Re: Interracial marriage - would/did you do it?
I see that people are assuming that your family is muslim. I didn’t think Pakistanis or Islam had a caste system. I think most secular people don’t care whether they marry within the faith or not, regardless of whatever faith they label themselves in.
How do you teach your child that daddy drinks beer but its not ok for us? Yes, we celebrate x-mas because Daddy, Grandma, and Grandpa do but Christmas is not the celebration of Isa’s (A.S) birthday. How do you counter the view that “Islam is boring and no fun” and “Secular Christianity is fun”? How do you teach your child that it’s not ok for him or her to have a girlfriend or boyfriend when his/her father and grandparents encourage that? How do you teach your “jigar ka tukra” that drinking, binge drinking, sexual experimentation, experimenting with drugs at parties, etc is not right when 1/2 of his heritage says that it’s just part of growing up. It’s hard to instill Islamic values in your children when 1/2 of their heritage celebrates some of these behaviors. It’s a tough road.
I think it’s great that people don’t define others by the color of their skins but you must also take into account if you have shared values and when your values diverge, how you will deal with issues that arise.
You simply use your non-muslim aka ethnic identity to instill those values. The martial identity, watch if your kid drinks knowing who they truly are. If they do, then they do; stuff happens sometimes, if they learn from it it’s fine because at that point it’s out of your hands.
No problem. It isn’t just “interfaith”, I think it’s parental values not matching up. Like I said before, my BIL is far more Muslim than some Muslims I know. I see the same struggles in Muslim households where parents come from different ends of the spectrum. My husband has cousins, brother and sister. The brother is raising his kids islamically where as the sister is not, although both are married to muslims and both had the same parents. The difference is that the brother is married to a woman for whom raising her kids islamically is important, however the sister is married to a man who is disrespectful towards Islam. A man who is a hot shot by our societal values and he refutes everything when it comes to religion, probably because his father believes in the South Asian version of Islam “Hell Fire & Brimstone” “obey” etc…
Is the hell fire version one that comes straight from sufis or like.. Don’t wanna derail thread was wondering what the differences were..
Excellent post Peony.
You certainly have not seen desi munday yet or maybe vice versa.
Meray Nainoo Se Jo B Nainoo Ko Milay Ga, Meray Naino Ka Jadoo Us Per Char Jahay Ga.
True, Pakistani ladies are uncomparable, they simply excel.Its so strange how our ladies love Arabs, Arabs love Goriyaan, Goriyaan love Kalay, Kalay love Chinese/Asians and they love desis.In short, I know many non-desi girls who love desi men.
Might b religious differences, across the border all the girls I know say they’d probably rather burn than marry Arabs cuz they can’t fight, and got kicked out. They okay with kalay or guyanese or sum1 basically who-ever there wasn’t conflict with.
But you’re wrong, everyone loves desi men (well women too )