I am a Muslim woman married to a Christian man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Why are you telling her what is and is not possible in her religion? And since when is religion governed by reason? Why are you grilling her?

What do you mean why? Is any of what I said wrong about Islam? Feel free to correct any mistakes I've made. I am not grilling her, just want to voice the concern that people should be honest to themselves about what they believe in. If you believe in something enough to devote your life to it, then why would you be receptive to ideas that is at odds with your belief?

I hope people involve reason in everything, including their spirituality. Otherwise what would you have left, mysticism?

Anonymous wrote:
OP, I'm sorry you are getting so much grief here. It's not universal. My suggestion is to ignore the belligerent Christians and answer the questions well-meaning others asked you. You don't need to justify your beliefs.

I'm not a Christian.

Not OP, but yes you are wrong about Islam. She can't worship as a Catholic, but she can respect someone else who does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does your family think of this? I'm a Christian woman married to a Muslim man and as you know Islam allows men to marry Christian and Jewish women. But not vice versa. I know if his sisters or his daughters wanted to marry a non-Muslim man, things would be very tense.

In all clarity, the Quran isn't definite about the prohibition on muslim women marrying non-muslim men. All the Quran says is that muslim men can marry women from among "people of the book", that is, christians and jews. It does NOT explicitly state that muslim women CANNOT do that. Muslim scholars have so far interpreted the lack of such an address to women to mean that NO permission is given. I'd like to think its left ambiguous on purpose so that the Muslim community can interpret it to fit the times and best apply its meaning to their unique situation.

If this is OP, I was curious how your family handled this.

Trying for the third time to see if you answer. How did your family react to your marrying a Christian?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does your family think of this? I'm a Christian woman married to a Muslim man and as you know Islam allows men to marry Christian and Jewish women. But not vice versa. I know if his sisters or his daughters wanted to marry a non-Muslim man, things would be very tense.

In all clarity, the Quran isn't definite about the prohibition on muslim women marrying non-muslim men. All the Quran says is that muslim men can marry women from among "people of the book", that is, christians and jews. It does NOT explicitly state that muslim women CANNOT do that. Muslim scholars have so far interpreted the lack of such an address to women to mean that NO permission is given. I'd like to think its left ambiguous on purpose so that the Muslim community can interpret it to fit the times and best apply its meaning to their unique situation.

If this is OP, I was curious how your family handled this.

Trying for the third time to see if you answer. How did your family react to your marrying a Christian?

My siblings are a 100% accepting of it. My parents took a while to come around. I just reasoned with them that my husband is a man of God and a person of the book and he will not hinder my ability to practice my faith. If God is cool with Christians, they couldn't really say much about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
None of that is up to you. She's free to believe however she likes, and to interpret her faith however she likes. She doesn't owe you any answers about her beliefs, and they don't need to make sense to you.

I didn't say it was up to me. She described her situation and her view on her husband's religion, which I found to be rather hypocritical. She is actually not free to believe however she likes if she attest that she is of the Islam faith. With that label comes a plethora of limitations on what she can or can't believe, and how she can and can't behave. Simply put, her beliefs are incongruent with her chosen faith. We are not talking about some relatively unimportant side passage, but a core tenet of her religion. Either she misunderstood the rules of her religion, or she doesn't agree with this aspect and chose not to follow it.

The questions I asked does not rely on knowing anything about any religion in particular. The same line of reasoning could be applied to any two religions, although the significant differences between Islam and Christianity has certainly made the comparison much easier to illustrate. Imagine if you were on a journey to go somewhere, and you said "I believe hiking is the only good way to get from here to there as there is no water way in between", and then next say "but I think a boat is also a good way of getting there". Clearly something is amiss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
None of that is up to you. She's free to believe however she likes, and to interpret her faith however she likes. She doesn't owe you any answers about her beliefs, and they don't need to make sense to you.

I didn't say it was up to me. She described her situation and her view on her husband's religion, which I found to be rather hypocritical. She is actually not free to believe however she likes if she attest that she is of the Islam faith. With that label comes a plethora of limitations on what she can or can't believe, and how she can and can't behave. Simply put, her beliefs are incongruent with her chosen faith. We are not talking about some relatively unimportant side passage, but a core tenet of her religion. Either she misunderstood the rules of her religion, or she doesn't agree with this aspect and chose not to follow it.

The questions I asked does not rely on knowing anything about any religion in particular. The same line of reasoning could be applied to any two religions, although the significant differences between Islam and Christianity has certainly made the comparison much easier to illustrate. Imagine if you were on a journey to go somewhere, and you said "I believe hiking is the only good way to get from here to there as there is no water way in between", and then next say "but I think a boat is also a good way of getting there". Clearly something is amiss.

It appears you do not know your Islam well.

Islam does not believe that Jesus was God, but it is fine with Christians who do. You clearly are not fine with Christians and their trinitarian beliefs even though God in the Quran approves of them as people of the book.

Dare I say this makes you a hypocrite, claiming to be a good Muslim, and certainly a better one in your eyes than OP, and rejecting the Quranic word of God in this matter?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
As a Muslim I believe that there is only one God and that Muhammad is his prophet. I also know that there were tons of other prophets sent to other people and those people have devised various religious traditions around those prophets. All I know is that Jesus is a revered figure in Islam and I owe him the same respect I owe all other messengers sent to humanity. If my husband and others of the catholic faith revere Jesus and give him some extra attention, they can go ahead and do so.

LOL, so let me get this straight, believing that Jesus is God is just some extra attention. Ask Christians if this is just a little extra attention.

Anonymous wrote:
God certainly has no problem with their interpretation, I don't see why you're so upset:

{Those who believe [in the Quran], and those who follow the Jewish [scriptures], and the Christians and the Sabians,—any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.} (Al-Baqarah 2:62)

Because that's not what it says. My first Google result is from Quran.com and it reads:

"Indeed, those who believed and those who were Jews or Christians or Sabeans [before Prophet Muhammad] - those [among them] who believed in Allah and the Last Day and did righteousness - will have their reward with their Lord, and no fear will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve."

I don't read Arabic, and even if I did, I lack the cultural context to fully appreciate a foreign language. I do speak two languages and have two cultural backgrounds so I understand the difficulty of capturing nuances in translation of literary works. With this in mind, I read the above with as much neutrality as I can muster. To me, the outward purpose of this passage is obvious: those Jews or Christians who convert to Islam and serve Allah, will be fine. This in no way means they can go on believing in their own religion. Thinking I have missed something since the language is somewhat ambiguous (is Allah only the Islamic God, or could it also be a Christian God? Does the "before Prophet Muhammad" part refer only to Sabeans, or also Christians and Jews?), and I am also missing context, I clicked on the second Google search result link:

http://www.ayubhamid.com/reflections/qur-aan/examples-of-misinterpretations/335-the-misconceptions-about-verse-62-of-al-baqarah

And the third one:

http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Christians_Jews_and_Muslims_in_Heaven

None of these support your claims.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure if you answered this already, but what do you think about his belief that God had a son?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While the Quran may not have an explicit prohibition against women marrying Christians, in a very deep cultural way it is believed that children are the faith of their fathers.

While a Muslim convert has to say the shehada to become a Muslim, the child of a Muslim man is never expected to say the shehada to prove he or she is Muslim. This is not unlike the situation in Israel--if someone is the child of a Jewish mother he is automatically considered Jewish even if he or she is an theist. But if someone is the child of Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, he or she must go through an orthodox conversion process (much more onerous than simply reciting the shehada) in order to be considered Jewish in Israel for civil matters.

In any case, this is why families in the Middle East sometimes conduct honor killings if their Muslim daughter marries a Christian. Indeed, there are honor killings of Christian women who marry Muslims, even if he has converted to Christianity. For civil purposes in a country that has Islam as, for want of a better term, the state religion in the latter case the conversion would not be recognized

OP here. That may be true but you forget that in Islam a lot of emphasis is placed on the mother. The Prophet has said, 'Paradise lies at the feet of your mother' [Musnad Ahmad, Sunan An-Nasâ’i, Sunan Ibn Mâjah]

Considering the importance given to motherhood and mothers in islam, it makes no sense that a muslim man is allowed to have his children be raised by a christian or jewish mother and children of a Muslim mother are deemed not muslim? Makes no sense.

Possibly not, but that is how it works. Same thing in Judaism but the sexes are reversed. Christianity requires a rite of initiation to be deemed Christian. (Mainstream Christianity, can't speak to some of the less mainstream Protestant sects.) You are not Christian simply because you were born to a Christian mother or father, unlike in Islam or Judaism.

You don't know what you're talking about. There is nothing in Islamic law that makes children of a Muslim mother, regardless of who the father is, non-Muslim. She can have an illegitimate child tomorrow and as long as she raises him or her Muslim, that child is Muslim. A child does not require a Muslim father to be Muslim.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
None of that is up to you. She's free to believe however she likes, and to interpret her faith however she likes. She doesn't owe you any answers about her beliefs, and they don't need to make sense to you.

I didn't say it was up to me. She described her situation and her view on her husband's religion, which I found to be rather hypocritical. She is actually not free to believe however she likes if she attest that she is of the Islam faith. With that label comes a plethora of limitations on what she can or can't believe, and how she can and can't behave. Simply put, her beliefs are incongruent with her chosen faith. We are not talking about some relatively unimportant side passage, but a core tenet of her religion. Either she misunderstood the rules of her religion, or she doesn't agree with this aspect and chose not to follow it.

The questions I asked does not rely on knowing anything about any religion in particular. The same line of reasoning could be applied to any two religions, although the significant differences between Islam and Christianity has certainly made the comparison much easier to illustrate. Imagine if you were on a journey to go somewhere, and you said "I believe hiking is the only good way to get from here to there as there is no water way in between", and then next say "but I think a boat is also a good way of getting there". Clearly something is amiss.

Who died and appointed you chief mufti? Would you like a one-way ticket to Raqqa? People who rule that place like to declare takfir on just about anyone. I think you'd fit it just right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As a Muslim I believe that there is only one God and that Muhammad is his prophet. I also know that there were tons of other prophets sent to other people and those people have devised various religious traditions around those prophets. All I know is that Jesus is a revered figure in Islam and I owe him the same respect I owe all other messengers sent to humanity. If my husband and others of the catholic faith revere Jesus and give him some extra attention, they can go ahead and do so.

LOL, so let me get this straight, believing that Jesus is God is just some extra attention. Ask Christians if this is just a little extra attention.

Anonymous wrote:
God certainly has no problem with their interpretation, I don't see why you're so upset:

{Those who believe [in the Quran], and those who follow the Jewish [scriptures], and the Christians and the Sabians,—any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.} (Al-Baqarah 2:62)

Because that's not what it says. My first Google result is from Quran.com and it reads:

"Indeed, those who believed and those who were Jews or Christians or Sabeans [before Prophet Muhammad] - those [among them] who believed in Allah and the Last Day and did righteousness - will have their reward with their Lord, and no fear will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve."

I don't read Arabic, and even if I did, I lack the cultural context to fully appreciate a foreign language. I do speak two languages and have two cultural backgrounds so I understand the difficulty of capturing nuances in translation of literary works. With this in mind, I read the above with as much neutrality as I can muster. To me, the outward purpose of this passage is obvious: those Jews or Christians who convert to Islam and serve Allah, will be fine. This in no way means they can go on believing in their own religion. Thinking I have missed something since the language is somewhat ambiguous (is Allah only the Islamic God, or could it also be a Christian God? Does the "before Prophet Muhammad" part refer only to Sabeans, or also Christians and Jews?), and I am also missing context, I clicked on the second Google search result link:

http://www.ayubhamid.com/reflections/qur-aan/examples-of-misinterpretations/335-the-misconceptions-about-verse-62-of-al-baqarah

And the third one:

http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Christians_Jews_and_Muslims_in_Heaven

None of these support your claims.

So you are engaging in a theological argument about Islam with a born Muslim after fifteen minutes with Sheikh Google?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
None of that is up to you. She's free to believe however she likes, and to interpret her faith however she likes. She doesn't owe you any answers about her beliefs, and they don't need to make sense to you.

I didn't say it was up to me. She described her situation and her view on her husband's religion, which I found to be rather hypocritical. She is actually not free to believe however she likes if she attest that she is of the Islam faith. With that label comes a plethora of limitations on what she can or can't believe, and how she can and can't behave. Simply put, her beliefs are incongruent with her chosen faith. We are not talking about some relatively unimportant side passage, but a core tenet of her religion. Either she misunderstood the rules of her religion, or she doesn't agree with this aspect and chose not to follow it.

The questions I asked does not rely on knowing anything about any religion in particular. The same line of reasoning could be applied to any two religions, although the significant differences between Islam and Christianity has certainly made the comparison much easier to illustrate. Imagine if you were on a journey to go somewhere, and you said "I believe hiking is the only good way to get from here to there as there is no water way in between", and then next say "but I think a boat is also a good way of getting there". Clearly something is amiss.

It appears you do not know your Islam well.

Islam does not believe that Jesus was God, but it is fine with Christians who do. You clearly are not fine with Christians and their trinitarian beliefs even though God in the Quran approves of them as people of the book.

Dare I say this makes you a hypocrite, claiming to be a good Muslim, and certainly a better one in your eyes than OP, and rejecting the Quranic word of God in this matter?

She doesn't claim to be a Muslim. She just claims to understand Islam better than born Muslims.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does your family think of this? I'm a Christian woman married to a Muslim man and as you know Islam allows men to marry Christian and Jewish women. But not vice versa. I know if his sisters or his daughters wanted to marry a non-Muslim man, things would be very tense.

In all clarity, the Quran isn't definite about the prohibition on muslim women marrying non-muslim men. All the Quran says is that muslim men can marry women from among "people of the book", that is, christians and jews. It does NOT explicitly state that muslim women CANNOT do that. Muslim scholars have so far interpreted the lack of such an address to women to mean that NO permission is given. I'd like to think its left ambiguous on purpose so that the Muslim community can interpret it to fit the times and best apply its meaning to their unique situation.

If this is OP, I was curious how your family handled this.

Trying for the third time to see if you answer. How did your family react to your marrying a Christian?

My siblings are a 100% accepting of it. My parents took a while to come around. I just reasoned with them that my husband is a man of God and a person of the book and he will not hinder my ability to practice my faith. If God is cool with Christians, they couldn't really say much about it.

How did you meet him?

What was the wedding like?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It appears you do not know your Islam well.

Islam does not believe that Jesus was God, but it is fine with Christians who do. You clearly are not fine with Christians and their trinitarian beliefs even though God in the Quran approves of them as people of the book.

Dare I say this makes you a hypocrite, claiming to be a good Muslim, and certainly a better one in your eyes than OP, and rejecting the Quranic word of God in this matter?

I am not a Muslim. To keep a tally, remember that I am not a Christian either.

The Quran is very clear that any religion other than Islam is not acceptable to Allah. Christians do not believe in Islam and are therefore not acceptable to Allah. So your claim that Islam thinks it is fine for Christian to believe Jesus was God does not have any basis in fact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So you are engaging in a theological argument about Islam with a born Muslim after fifteen minutes with Sheikh Google?

A born Muslim? Are Muslims born somehow special in terms of their knowledge of the religion? Are Muslim babies born with innate knowledge of the Qu'ran or something? What special powers are held by born Muslims versus those who merely convert after some time?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
So you are engaging in a theological argument about Islam with a born Muslim after fifteen minutes with Sheikh Google?

A born Muslim? Are Muslims born somehow special in terms of their knowledge of the religion? Are Muslim babies born with innate knowledge of the Qu'ran or something? What special powers are held by born Muslims versus those who merely convert after some time?

You are neither of these things and you don't know much about Islam. I make that judgment after looking at your posts.