“Kindergeld Is My Blood; My Blood Cannot Be Violated”: West African Muslim Women’s Experiences of Sexual Abuse in Germany

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Fulera Issaka-Toure

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In this chapter, I connect notions of agency to explore how West African Muslim women in Germany engage and challenge Muslim patriarchal norms in their marriages. Because the Islamic concept of nikah (marriage) is intricately linked to sex, Muslim women’s experiences of sexual abuse are often also connected to their marriages. The title of this chapter emerged from a West African Muslim woman in a German town while narrating her challenges of sexual abuse by her ex-husband. Kindergeld is a system of financial support for the parents of all children under the age of eighteen whose parents have legal status in Germany. Depending on the number of children, parents receive a significant amount of money. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with West African Muslim women in Germany, I argue that implicitly forcing women to stay married and having children in order to collect the Kindergeld constitutes a form of sexual violence. This chapter thus contributes to our understanding of West African Muslim women’s experiences of sexual abuse through the conflicts and contestations over Kindergeld.