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Worried for my relativeReader comment on item: Advice to Non-Muslim Women against Marrying Muslim Men Submitted by Marcus (United States), Oct 30, 2014 at 12:53 Greetings all, Ok, I generally avoid forums but I figured that, due to the emotional nature of this situation, I would come to a forum and share what is going on, to the best of my ablity, in my relatives life. I will open by saying that I hope, fervently, that I am wrong but (as I am here) I probably correct. That being said, here is the tale. A litte backgrund. My relative is an older woman and a little overweight (not obese and certainly in good heath but certainly overweight). Se has a huge self-esteem problem no matter how much I or her other relatives try to boost that esteem with positive feedback. She was, about a three years ago, taken in by a variation of the classic "Nigerian" scam by a man on the internet whom she thought she loved. (yes we all tried to warn her then too). I mention this past incident and her self-esteem/stats only to provide context for my, and the rest of the family's, concerns. This past incident caused her to lose her entire savings up to that point (she has always lived around the poverty line) and served to damage her self-esteem even more. About a year ago she started talking to a co-worker who was from Morocco and came to the US on a fiance visa some years ago. He is no longer with the woman he married when he entered the country but with another older woman (I do not know the age of his previous wife as h is not open with that information). He recently became a full citizen and is still living with his older girlfriend but openly talks about leaving her and living in a larger city with a bigger Moroccan population. (he has long since stopped practicing Islam and is quite open about not praying or attending Mosk). It is from this man that my relative started talking to a man living in Morocco. Within a couple of weeks my relative was discussing marriage to a man more than ten years younger than her but believed it was genuine because, unlike the Nigerian incident, she met him through a person she works with. Wthin a few months of knowing this man she poached part of the savings she had been rebuilding and flew to Morocco to "meet him and see if it was genuine.". She describes her time in Morocco in a dreamy context and all of my relatives and I were happy that she had such a good time and seemed to like him so much. We were very hopeful for her but secretly we worry as the situation moved way too fast for us to truly be comfortable, especially with everything we have sat through with her. Over the next few months she shared tidbits of the relationship with us,we try not to pry as she can get quite mad if she feels someone is trying to run her life, whatever the intention. First she said he was ok with not having children of his own but later has backtracked to say he wants children and she has looked at adoption and even attempted to volunteer him as a sort of live-in nanny/father for children in the family (this of course drew rage from just about everyone in the family because, like any parents, we like to parent an raise our own children). This was not the first red flag, obviously, but was a major alert that we might need to get more directly involved because now she appears to be promising our resources and lives to her fiance. She is very proud that he has told her he is virgin (already deeply into middle age) saving himself for marriage and that they hadnot slept together on her visit. I understand that it is both illegal and against Islam so I took that as a good sign of his intent as I also took his refusal to ask for money to be another good sign even though se has, over the last year, become openly obsessed with amassing a large sum of money to "bring him here and pay for his paperwork" etc etc etc. I know that there are a lot of con artists out there who will wait for years before springing a trap. Of course I hve to accept that I might just be paranoid. There have been some issues she has had getting him the paperwork to finalize his fiance visa which has her agitated beyond belief and she has broken down two or three times over "not leaving him there". I suggested that if she did not want to weather the waits she could aways go to Morocco and marry him there and then come back to the US hat way but would have to live with him and his family if she did that. She proposed the idea and initially told us that he had said that was "fine" but now doesn't even entertain the notion and is once more rushing around trying to work her job and calling various agencies to figure out why it is taking so long. Amid all of this her co-worker, the recent citizen, has been coaching her on what to say and do at almost every juncture from interviews to paperwork and what a wait time is "supposed to be". She has been mostly closed mouth about her conversations with this man and details from their chats are no shared with us. I suspect that is because the last two times she was involved in scandals we openly warned her and we may have been a bit harsh after the last scam when I personally told her she had been foolish and she "needed to get off the cross because someone needed the wood." (I was honestly attempting tough love as had seen her hurt so many times). What I do know is following: 1. He has almost never smiled in any pictures, even the ones with her. (I am told this is actually a good sign, as odd as that sounds, because it is supposedly part of their culture.) 2. He has never, as she constantly reminds everyone, likely because of the Nigeran, aske her for a dime of money. (I have mixed opinions on this because on the one hand he is doing the 'manly' thing but on the other he could be biding his time so this one is inconclusive to me.) 3. On her trip, although she couldn't understand anyone, she gushes over how much his family loves her and how she "cooked with his mother" and they wanted her to stay etc. Coming from an old fashioned background I personally think she is reading into the family meeting aspect than she should but there is always a chance it could carry a lot of weight. 4. She showed a lot of concern when he was going in for his first visa hearing because the interviewer was american and just would not understand how he is and that he doesnt show emotion outwardly, he just feels it insid,e and worried that he would be seen as ingenuine. 5 She and he rehearsed online for a week before he had his interview to make sure, as he and his friend who introduced them said "got it right." Many things just do not add up and I admit Im suspicious by nature. I also do not wish to be a hypocrite because Imet my own wife online. (although we are both american and had been friends for many years before we became romantically involved). I worry for my relative and, in spite of the titanic amount of research I have done over the last few months, I am seeking the experiential knowledge of others for more input and to help me make sense of the data I do have. More details are available upon request of course. Am I worrying over nothing? Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". Reader comments (21923) on this item
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