Those in mixed faith marriages...

[MaltWispa]

...how do you make it work if one of you changes your mind?

Been married for 4 years, together for 11 and have a 10 month old DS. Two different backgrounds - DH is Muslim (he's British but his dad is from another country) and I don't have any religion, but believed in God - which was good enough.

Ever since having DS though, I've just felt so scared of his religion and anxious about it all. He's become slightly more religious and I've come to realise that I really don't like it, that I'm not sure what I believe in anymore seeing all the horrible things in the world and I'm scared for our marriage as it's making me view him in a different light.

I don't know if it's PP hormones that are making me change my mind, but I feel so sad everyday about it all.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? I feel so lost about it and I have absolutely no one to talk to about this in real life who would really understand it.

OP, I will tell you about my experience with my ex husband.
We met around 40 years ago. He was totally non practicing and westernised. He had come to UK aged 7 and he, his siblings and mum had all assimilated and integrated totally into English society. This was in the mid 1960s when there was very little multiculturalism in England. They lived in quite a rough, racist part of London and they made a conscious decision to become more “English” in order to survive and thrive. We had a registry office wedding and English style reception.
I was brought up as a catholic and did not and still do not practice.
Being the nice, kind, loving person I am, I was very upset when he would tell me how he had to distance himself from his background and culture in order to be able to live peacefully and get on in the education and employment world (the family actually Anglicized their names) and I encouraged him to reconnect with his faith and culture. His mum (who was divorced from his dad who lived abroad and never really figured much in his life) was delighted with this and very grateful to me. She was a lovely lady and very moderate in her religious beliefs and lifestyle.
When our first child (daughter) was born, he began to become more Islamic in his lifestyle, he began to go to Friday prayers and mix more with with Muslim community and become more influenced by them. We had a second child (son) and he became more Islamic in his lifestyle eg he stopped drinking alcohol, would buy only halal meat, started to fast during Ramadan. He insisted on our children being instructed in the faith and as they got older that they observe the religion. This caused an awful lot of conflict in our marriage and family life and unhappiness, conflict and confusion for our children. Many of the people and families I met in the Islamic community were wonderful and truly lived their lives by their faith. I also encountered a lot of deeply unpleasant people who were very racist towards me and our children.Of course I can’t say that I wished we hadn’t married because we have two wonderful children but it was a very hard road for me and our children and I will always feel so guilty that they went through very hard times due to the conflict. Only around 5 years ago my daughter who is now in her 30s told me that she cried herself to sleep on more than one occasion as she was told by some adult Muslims that her grandparents (my mum and dad), who were the nicest, kindest, most loving grandparents any child could wish for, would go to hell as they were not Muslims! Please be very cautious how you go forward in your marriage.
How is your relationship with his family? Are they practicing? Family ties and loyalties can be very strong and influential in Islam. My eldest ex SIL is a very domineering bully who estranged herself from two of her siblings after telling them how they would go to hell due to their lifestyles (one is gay and one is married to a Hindu). My ex just decided to ignore the fact that his sibling is gay and make out that it just wasn’t the case and similar with sibling married to a HIndu. Please, please for the sake of your child sort this out now. My children suffered enormously due to my being too passive.
I would also add that in the forty years since I met my ex there has been a growth in Islamic society in UK and there has been some movement to more extreme practices by some people eg when we first met we never saw women wearing burqas but now regularly see women totally covered including gloves and showing nothing of their faces apart from their eyes. I’m totally fine with people dressing how they wish but when these same people show disgust at how my beautiful daughter dresses I will not tolerate it (and neither will she). Luckily both my children are strong, confident adults and are not affected by any bigotry or racism shown to them (and I am proud to say that this is due to my parenting and not their father’s). They both have friends from all cultures who are wonderful, tolerant inclusive people). However,I personally know a white English family whose young daughter was subjected to racism by both the parents and children of the majority Muslim school community and they ended up moving. They had no support from the school staff (who were also all Muslim).
Im sorry if this makes you more frightened and worried, that’s not my intention but I really do wish I could have seen into the future when I married and I would have been more firm about things at the start when my influence on my ex mattered to him.

One thing to consider is that not being together would in no way change what he teaches dc about his religion.

This is a one of the issues with Western culture. Our individualism extends even into how we raise our children. You are far less likely to see a Muslim woman in your same predicament with a Hindu or atheist, because they are raised to avoid relations with non-Muslim men to protect their community and values, Western women are encouraged to pursue personal freedom and "fairness" above all else. It's the live-and-let-live ethos, which on the surface seems nice and tolerant, but in practice leads to unintended consequences such as girls entering relationships across cultural, religious, and ethnic lines simply because our liberal ideology deems it progressive. Muslims aren't supposed to date. Nor are they supposed to marry women not of the book and those that they do are supposed to convert. You're in a tricky situation because you agreed to go along with it initially but now you've changed your mind. Which takes me back to the problem with the way we raise our daughters in the West. I know what this is like to some extent, I fell very in love with a Muslim man but later he admitted he was disappointed in me that I wasn't a Virgin, and that it may lead him to need to take a second wife. I don't have much advice but it looks like you need to do some serious soul searching. Do you want to be a single mum, free from having to conform to a religion you don't believe in, or do you want to hold your family together but become Muslim. This is his fault too, I think men get excited about getting with foreign women (white men get excited about Latinas and East Asians) and they get carried away without thinking about whether or not you are truly compatible.

For what it's worth I'd wager heavily that Abrahamic religion is not going anywhere. In fact I think it will become increasingly dominant, and within 50 years, this country will be Christian, Muslim, or both.