining principle meta-contrast with concept boundary-markers propose general model intergroup dynamics.

Customary marriage (nikāḥ ‘urfī)—non-official married life of a couple—is a new phenomenon increasingly spreading throughout the Arab world. Legal and social consequences of customary marriage have led many socio-jurisprudential scholars to forbid all its varieties. The strategy has, nevertheless, failed to restrain the spread of this type of marriage. In this paper, I argue that one f...