Women in Islam - Oppressed or Liberated?

Yes but there is whole silly idea of culture and race. Makes it harder. Your own culture is backwards so when you try to marry outwards even they then look down on you because you aren't that race. It is an impossible journey. For nonmuslims getting married is so easy cauz they dont worry about all these nonsense

Yeah thats how my parents are. They aren't going to get what they want though because its not really likely. Its very rare to find the people in our culture. Only a tiny part of russia.. We live in America.. All my siblings are probably going to marry someone here. I'd want to marry someone around here too because it is much more simple. The people my parents have in mind aren't even that serious with their deen. They keep trying to find my practicing brother these super beautiful women who flaunt their beauty and have education but not much deen. My practicing brother wanted to marry one of the girls they showed him just for that and he was blindly thinking to the point where he started compromising her deen in trade for her beauty.. After awhile he figured it wasn't a good idea and they broke up. All they have to do is say that they are Muslims from our culture for my parents to approve. For all I know, they probably dont even need to pray to get my parents approval. They do the same with us too, they want my sister to marry some handsome man from our culture who has a good education. I believe that the person needs to have deen and good character which is the most important factor and has to be a bit attractive to you so that there wont be problems

My mom has preferences but she does believe in our freedom. It's just my dad. They even once started talking about how they are going to force the man to pay an extremely high mahr if he is an arab..(the muslims in our area of the USA are usually arab). My sister ended up raging that day