Alice says: December 24, 2012 at 6:11 am
Hello sisters,
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? – Alice
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Admin says:
Alice,
Congratulations for being firm and not converting. This is a hopeless situation, just get away from him as soon as possible and start a new life now. If you have any doubt, read all suggested articles below.
You stated, “He slept with his arms around me every night and he would kiss me at least 100 times every day”, why you see this as is a positive quality in him? This is not LOVE, but is called LUST! If he truly loves you, he will except you the way you are, not try to convert you to something you are not. For him, it is free sex and on top he could convert a Christian to Islam, it is all win-win for him. Be clear, he does not love you, his first love is Islam. If you don’t convert and not ready to raise Muslim children, for him, Alice does not mean anything other than a sex slave (actually slave costs money, sex with Alice is free!).
Do not waste your time and energy to try to make this Telibani a good human being.
“By nature girls are innocent and emotional, whosoever respects them (even falsely), they get trapped. There are so many anti social elements in the society who are disguised as gentlemen but internally conspirator” –Abida.
We hope other Muslim girls will come here to guide you soon. -Admin.
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Also read:
Islamic Women Today,
Hindu-Muslim marriages,
Hindu girl,
Koran,
Pride,
Loving a Muslim,
Veena Malik,
Muslim won’t understand Pluralism,
Restore torned hymen,
Muslim men are womanizers,
One day you will have to face ALLAH,
Be a friend on Facebook. Return to InterfaithShaadi.org. To share your experience, read.
my (Christian) parents do not want a Hindu marriage ritual
Jesus is coming to set all captives free. He is the Savior & died to prove His Love for all humans…this is the True Nature of our Heavenly Father. He is a Spirit of Love & Forgiveness! Ask Him to help you forgive everybuddy with the New Heart only He can give you! Call on Jesus, call on Love. Believe He is Coming Soon to Rescue all who want to be amongst the Righteous! You need not fear Hell, that is only for fallen angels & liars depraved enough to let themselves be taken over by their spirits! If your heart is true, you will turn to Compassion & receive Salvation. I’m not a ‘fake Christian’, I offer you the true Love of Jesus. I’ve been sharing John 8 in Arabic, hoping some poor muslim will hear the truth that Christian Believers follow the Son of God who FORGIVES! 😀 Bless You All & Please Choose Being Sorry for getting off the track & Starting to Follow Jesus In The Light of Love!
Follow Jesus, not the church, read https://www.interfaithshaadi.org/?p=2511
These fake stories and antiislamic and do not belive to them vist http://www.usislam.org to learn about islam
An afgran girl when she refused to prostitute herself or have sex with the man she was forced to marry when she was about 13, officials said, Sahar Gul’s in-laws tortured her and threw her into a dirty, windowless cellar for months until the police discovered her lying in hay and animal dung.
In July, an appeals court upheld prison sentences of 10 years each for three of her in-laws, a decision heralded as a legal triumph underscoring the advances for women’s rights in the past decade. She is recovering from her wounds, physical and emotional, in a women’s shelter in Kabul.
But to many rights advocates, Sahar Gul’s case, which drew attention from President Hamid Karzai and the international news media, is the exception that proves the rule: a small victory that masks a still-depressing picture of widespread instances of abuse of women that never come to light.
Further, advocacy groups fear that even the tentative progress that has been achieved in protecting some women could be undone if the West’s focus on Afghanistan now begins to shift away as NATO troops withdraw and the international money pumped into the economy diminishes.
“If you take away that funding and pressure, it is not sustainable,” said Heather Barr, Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch.
As more details of Sahar Gul’s case have come to light — including the fact that the abuse continued even as, time and again, neighbors, police officers and her family members voiced suspicions that something was wrong — it has only reinforced how vulnerable women and girls still are in Afghanistan, particularly in rural areas where under-age marriages are common and forced ones are typical.
Sahar Gul, who is now about 14, grew up in Badakhshan, a poor, mountainous province in the north. As a young child she was shuffled around after her father died, ending up with her stepbrother, Mohammad, when she was about 9. She helped with the hard work — tending cows, sheep and an orchard of walnut and apricot trees, and making dung bricks for the fire — but her stepbrother’s wife resented her presence. The woman pressured Mohammad to give Sahar Gul up for marriage after he was contacted by a man, about 30, named Ghulam Sakhi — even though she had not yet reached the legal marriage age of 16, or 15 with a father’s consent.
In effect, Ghulam Sakhi bought her: he paid at least $5,000, according to government officials and prosecutors, an illegal exchange. He drove off with Sahar Gul to his parents’ home in Baghlan, another northern province hundreds of miles away.
Ghulam Sakhi’s first wife had fled after he and his mother beat her for not bearing children, according to Rahima Zarifi, the chairwoman of Baghlan’s women’s affairs department, and the mullah in the mosque in the town in Baghlan. In his search for a new wife, there may have been a reason Ghulam Sakhi’s family looked so far afield: they intended to force her into prostitution, according to Ms. Zarifi, who followed the case closely, and officials at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Kabul.
In Baghlan, the girl was immediately put to work cooking and cleaning, but she was able to resist consummating the marriage for weeks.
She ran away to the house of a neighbor, who alerted both the police and her husband’s family. Ghulam Sakhi’s neighbors and the police forced him to sign a letter promising not to mistreat Sahar Gul, though they let him take her back.
The warning had little effect. One day, when she complained of a headache, her mother-in-law, Siyamoi, tricked her into taking a sedative that she thought was medicine, said Mushtari Daqiq, a lawyer for the aid group Women for Afghan Women and also Sahar Gul’s lawyer.
“When she woke up in the morning, she realized she had been used by her husband,” Ms. Daqiq said.
A neighbor named Ehsanullah said that one evening last summer, as his family ate dinner, they heard screaming coming from the house. The following morning his mother called at the house. He recounted what she saw: “Sahar Gul had lost a lot of weight, her hands were covered with bruises and wounds, one of her hands was broken, but her mother-in-law was forcing her to do the laundry.” He added, “She kept her head down the whole time my mother was there.”
After a group of elders confronted Ghulam Sakhi, the screaming stopped.
Frustrated that the girl could not perform the housework they expected, the family put her in the cellar, where she slept on the floor without a mattress, her hands and feet tied with rope. She was given only bread and water to eat. She was also beaten regularly. According to Sahar Gul and Ms. Daqiq, most of the beatings were at the hand of Amanullah, Ghulam Sakhi’s elderly father.
They described grotesque crimes, accusing Amanullah of hitting Sahar Gul with sticks, biting her chest, inserting hot irons in her ears and vagina, and pulling out two fingernails.
“She was helpless,” Ms. Daqiq said. “She had no hope for her life.”
Sahar Gul’s uncle Khwaja, who lived nearby in the same province, and her stepbrother, Mohammad, tried to visit her a few times, but the family told them the girl was not home. The family then threatened Mohammad, warning that he had illegally given his sister to be married. “He had to accept and run back to Badakhshan without meeting his sister,” Khwaja said.
Then, last December, about six months after the marriage, they finally got to see her when they called at the house with two police officers and heard a voice coming from the cellar.
“In the light of our flashlight, we found Sahar Gul lying on a pile of hay,” said Shirullah, one of the police officers.
Her dress was in rags, she was barely conscious and she could not stand after weeks in the dark.
“She was constantly moaning,” Shirullah said. “She was in a horrible situation. She couldn’t move her body parts, and we carried her to the hospital in our arms.”
Ms. Zarifi and three nurses washed her and gave her soup and dates. “When she saw the food, she became very excited,” Ms. Zarifi said.
The police arrested the mother-in-law, Siyamoi, her daughter Mahkhurd and finally Amanullah, the father-in-law — who was discovered hiding in a burqa and a blanket.
The family told the police that Ghulam Sakhi was in the Afghan Army in Helmand. That was later found to be untrue, according to local residents and Afghan officials, but the claim bought enough time for him to slip away from the authorities along with his brother, Darmak. They remain at large.
With her mistreatment a big story in the Afghan news media, Mr. Karzai called for swift justice. In a district court in Kabul on May 1, the judge, speaking in front of a bank of microphones on national television, declared Sahar Gul’s three in-laws guilty.
According to neighbors and to officials who heard the in-laws’ arguments in court, they acted the way they did mostly because they felt they had paid good money for a girl who they said was not pretty, who misbehaved and who would neither work as they demanded nor bear them children.
Lawyers for the family members say that they deny beating or drugging Sahar Gul, and that her wounds were self-inflicted. They deny confining her in the cellar, and say they had no plans to send her into prostitution. The prostitution accusation was not addressed in court.
The lawyers, who were provided by the legal group Da Qanoon Ghushtonky, or Demanders of Law, which is financed by international aid, argue that the political outcry caused the trial to be rushed through without due process.
Rather than showing the lack of legal protections for women, they argued, Sahar Gul’s case underscores the weakness of Afghanistan’s still-developing legal system, one that can easily be swayed by politicians like Mr. Karzai.
Siyamoi and Mahkhurd are now 2 of 171 prisoners in a women’s prison in Kabul. On a recent morning there, the two women insisted they were innocent and railed ferociously at their accusers.
“We are being cheated by the court,” Siyamoi said. “If you think I am a criminal, why don’t you pull out my fingernails?”
A few miles away across Kabul, Sahar Gul lives in a shelter provided by Women for Afghan Women, one of seven shelters the organization has established nationally for abuse victims.
Sahar Gul played in the sun in the garden in a golden dress and purple shawl and pink bracelets, a round-cheeked, gangly girl. She had made a new friend at the shelter, a 14-year-old girl whose face was scarred by acid by a sister’s thwarted suitor.
Sahar Gul still bears the scars and bruises of her ordeal, but her caregivers said she was recovering and becoming gradually more independent. She said she had ambitions.
“I want to become a politician and stop other women suffering the same,” she said.
Now, however, rights groups fear that schools and clinics for girls may close as international money dries up and the political climate in Afghanistan becomes more religiously conservative, undermining the fragile lattice of pro-women support groups, government ministries and nongovernmental organizations as well as laws specifically created in the past few years to protect women.
A new 2009 law to eliminate violence against women was cited in the sentencing of Sahar Gul’s abusers, but the law is still barely applied, according to a United Nations report published in November, and it has not been formally adopted.
Women’s shelters are under threat, with a conservative justice minister describing them as “brothels,” while a new family law that could make it easier for abused women to divorce is being held up.
In such a climate, the fear is that Sahar Gul’s successful rescue may turn out to be an aberration rather than a new norm, and that it will not help those women whose suffering is not discovered.
“We have many cases perhaps graver than this where women are murdered,” Ms. Zarifi said. “No one hears anything about them.”