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This includes moral purity. Often they are worried about the risks of exposure to the sexual freedoms of western culture, and may assume it characterizes all the western women they meet. Feel free to share your own concern about living according to biblical standards in the face of pressure from the contemporary culture. It also includes physical purity. Careful washing rituals are the means to restore purity. And defiled conditions affect women much more than men any kind of emission from the body, whether solid, liquid or gas, is a cause of impurity.
So all Muslims become impure and must wash to gain purity every day. Moreover, women become impure for a week each month.
This is very different to western understanding. Nor is he unclean from touching a dead body according to Jewish rules of the time. Rather, he heals a woman, gives life to a dead girl, and purity of heart to all of us. In many Muslim societies, a stronger relational bond is one between mother and son.
The mother-son relationship may be a more significant line of influence than the husband-wife one.
When I was encouraging young women to come to literacy classes, it was more often mothers or sisters-in-law not husbands , who might prevent them from attending. Muslim women often carry much of the responsibility for family welfare—health of family members, harmony in relationships, and success of children. These can be deep daily concerns for women, especially in countries without good health facilities or education, facing issues of drought or war. Women may be more anxious about these areas than about theological issues or questions.
So they are very conscious of the many negative forces that can affect them and their families. Fear may also extend beyond this life. In conversations, stories are often used to make a point or solve a problem. We can tell stories about Jesus, any place, any time, especially about the many women he cared for.
Muslim women, like us, are image-bearers of God, so we love them as people created and loved by God. The Muslim American community is extremely diverse by the numbers. Taking into account both native and foreign born Muslims, the Pew study suggests that South Asians and Arabs together make up the majority of the Muslims in America, followed by a sizable number of Black Muslims, and the rest comprising a hodge podge of various other Muslim nations as mentioned above.
Despite the inherent diversity within the Muslim American community, these community social spaces tend to remain segregated. The South Asian and Arab communities that immigrated in the 80s and 90s have established themselves in various professions in the US as doctors, store owners, engineers, taxi drivers, and so on. As more people from the same ethnic group gather and form a community, they eventually start to raise money and build a mosque, which serves as a primary space of gathering for those within this specific ethnic community.
Various other ethnicities attend these mosques as well for their spiritual fulfillment. Yet, despite the mixing of ethnicities at the mosque during prayer, the social groups that form outside of the mosque are quite homogenous. However, the same post-mosque social group separation is not as apparent in second generation Muslims compared to first immigrant Muslims. Perhaps because of a more shared American identity, or perhaps because of more interaction and inclusion in college spaces, but social gatherings today are not as divided along ethnic lines as they were in the past.
Therefore, you find more interracial dating and marriage within second generation Muslim Americans that was not as present in with first generation immigrants.
Raising children. Taking a christian converts to marry christian or more often that muslim woman is no frivolous question. As the male can provide is not allowed. Specifically, I'm referring to the dynamics of dating and relationships within the of the Muslims in America, followed by a sizable number of Black Muslims, them to good Muslim men or women for the purpose of marriage.
Yet, the ugly truth is that certain interracial marriages are more accepted than others. Within the South Asian community, there is strong association with whiteness and beauty. From the casting of very fair Bollywood actors and actresses to advertisements for the infamous Fair and Lovely skin whitening cream, to parents who implore their sons and daughters to avoid spending too much time in the sun to avoid becoming dark, there is a not-so-subtle message that white is right.
This preference for lighter skin tone is also present within Arab and other non-Black Muslim communities, but perhaps it is not as blatant as within the South Asian community. Yet, what is common among nearly all non-Black communities is a general dislike of Black skin, and by association Black people. However, these same parents get excited by the prospects of their son or daughter marrying a white convert, or even a very fair Arab.
Yet they revert to the culture excuse in order to save face when the prospects of a Black person is presented. I am fortunate enough to have friends from various ethnicities within the Muslim American community, and I think each individual has the right to date or marry whoever they want. If people choose to prioritize marrying someone of their same ethnicity because of language, cultural similarities, love for Bollywood or something else that they have decided is important to them, then they should certainly proceed in this manner.
In a hilarious twist of irony, a friend, who is a white Muslim convert that is very involved within my local community and a very trusted individual, discussed on Facebook the issues with this racial hierarchy, which he sees first hand. Often, people will come to him frustrated with the prospects of finding a spouse and ask him to introduce them to good Muslim men or women for the purpose of marriage. As a litmus test to assess their openness, he often starts by stating that there is an amazing Black brother or sister in the community that he thinks would be a great fit.
Situations like these make me wonder whether or not parental resistance had anything to do with an aversion to such an introduction in the first place. Moreover, I wonder to what extent these excuses are actually a cover up for subconscious racism that has been allowed to fester in the name of cultural preservation, which involves worshiping white skin.
Yet the reality is that we live in an imperfect world and racism is alive and well within our community. Friends have told me tales of their parents giving them the Romeo and Juliet ultimatum when presenting someone to them of a race they did not approve of. Specifically, they had to choose between a romantic interest and keeping ties with their family.