Not sure what to do about my abusive Muslim boyfriend, should I leave?
As I have previouly posted a question on some one else post, i would just like to post my own and add to the previous post.
I have been with my boyfriend for 4 years now and at the beginning of the relashonship I was very keen to learn about islam, i even went out and bought my own koren and tried to read a chapter or a page everyday and I was very interested and loved to learn, but as the relashonship between me and my partner bacame violent and the fact that we loved each other very much but had to keep us being together a secret from his parents made me doubt the religion.
It actually made me feel quite bitter and upset towards his family, the fact they had judged me before they even knew me. I feel like a bad person because I hold anger towards them for the fact they decided to have there children in the UK send them to UK schools and have white friends yet when they fall in love with a white girl it is seen as shameful.
I find it all very difficult some times.
I wanted to learn but now I feel anger and upset, also im under the impression that I have to convert for us to marry and tell his family, but I've read that if you are a christain or jewish women you do not need to convert to marry. I am irish catholic so do I have to convert to marry?
I feel so confused sometimes, I dont want to leave this man I dont want to give up, the violence has stopped its been about 1 year and half. I feel he has changed. but I've put so much into this and I can't ever imagine being with some one else.
I dont want to give up on him on us for all his faults he is good, I dont see it as domestic abuse. I can't understand that it would be because he tells me he loves me. Am I just being stupid?
what should I do?
-l
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Hi I. May God grant you peace.
I wasn't sure if by your post, you are still being abused? It seems it is still occuring. If thats the case you know you are better than that. No one has the right to demean and abuse another human being in any way whether emotionally or physically.
If your boyfriend still abuses you in any way then getting out fast should be your priority. It doesnt make any difference that he tells you he loves you. Love is not a word or a feeling. It is an action and actions speak louder than words. If his actions dont match his words then his words obviously aren't true. The harsh truth is if he really loved you he would never have been violent towards you.
So please for your own safety do leave him and if you fear he will be violent keep your whereabouts secret.
Also please dont judge the religion based on his parents behavior. Its not fair. Think about it this way: I have met many people Christians, Muslims etc good and bad, nice and mean. If someone was cheated/scammed by a catholic, how would you feel if someone said that catholism promotes cheating/fraud? Or that catholics are frauds. This is just an example.
So please do not judge the religion of Islam on anything the Muslims do. Because unfortuantely so few of us really follow the Qur'an and Sunnah completely and we are all humans. My advice to you is you should never convert for a person. If you sincerely believe then you would convert whether or not that person is in your life. So look into Islam again, without this guy in your life. Read the Qur'an and ponder and enjoy it. The beautiful thing about the Qur'an is it has so many different levels. It speaks to you and people can interpret it differently because it has so many levels of meaning. It has a solution to every problem and it is so beautiful. It is not uncommon (infact it is common) for a person to clear their mind and their heart, open the Qur'an on a page and find a solution to the problem they need. Whether that solution is a change of attitude or mind or a means of comfort. It has happened to me before when I was having a difficult time at work. So read it with an open frame of mind and ask God to guide you to the truth and He will if you ask sincerely.
My point being is it provides a lot of peace. As for converting for marriage you actually dont have to. A Muslim man can marry a Muslim, Jewish or Christian woman in Islam. However, this usually causes a number of problems because of the differences. Either way I wouldnt advise you to marry someone who was previously abusive unless he has proven that he has completely changed. Deep down you know in your heart whether or not he has changed. From your post it seems he hasn't.
I pray that God grants you peace and guides you to the truth.
If you need more advice on this or want to provide an update please do so on here. This post is yours to comment on and we are here to help.
Sara
IslamicAnswers.com Editor
Although this seems a bit irrelevant, I wanted to post it anyway. This post is from a Christian man married to someone of another faith on why he believes inter faith marriages are very difficult: It is nice to hear things from a Christians perspective and will hopefully give you some food for thought:
"As a Catholic married to a Baptist women.
I do not recommend inter-faith marriages. PERIOD.
This may sound hypocritical, but it is not. It is born out of personal experience... the experience of countless others, and statistics.
With over 50% of all marriages ending in Divorce, and one of the Primary reasons cited is: Religious Differences -- Do you really want to start off your marriage with such a huge knock against it?
Divorce rates amongst Christians are actually exceeding those of the non-religious. Most of these are between Christians and non-Christians. (see above reason)
The bible warns that Marriage is hard, it is not for everyone, and specifically it warns being "unequally yoked" with a non-believer.
I have great respect for devout Muslims, but that does not mean I advocate either of them to marry outside of their faith.
There will be cultural differences in the way one views things. There will be cultural and social pressure from Family for the 2 of you to worship and celebrate TOGETHER.
There will be complications on how you raise your children. They will grow up with an unreconcilable conflict. That is: Mommy is good, Daddy is good, and yet NEITHER of them can agree on God.
There are only 3 possible outcomes to this, none of which are really great....
1) God must not exist, since even the smartest people...Mommy and Daddy, don't agree, it must all be made up or imaginary.
2) They will adopt a laize faire mentality and have a very vague sense of God, which is fairly close to simply having no faith at all.
3) They will end up with a very confused merger of both faiths, believing or agreeing with whomever is in the room or which ever person seems the strongest at the time.
Very rarely do they emerge from an inter-faith marriage with a strong faith.
Again, I base this on 2 Family members who married Jewish people. Catholics marrying non-believers. Christians marrying non-believers. etc.
I know this is not what you want to hear...but it needs to be said.
Lastly,
Within my own marraige, we don't have kids, but none the less.. our differences are enough that we have to ignore the topic of Religion as much as possible. The few times we have tried to discuss our religious differences in detail, it has ended up with one of us crying and both of us shouting. So much so.. that I've banned the topic of religion in our house. We can talk about God in a general sense as in "I think that was God's plan" or "I think prayer was answered by God" etc. But nothing specific.
You see, within a Marriage.. the 2 are to become one. As the marriage gets older.. the 2 want to share more and more of their life with the other person. However, their differences in Religion means that there is a part of them that they can NEVER fully share with the other person... that their spouse will never truly understand and appreciate.
This means that there is a divide between them...they can't truly become ONE.
The BEST they can do is respect and ignore the differences.
That sometimes doesn't work and creates conflict and separation.
Add in pressure from 1 or both sides of the family and you have a recipe for divorce."
Salaams,
Dear sister, for me the simplest way to start is to answer your questions. Yes, Muslim men can marry Christians/Jews. Conversion is not required before a marriage to these ladies, and as it happens it wouldn't be required after. If a lady wants to convert, she should do it because she really sees Islam as the true Guidance from God and not because a man is pressuring her to or making it a condition for a relationship. It is possible to have a meaningful marriage with a Muslim husband and Christian/Jewish woman, if both are respectful of each other's beliefs and love each other for reasons beyond their differences.
With you sister, the issue really isn't religion, though. It really is about the abuse. Even if it's hard for you to recognize or believe, a man who is physically harming a lady on any level, whether only a little or quite a lot, IS an abusive man. Such a relationship IS an abusive relationship. So while you say that he has changed and that it hasn't happened in a year and a half, the fact that it has happened before means it possibly could happen again. For you to take the chance of moving forward with him and that being the case, it is a very, very big risk on your part. The fact that he tells you he loves you doesn't change that wager, because I can assure you that EVERY abusive man has claimed to love the woman he's hurting. It's actually a vital part of the cycle of abuse, where a man will hurt the girl, come back to her and assure her he loves her and he's sorry and will never do it again, and then for a time everything seems normal until the next time he hurts her. These patterns have been shown to happen over and over and over and get more intense and dangerous with time. 99.9% of the time, there are only three things that stop that pattern: 1. The man gets put in jail and can't access the woman to harm her; 2. The woman leaves the man and he is unable to find her to harm her; 3. The woman is killed by the violence. Only in a fraction of cases, and I mean a very, very small amount of cases, can an abusive man change his habits and truly become a safe person. Those that are able to are HIGHLY motivated and have to make a lot of sacrifices and work on their personal issues to achieve it, and even then work hard to maintain their progress so they don't "relapse".
So ask yourself this: while at this time it seems that he is all you want and you can't imagine life without him, do you think you would still look at it this way if you knew for a fact that ten years from now you will have sustained broken bones, lost teeth, perhaps even miscarriages, and feared for your very life because of the abuse you will possibly (dare I say, likely) experience by staying with this person What if you had to watch your children being smacked, pushed, bruised and bloodied by him? I can assure you, if this did happen to you, your future self would give ANYTHING to go back in time and try to stop you from making such a mistake.
Well we cannot time travel, so the best I can do is ring the warning to you here and now: do not continue this relationship, it's just much, much too risky for you and there are much better propositions out there. The religious factors only add to the burden of proof that you are better off cutting this relationship off. Please don't make the mistake of proving me right the hard way, when it will be much harder to make the choice you can easily make now.
-Amy
IslamicAnswers.com Editor
I'm in a relationship with an abusive Muslim as well. I know how hard it is to let go, seeing as I haven't yet. I would advise you to leave. He won't change, just like I know my Muhammad won't. It is very heartbreaking.
I was in a relation with a Muslim guy over 2 years. At first time he was charming, very charming. He was very polite and respected me. After a 7 months he started to call me bitch every time I wanted to say my opinion, or even when I speak with a male friend. He tried to hit me and hit the wall instead (because he was drunk) he got injured so bad I needed to take him to the hospital and got surgery after that I wanted to leave him but he claimed he was sorry and during surgery he can just think about how wrong he was. MISTAKE! Every time we had a fight after that he blamed on me about the whole drama claiming I could not handle he was flirting with other girls, when the only thing I had was stand up and get out of the bar to not see him doing it.
It was awful, I really loved him and it has been one of the hardest decision of my life. I still miss him, he really made me laugh like no one else did. But, the price was to high I could not even be myself around him. Always I needed to follow his orders and thinking. BTW I'm a non Muslim.
Once during a discussion, he said to me exactly this words "The woman needs to be submissive and follow what the man said". At that moment I understood I needed to leave him, because I'm the kind of woman that like to say what do she thinks. He hated. He mentioned that I always took wrong decision so he needed to take it for me, he was controlling my money and expenses even I was working and he was an student, I could not have friends because everyone was a bad influence on me, he did not like to speak with my family BUT he could speak with her mom for hours and I could not say absolutely nothing cause "the love he has for his mom has not comparison", which I think is right but then why did he forbid me to speak with mine? He was very kind, lovely and such a good person just when I followed what he wants and didn't say nothing against him otherwise he would called me a bitch. Every time we have a fight he went out and club, after that he always said to me he hooked up with someone else but it didn't mean nothing, he did it because he was too angry and he needed to find peace.
I never understood how a person can say he loves you so much but hurt you every day like this, and PLUS blame you for every thing. Because in his eyes, I was the guilty of all those mentioned things. JUST because I said what I was thinking. He wanted me to convert Muslim, which at the beginning I was truly interested but after he started to be abusive and claimed it was the right path I'm sorry to say it but I lost all the faith in ISLAM. I always defended him towards every thing, even my family. Once, he got angry because I said to my mom he abused me, he got so angry he slapped me. And he said I made him lose respect in front of my parents and I should never under any situation said to no one our problems.
At the end, I ran away to my country (we were leaving both overseas) he claimed to miss me so much, even he proposed and he did every thing to make me come back, even offered himself to handle all my expenses to come back, since my parents didn't want to help me of course. I think about this every day and that's why I found this page. He said to me I needed to convert to Islam if I want him to be with me, I really tried and studied about it but the only thing that came to my mind was the hitting and abuse. He always said when you will be a Muslim you will understand the duties of a wife ( I don't understand if he was thinking I will understand why is he abusing me). He always said I was very disobeying girl and not polite. I always respected he was a Muslim even I put pressure on him to practice his religion.
After all, I really loved him but I could not stand and being abused. Every day I deal with the decision I took about leaving him and sometimes I feel regret but then I tried to remember where would I be if I stayed with him so far away from my family.
Please leave that guy they will never change. I LEFT my Muslim boyfriend ONCE and came back to my country than he even cried and I was so stupid to believe on him and I took a 23 hours flight just to be with him. SURPRISE, when he got the opportunity, he did it again and BLAME on me.