Submitted by M Tovey (United States), Sep 28, 2021 at 12:08
The tone of your response reveals certain perceptions of wanting certainty in the process of deciding if this is the best you can achieve in a search for happiness. Introducing questions of variant religious practices has historically caused frictions and uncertainties, going back millennia. More recently, the differences between Islam and Christianity are based upon violent rejections of perceptions of which religion is superior; there is a reason for that; it is based in hatred. But let us set that cause of action aside for the moment; what do you seek?
Marriage in human terms is imperfect at best; more often, it is tumultuous at many times and the attraction to love is sometimes lost in the vanities of individual competing desires. It requires a search for eventual peace in the ability to forgive and return to a respect one for another. That determination for living peacefully with one another is continually challenged and those times of peace sometimes are too few in between the moments of passion. Passion does not replace the peace. There is no satisfaction, as the song says.
But let us now return to the question that is the point of the topic: how does religion, whether Islamic or Christian, define a relationship. The answer is: what do they teach about marriage? After more than 40 years of my own journey, this is what is observed. A person that lives a Muslim way of life cannot answer to Biblically determined truth: it is impossible because they are taught to distrust it, not prove its truth.
For someone who has not been taught the correct translation to Biblical truth, a Muslim, for example, does not recognize the relationship one must have with Yeshua, Jesus, Issa, in order to know the truth, it is impossible; therefore that person cannot be expected to tell the truth about what he /she does not believe.
Conversely, a person that does believe in Yeshua will willingly tell of the salvation in truth, which Islam denies. There will always be that division and never with the two meet; it is likely why he would prefer you change, and not him.
Next, look at historically how each religion treats the marriage partner: Islam has the Quran saying that the male/female relationship is not equal, that dominance for the male is compulsory; one need only look at the inequities in Muslim law countries, now made extremely open to the world in Afghanistan. Women are not allowed to express any feelings contradictory to the male.
In the Christian context, while it is revealed here, again, that Christianity does not guarantee perfect marriages since neither partner is sinless nor perfect, the call for love and respect is a response to the faith as spoken of by the believer's Savior. In any religious environment, how the partners treat each other is a witness to the intent of making each other content, let alone happy, and is what this observers hopes is achieved.
Now, ultimately, while it is obvious that understanding these concepts can be difficult by themselves, and trying to get that understanding when English is as difficult as it is to make a point, hopefully, it has been helpful to gain a common understanding that what he seeks and what you desire are already at risk since he must bring your desires under his control in order to be true to himself, and not you. That is the insincerity.
That is why he must 'break' your Christian background by asserting his false knowledge about the Word of Christ; for he already knows this is what he must do in order to have a Muslim relationship with you.
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