I don't know your boyfriend, Sexytimes. And I don't want to paint him with a broad brush, and I don't want to say "all Muslims."

But the facts are that in some Muslim countries they still practice female genital mutilation. In some countries you can still be stoned to death or beheaded for apostasy.

In some countries women ARE property.

And in ALL of these countries they are adhering to the most fundamentalist view of Islam.

Not all countries are like that. Not all Muslims are like that.

But...you're a woman...and a poster here...and a friend...and I am concerned for you.

I really hope your boyfriend is a great guy.

This thing has DISASTER written all over it, no matter which angle you view it from.

She may not want to hear it, but that does not change the fact that she is about to make a huge mistake.

You deserve to be happy and safe. You sacrificed much for this country.

Can this boyfriend go to another country, meet you there, and get married then? Is that possible?

Thanks raptorjesus, I appreciate the concern. He really is a great guy. I've seen how he respects women. He's been working over there with our military for the past 8 years, risking his life. I've seen him volunteer to go out on missions, risking his life so his buddies don't have to go. He's been shot, hit by IEDs, and had his family threatened. He asked too many questions about Islam and was labelled an infidel as a teenager. His religious views are more Sufi or Buddhist than Muslim, but he doesn't really believe in any organized religion. What he believes in - what I believe in - is love.
Thanks for caring. I don't have any concerns about my boyfriend. If I can trust him in a war zone, I can trust him here. My only problem is how to get him over here. I'm sure, after that, everything will work out.

And your situation is tough for me to think about what I'd do in your shoes.

If I were a woman, the Muslim thing would be soooooooooo hard for me to consider.

Then again you are doing this for love. Hopefully true love.

So to quote Meatloaf, "I'd do anything for love. But I won't do that."

I understand that you don't want to wait around for awhile, but I really wouldn't get married in Afghanistan and call myself a Muslim.

I'd try to find ANY way possible to get married in another country or whatever if possible.

I'd buy his ass a ticket to Germany and meet him there if possible.

But I also don't understand the nuances of the immigration thing. I'm not sure if it is acceptable to get married in another country and then get him into the U.S.

Germany doesn't exactly welcome visitors from Afghanistan. Getting any kind of a visa to anywhere, as an Afghan citizen, is difficult. Trust me, I've looked into it. They even require transit visas, if he had a layover in Germany. Even if he stayed in the airport. It's way too complicated.
I can't say everything I wanted to on here - too many banned words, and I don't know what they are. I'll email you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2011 01:34AM by sexismyreligion.

How hard is it to convert to Islam??? And, more importantly, how hard is it to get out?

I was married to a Muslim. We met in grad school. He was very westernized and quite a partier.

We moved cross-country to Los Angeles to be with his family. He didn't get any more Muslim but he sure got more authoritarian. It's like he had to prove to his family that he was the BOSS. Eventually he became physically abusive and I bailed. To say I was shocked at the change in him would be an understatement.

(Then I joined the All-American, wholesome Mormons! Story for another day).

That being said, I believe in love. You are obviously familiar with Afghanistan and his culture. To answer you original question, I don't think there's anything morally wrong with joining a religion you don't beleive in. In this case, I believe the end justifies the means. And, if there is a God, I'm sure he doesn't give a crap either.

Good luck.

;o)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2011 02:17AM by shannon.

Thanks, shannon. I'm trying to figure out in my own mind how I really feel about the idea of becoming Muslim - it makes me feel a little nervous. Mainly, I think, because it's incredibly easy to become Muslim, but nearly impossible to leave. I can't really talk to my family about this, they think that I'm still Mormon. Fundamentalists might think I deserve to die if I ever left Islam, but then again, those types probably already think that I deserve to die because I'm American, and in the military. So I don't know if that really matters.
The only people it might affect badly are his family in Afghanistan. I might be putting myself in a situation where I'm kind of pretending to be Mormon for my family, and kind of pretending to be Muslim for his family. (We are hoping, someday, to try to bring his family over here too, but for now it's hard enough to just get him over to the U.S.)
I know this board isn't necessarily the best place to post about this, but it's not something I can really talk about to people who know who I am.

I dated a Muslim, lived in an Islamic country. I've also known Western women who have converted to Islam.

The truth is that some people can do it and be just fine. There are plenty of fine Muslim men out there who won't treat you like a posession or hurt you in any way.

The real problem is the cultural difference. Islamic cultures are about as different from American culture as you could imagine. We are more similar culturally to China than we are to most Islamic countries. For most people, cultural differences like that would cripple a relationship within weeks.

It doesn't even matter if you speak his language and he speaks yours. The words might be the same, but they mean completely different things. Every single idea about love, intimacy, respect, or what constitutes a good relationship, is a completely different concept to them. The concept is different, and also the words are different.

What I'm trying to say is that communication is next to impossible.

However, like I said, I've known many women who have converted and married and love their lives. Depending on the region, you will find very few Muslim men are actually practitioners of the religion. It can be done. Good luck :)

That's a really interesting point about communication and cultural differences...interesting because I found the complete opposite. The biggest problem with my TBM ex-husband was communication. We still constantly struggle to communicate on a very basic level, out of necessity because of our daughter. On the other hand, my boyfriend, the Afghan interpreter, often seems to understand how I feel before I even say anything, even though he is on the other side of the world. Maybe it helps that he's been living and working on a military base for the last 8 years, so he is very familiar with American culture - and I've lived in Afghanistan, so I have some familiarity with that culture as well. Honestly, though, I think it's more about personalities, and a willingness to be open and share feelings and experiences.

Like I said, I know a lot of people who were able to pull it off. If it works for ya, I think you'll be fine :)

For me, it didn't work out so well. I dated a Muslim girl when I was living overseas. We had a fun time, sex was great, etc, but when it came to actually needing to discuss things, we spoke completely different languages. I spoke her language fluently, and she spoke mine, but it didn't matter. Communication was a brick wall and the relationship ended because of that.

There were a few other girls that I spent a lot of time with, but that didn't bloom into a full relationship. Communication was always the problem with them as well.

Either way, good luck. I hope it does work out :)

sexismyreligion, why do you even need to "convert" to Islam to marry him? Islam allows Muslim males to marry Jewish or Christian women anyway, so his family should not have an issue with your marriage. I believe you said in your post yesterday that you are "technically" Christian, right?

I could tell you some BAD stories about women I've known (including a cousin of mine) who married Muslim men who seemed very secular and later "turned," but it looks like plenty of others here have already done that. One story I could tell would rival "Not Without My Daughter," if you are aware of that book and film. Frankly, if I were to recount it story here, I doubt anyone would even believe it, but it is absolutely true.

You seem pretty clued-in about the consequences of leaving Islam, which are bad enough. However, you should also familiarize yourself with women's and children's rights (or the lack thereof) under Islamic law, if you aren't already aware of this. Under Islamic law, husbands have **complete** rights over their children, and if you ever have children and later divorce, your husband, or his relatives, will have complete custody of your children after they have reach only about six years old. That would be in an Islamic country, of course--I don't mean here, obviously, but it's something to think about seriously. Our government will not intervene in any way to help American women whose children are being kept by their ex-husbands or partners in Islamic countries.

Also, in Islam, all children of a Muslim father are automatically considered Muslim, regardless of how they may be raised. You might want them to be raised Christian, atheist, whatever, but in Islamic societies and under Islamic laws, they will be deemed Muslim no matter what.

I appreciate your service (and your fiance's) to our country. Please be very careful, though. I sincerely wish both you and your fiance the best in your marriage.

I'm technically Mormon, and while Mormons consider themselves Christian, Muslims don't consider Mormons to be in the same category as Christians. The reason is because Islam recognizes prophets from the Bible as prophets, but they believe that Muhammed was the last prophet, and to call anyone after Muhammed a prophet is blasphemy. So according to Islam, the Mormon belief in continuing revelation and living prophets puts them outside the category of acceptable Christianity.
I could declare myself Christian instead of Mormon and still get married. It just seems that if I'm declaring a religion that I really don't belong to anyway, it might as well be Islam - it would probably go over better.

"Muslims don't consider Mormons to be in the same category as Christians."

My experiences have been very different with this. The few (very very few) Muslims that I have met who had even heard of Mormonism lumped it into the Christian category.

My apologies; I must have mis-read your original post. Yes, I'm well aware of the problems Islam has with "continuing revelation". I have a good friend who is a Baha'i from Iran, and the persecution of them in Iran, since they also believe in a prophet who came after Muhammed, is utterly brutal.

I'd still argue you'd be better off claiming you're Christian rather than converting to Islam or even just claiming to be Muslim. That way, you will at least avoid the whole apostasy issue in future. (An Afghan man who converted to Christianity, or at least was accused of doing so, was beheaded only about a week ago there, sadly, so this is still very much a current danger.) Good luck, and be safe.

I don't know which is safer, claiming to be Muslim or Christian - if I'm only going to be in Afghanistan for about 2 weeks, and hopefully never going back. I don't think the apostasy issue is likely to come up, if I never tell anyone in the U.S. about being Muslim. Yes, I would be in danger if someone in Afghanistan thought I was an apostate from Islam, but I'd be in danger anyway if they found out I was a U.S. soldier. I think I might be slightly safer during those two weeks that I'm there if I claim to be Muslim instead of Christian, but I'm not entirely sure.