My son has joined islam

[Alceste]

BTW, Shredmeister, in urging you to lighten up I am considering my own relationship with my father, who also attempted to exert his will using arbitrary and unfair punishments for offenses that were dubious to say the least. He did this long past the time I considered myself capable of managing my own affairs without his permission. Consider this: I feel no love for the man, and do not seek or value his opinion. If he didn't live in my mother's house I wouldn't talk to him at all - or even think of him, except in terms of overcoming the psychological damage his irrational and authoritarian approach to parenting inflicted on me. Just something to consider: perhaps it is time to start treating your son as your equal and your friend. You don't have much time.

 

[Breathe]

Umm.....he was never cut off from the family until AFTER this. Thus, he had no reason to hide any of this. There is a great possibility that i would be less infuriated had he discussed it with me form the beginning.

Glad to hear that! However, you were a teenager once, you know how irrational they can be.

See, my son is of the mindset that he would rather ask forgiveness than permission.

Permission? For joining a new religion..? Or have I misunderstood you here?

Having never once prior to this development said a negative word about islam to him, he had no reason to keep this from me, unless he felt somehow guilty or ashamed.

Or scared how you would react. He could easily feel guilty or ashamed, or something: because now he is in a different religion to you. Some people feel ashamed they may be letting their parents' down by joining a new religion.

In fact, I was among many who decried the bush administration for its own acts of terrorism against a nation that was doing NOTHING to us.

Glad to hear it.

The pattern with this young man is one of doing things without telling anyone until it becomes a done deal.

More than anything, the deceit involved angers me.

I can understand your frustration, and deceit is angering indeed. However, you need to keep a cool head with kids as you know. Some people don't tell someone when they join a new religion if they join them constantly, because they won't be taken seriously. Maybe he feels like that?

Either way, I wouldn't worry too much about him being a Muslim and not telling you: for one it's probably a phase, for a second it may get him out of his habit of lying. There is every chance that he won't stay in that path, when his interest in this girl dies down.

For now, don't give him any attention over his choice in religion. It will just be attention.

This has never happened before, so he would have no reason to suspect this.

But he still feared your reaction, probably: he may have feared you losing your temper or hating him because of it.

And let me say that the imam would likely be given pause if he new the nature of things my son has done. He may want no involvement with my son. A rational person would not.

I would suggest you bring these things up with the imam when you go and see him, then. Who knows, they may help him stop them before he decides Islam is too difficult and leaves.

 

[Shredmeister]

BTW, Shredmeister, in urging you to lighten up I am considering my own relationship with my father, who also attempted to exert his will using arbitrary and unfair punishments for offenses that were dubious to say the least. He did this long past the time I considered myself capable of managing my own affairs without his permission. Consider this: I feel no love for the man, and do not seek or value his opinion. If he didn't live in my mother's house I wouldn't talk to him at all - or even think of him, except in terms of overcoming the psychological damage his irrational and authoritarian approach to parenting inflicted on me. Just something to consider: perhaps it is time to start treating your son as your equal and your friend. You don't have much time.

Thank you for your input.

Truth be known, I have been perhaps TOO MUCH of a friend to him. There were times i should have stepped in where I didn't. His mother(we're long since divorced) pretty much lets him do as he pleases and go where he pleases with whom he pleases. It is my opinion that she was fairly tired of parenting 2-3 years ago.

This is the first time I have reacted so strongly to anything he has done, apart from his arrest. And in that case, the courts were reacting plenty. He knew no one on EARTH approved of his actions, and the courts scared him in line. They are not involved this time, naturally.

 

[Shredmeister]

Glad to hear that! However, you were a teenager once, you know how irrational they can be.


Permission? For joining a new religion..? Or have I misunderstood you here?


Or scared how you would react. He could easily feel guilty or ashamed, or something: because now he is in a different religion to you. Some people feel ashamed they may be letting their parents' down by joining a new religion.


Glad to hear it.


I can understand your frustration, and deceit is angering indeed. However, you need to keep a cool head with kids as you know. Some people don't tell someone when they join a new religion if they join them constantly, because they won't be taken seriously. Maybe he feels like that?

Either way, I wouldn't worry too much about him being a Muslim and not telling you: for one it's probably a phase, for a second it may get him out of his habit of lying. There is every chance that he won't stay in that path, when his interest in this girl dies down.

For now, don't give him any attention over his choice in religion. It will just be attention.


But he still feared your reaction, probably: he may have feared you losing your temper or hating him because of it.


I would suggest you bring these things up with the imam when you go and see him, then. Who knows, they may help him stop them before he decides Islam is too difficult and leaves.

Thank you for communicating respectfully. I am taking all you have said to heart.

 

[The Khan]

Thanks for the info. I think of Hezbollah and Hamas as political parties rather than being specifically associated with Islam. Suffice it to say, it is impossible for me as a woman not to associate the Taliban's "nominal" religion with extreme violence. In your view, are they doing it wrong?

Taliban's ideology is officially Deobandi mixed with traditional Pashtunwali (the code of ethnic Pashtuns - bit like a mix between a Knight's chivalry and Japanese bushido). They also have strict interpretations of Shari'a, but not necessarily Wahaabi. The Taliban accepted some features associated with Wahaabism due to influence from the al-Qaeda volunteers, such as systematic discrimination against the Hazara Shi'a minority, but they rejected Wahaabism otherwise. For example, the Taliban refused to destroy the shrines of Islamic saints. The main reason behind Abdul Wahaab's movement was that saint veneration is a form of polytheism, and that Muslims were following a corrupt form of Islam.

 

[idea]

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference...

sometimes if you love someone, you have to let them go...

 

[Breathe]

I am taking all you have said to heart.

I'm glad to hear that, that's the best thing we could learn.

 

[Sunstone]

I think Shredmeister is making the problem a whole lot worse than it needs to be.

 

[sandy whitelinger]

Wow, a whole thread of free Dr. Laura advice. Good luck my man

 

[Shredmeister]

I think Shredmeister is making the problem a whole lot worse than it needs to be.

But I am not making it as bad as I could

 

[Shredmeister]

Wow, a whole thread of free Dr. Laura advice. Good luck my man

Word.:yes: