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....years passed on and we were still not able to progress. He wanted to marry me and he even told his whole family that he would marry me, but I just couldn’t take that risk because of numerous reasons. One of them was that I didn’t want my kids to be Muslim. Another reason is that his whole family tried to control me, pressuring me into converting, and I really dislike it when people try to control me.

 


Dear Ali Sina,

 

I would like to share my experience with you and other women in my situation.

OK, so where should I begin. I am an educated woman from Norway who went to Oxford to study when I was 20 years old. When I was 24, I fell in love with a man that treated me very good (well, at least in the beginning...). He was born and raised in London, but he was still very true to his religion, which was (unfortunately) Islam.

I was actually very disappointed when he told me that he was Muslim, cause I had seen good friends around me being treated very bad by Muslim men, but because he seemed like such a warm person, I didn’t want to dump him just like that -I wanted to get to know him better. Things evolved and we quickly became inseparable, but then reality started to kick in.

He lived with his controlling Muslim family and they didn’t approve that he had a non-Muslim girlfriend, so in the beginning he had to “sneak around” with me like I was a little secret. That upset me a lot and made me not trusting in him, but he explained that his family would disown him if he had a girlfriend, especially a non-Muslim girlfriend. He said he didn’t want to lose his family until he was 100% sure that I would become his wife.

Eventually as we fell deeper in love he told me that he was willing to go against his family for me, and what a big step that was. I didn’t understand any of that backwards mentality, but I tried to be patient. He said to me repeatedly: “If you converted to Islam today, I would marry you tomorrow”, but I have too much self-respect to change my identity for anyone, no matter how much I may love a person. A person should love me for who I am in the first place, but I forgave him for his ignorance. Eventually I met his family, who came across as quite fake to me, like they were trying too hard to be kind. They were nice to me, but they still nagged me about converting every time I saw them, which I thought was very inappropriate.

I am a spiritual person and I tried to make him realise that he shouldn’t live his life like that, but he had such a tunnel vision and appeared so ignorant at times. And he never read the Qur’an and done proper research of the life of Mohammad -but still he desperately clung to his beliefs! I used to call him brainwashed and we would get into huge arguments when we discussed the bigger questions in life. He wouldn’t listen to any of my beliefs, and I have read a lot of spiritual, scientific and philosophical books through the years. I just couldn’t reach through to him because he would make things up and start talking about other topics once I had proven a valuable point. And he would always say “I won this discussion” when he didn’t have any facts to back up anything. It was ridiculous and drove me crazy!

Sometimes I thought that I should just let it go and respect that he has a different view on life than me, but I was naive because I realised that Islam made him into a bad person. Everything that Islam is; Manipulative, deceiving, controlling, possessive, hypocritical, etc., was also manifesting in his behaviour! I never caught him cheating and he was never violent towards me, but he was possessive and would send “spies” after me whenever I went to a nightclub to hang out with my friends. He would also go into my email and mobile to read messages, when he had absolutely no reason to suspect that I was cheating on him. He lied a lot too, about the smallest things, and I just couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just be an honest person. That would’ve made his life -and my life, so much easier! I also found him very manipulative, always encouraging me to wear ugly, unattractive clothes (so that men wouldn’t look at me).

He lived a double life because of Islam, and he was trapped in a web of lies and deception that made himself (and me!), miserable. Islam also made him a spineless and weak man that was too afraid to stand up for what he believed in. And he was afraid to be an individual.

He was probably in love with me, but still he wouldn’t stand up for our relationship at times when his friends and family were saying something negative about me. His family did not respect me because we weren’t married and I wasn’t Muslim, and sometimes they were really mean. His sister and his brother would send me vicious text messages saying “This is only temporary. He needs to marry a Muslim woman”, etc. My boyfriend would sometimes stand up for me, but other times he would avoid confrontations which made me angry, because I felt like he should’ve defended me every single time!

So there we were, years passed on and we were still not able to progress. He wanted to marry me and he even told his whole family that he would marry me, but I just couldn’t take that risk because of numerous reasons. One of them was that I didn’t want my kids to be Muslim. Another reason is that his whole family tried to control me, pressuring me into converting, and I really dislike it when people try to control me.

But what kept me/us holding on for so long was because of the connection we had, how we laughed and played and how we forgot all our problems when we spent time together. We could just be ourselves around each other. He always played a role when he spoke to his family and friends, but he was able to relax when he spent time with me. He used to tell me that he felt so peaceful when we spent time together. I think that he was able to be his true self around me and I made him happy. He slept with his arms around me every night and he would kiss me at least 100 times every day. I felt loved most of the time, but when we had to face his friends and family, he would change.

That culture/religion caused us so many arguments and it made me feel like my opinions and needs didn’t mean anything, so after 6 years with ongoing problems, I finally left him cause I couldn’t take anymore. I want to start a happy life with a man I can have kids with. I still love him, but I love myself more and I just want to be happy. He still wants to be with me and marry me, but I don’t trust him because he is always so contradictive, he doesn’t stand up for me all the time when his family is treating me bad. He would have to leave his family, Muslim friends and Islam for it to work with me and I highly doubt that he will do that. He loves his family. That’s the complexity of the problem; he feels like I’m demanding too much from him and I’m the “bad guy” for wanting to change him, but I’m only trying to “rescue” him from the dark and oppressive influences cause I’ve seen the good in him. And even if a miracle happened and he left Islam, would he really change his ways and start thinking differently? He is 30 now and it will probably take years for him to let go of all the illusions?

I tried for 5 years to make him change his views and expand his tunnel vision, but it seems utterly impossible! Maybe I’ll give him your book as one last option, do you think that can help him change his views?

Thanks for listening. I love the way you are able to observe and articulate everything that’s wrong with Islam and Muslims.