Dilemma of Mixed Unions

Re: # 24

Forgot to add......... nice post :)

I would say castrate the sinful atheist man for marrying a Muslim woman.
As far as Muslim woman is concerned, female circumcision available, as done in African tribes.

24 by sattar 2



``I think Socrates nailed it when he said to his students … “My advice to you is that you should get married. If you find a good spouse, you’ll be happy. Otherwise you’ll become a philosopher”. There you have it … I think every married man is partly a philosopher … some realize this, some don’t … and life goes on … ``

Good clinching comment.

In fact marriages being generally hetero-sexual are essentially mixed ones. It is the sex whch binds them despite all divergences like gravitation. I had a young sister-in-law of mine who had a love marriage but had been exprerensing some estrangement with her husband. One day the couple came to our home and started talking about their family problem. The husband said,``Look uncle we can`t pull on any further due to some serious differences betwwn us: I am Urdu-speaking and she a Pujabi one, I m a Shia and she is Sunni, I am highly educated and she is illiterare``. I said, `` You have forgotton the most important different between you and her, i.e, of sex, as you are a man and she a woman.``
I did not meet them again but learnt later on that they got divorced and the girl got married
with an aged uncle of her ex-husband and is pulling on well despite greater divergences with her new husband. So as Bernard Shaw said ``The golden rule is that there is no rule``. This is all the more correct in case of marriage perhaps.

Sattar:

With all said, it seems you aren`t going to consult Hazratae` Khizr on board :)

The following is an excellent observation presented by Kulharee. It kind of refutes what Freethinker has presented in this gloomy and weird essay. The concept behind this article is indeed worth exploring but the conclusions are naive and impractical. They simply lack any kind of freethinking. That`s where I think Freethinker`s perspectives have a tendency to lean towards ``traditional`` Muslims views vs anything else when it comes to social sciences :)

[The challenges that mixed unions present are not any different from the challenges that non-mixed unions present. ]

#29 - Raw_Dust
I think you meant bothg Pakistani Muslims/Muslimahs. Please do not be so damn unkind toward your own species. If the Muslimahs have unreasonable expectations then the Muslims are no less than them. Let`s be fair for a change!

dr sohail -- wish I had not asked the question -- ur answer took away the sting, the suspense, the mystery of the story -- this is not an irreligious husband -- of a knowledgeable pragmatic wife -- who seems to be practicing fanatic atheism...

the fight is a much ado about nothing -- circumcision may be Abrahamic practice of a redundant piece of skin that like -- cutting your nail that is no nail mutilation -- is no genital mutilation.

of course cutting penile tissue like cutting clitoris -- is definitely genital mutilation... and it is medically proven to lower the incidence of cancer of the penis -- only if the prepuce is not kept clean.....

btw this marriage is headed for the rocks....

drsohail:
this guy should have known thoroughly what he was getting into... i mean did he not know pakistani muslimahs and their ideas and expectations of nikaah and ``marriage``.?
The guy should take the blame all the way and put up with it.

Dear Mohammad Gill
One of the readers asked about the background of the atheist husband in the story.
He is from a Muslim Pakistani family but has become an atheist.
Muslim wife moved from Pakistan to North America after marriage.
The family lives in America now
sincerely
sohail

Re:sattar2

Sirjee, you are wrong. There was a very interesting study performed at University of Chicago where they showed that the order of happiness was as follows - married men, single women, single men and finally married women. So married men are actually the happiest people in society.

The main reason is that a married man has options. He can focus on career and make money i.e. succeed. Besides having a guaranteed female company at home, with success comes options like chasing the trophy second wife, having a mistress etc. Even if you do not exercise these options, the fact that you have these options makes a man happy. Also married men have longer life spans and less stress.

Single women have a lot of options as well, especially when it comes to dating and choosing a man. They do not have the financial means like a married man, in general. So they fall in the second category.

Single men may have money but they have lesser options because they do not have a guaranteed female company and have to work hard to acquire one and sustain it.

Married women are the worst of the lot because they typically give up on career aspirations. As a result they have lesser economic clout. Also with kids, a woman`s options gets even more limited. It is incredibly hard for a married woman to walk out on a husband and get a new dad for her kids. It is incredibly easy for a married man to walk out on his wife and get a new wife.

So, sattarji, stop being so depressed. You are in the happiest category already. :-)

Re: # 25

Soysauce, my comment was that the marital issues and problems (I wouldn’t call them problems, perhaps concerns??) are similar in both types of unions. Kids and their challenges, etc. are part of every household with kids. Perhaps there unique issues faced by inter-racial couples (and no doubt about it) but to say that, and I will quote Gill Sahib’s concluding remarks.

>>>In the end, it should be remembered that a mixed union requires the nourishment of lifelong sacrifices. It is best when both partners are willing to make them. Otherwise, it is better to seek homogeneous relationships in which such issues (circumcision, etc.) do not crop up every now and then and make marriage a venomous and bitter experience for both of them.<<<

I think that those little issues that Gill Sahib is alluding to are inconsequential in the larger scheme of things. It all depends on the partnership; and there is no need to go out of one’s way to (to what Gill Sahib calls “lifelong sacrifice”) to do that.

And I think that any relationship requires “nourishment of lifelong commitment” (to borrow from Gill Sahib mit gratis) regardless of difference of faith or cultural upbringing. No wonder that over half of the marriages in the US end in divorce.

#20 kulharee
Interesting comment. Circumcision becoming an issue is a symptom of a larger ``control`` problem.
``Mixed`` marriages by default happen between people who are either open to other POV or are too moonstruck to realize what they are getting into. What this article relates is a cautionary tale having to do with the latter group but that by no means is representative.
If a marital relationship is dominated by worries over school, sex & drugs, mortgage payments, etc., one wonders why marry in the first place..
Isn`t marriage about fulfillment and not codependency?

Zahra (re #19) …

Men don’t know diddly anymore … and it’s all women’s fault. Now it would not be such a big issue if men were allowed to have multiple wives. That way when one is giving us an attitude, we’d go to the other one … problem solved. But alas … despite being a self-proclaimed muslim, mrs. sattar would have none of it … and she has “law of the land” on her side …

And such are the facts that every man knows (tahmed remains an exception). And I think hamidm is in agreement with me on futility of marriage … unless mrs. hamidm read his posts and gave him a time-out. May be his visit to Pakistan was his punishment. But what do I know … all I know is that my next mortgage payment is coming due pretty soon … while mrs. sattar continues to get speeding tickets …

I think Socrates nailed it when he said to his students … “My advice to you is that you should get married. If you find a good spouse, you’ll be happy. Otherwise you’ll become a philosopher”. There you have it … I think every married man is partly a philosopher … some realize this, some don’t … and life goes on …

And you have no idea what beasts in-laws can be … so don’t throw stones yet. And one day when you do get a taste of it, let me know. We’ll have a coffee chat and discuss god, king, and the country … and everything will start to make sense to you too …

Mr. Kulaharee:
I appreciate your critique. I was inspired to write on this topic by the story I described. In the text I made some general comments about other things also which can be a sore point in such unions. For instace, I did mention about the religion (or no religion) into which the kids of such unions would be raised. In academic discussions, such issues do not hit you with the same impact that they do when you are personally going through such difficult experience. My article was just a short essay; it was not a thesis on mixed unions. The article tried to underline the triviality of a factor that could become thorny in the situations of mixed unions.
Other problems that you have mentioned, I have gone through them. I can empathize with you because I have been (and still am) there. Raising of children by responsible parents is not a joke. I wish you well and I`ll try to do better next time,
Mohammad Gill

Gill Sahib, That’s all fine, but to exemplify just one instance of such a marriage by no means present a wider phenomenon. You title your essay as “Dilemma of Mixed Unions” by citing just “one” story. Unless it is a wider and more prevalent issue, it is neither an appropriate title, nor an appropriate story to tell. It can be a nice story in a larger scheme of things.

My kids are both baptized, circumcised, and Aqiqafide. I am not suggesting that they will grow up to appreciate all the religions or appreciate all the idiosyncrasies of various cultures and anthrops. In fact, if anything, they will look for what is wrong with “each one of them”, instead of just looking at what is wrong with just “one”.

The challenges that mixed unions present are not any different from the challenges that non-mixed unions present. In my case, we as a couple are more worried about kids, schools, drugs, sex, local politics, stupid relatives on both sides, yearly vacations, etc. And I don’t for a second think that if we were of the same faith and same cultural backgrounds, our challenges will be any different.

But then again, that is just “my” experience.

Mr. Kulharee:
Thanks for your feedback and the statistics you presented.
I did not discuss circumcision as a global issue in the article. It became an issue between the wife and the husband and it is not fictional nor hypothetical; it is a true story.
As far as I am concerned I care two hoots for it. My earliest memory of the downside of circumcision goes back to 1947. The Hindus and Sikhs would strip the males to check who were Muslims. The circumsized ones were put to death.
My essay is not about circumcision and pricks; it is about mixed unions. Circumcision among other things could become a dissident issue as it did in the story I described. The couples entering the mixed unions should consider such issues before tying the knot.
I do not have any `palaver` with your statistics; that was not the theme nor the point of the article. Individuals can still be mortified in mixed unions in spite of the rosy picture you presented by your statistics.
Mohammad Gill

>>>The marriages in which there is absolutely no compromise and accommodation regarding the individuals’ religious backgrounds, culture and cultural practices, usually end up in bitterness, in fiasco, or remain unduly in enduring and stressful relationships. Church and mosque, mosque and mandar, or mosque and no mosque are seldom symbiotic realities unless the spouses are prepared not to push them hard and test them every now and then. A loving relationship should rise above these things. They need to come to some reasonable understanding about their children as well.<<<

Gill Sahib… your essay is a total nonsense, it lacks any substance. Islam or any other religion is not about chopping off a little skin off penis, and marriages are institutions that are above the shape and size of pricks. In the US, as it is, 50% marriages end up in Divorce (you can easily say that over 99 % of them are not cross cultural). In Pakistan the rate of happy marriages is about 6%, the rest are just for legalized and cheap sex. In Saudi Arabia the rate of divorce is minus 26% (because only the women is divorced, the man has 17 wives and can never be divorced).

Today, in NYC area, in the Greek Orthodox Church, over half of the marriages solemnized are mixed unions. And the divorce rate (if that be any indication) among mixed unions is far less than non-mixed marriages.