A
few months ago, I received an email from a young woman. She had read one
of my articles about my daughter who married a Muslim and converted. Not at
all sympathetic of my feelings or problems, she informed me I was hard-hearted
and narrow-minded. She also questioned whether my conversations with my grandchildren were realistic.
In the first response, I felt it necessary to assure her of the accuracy of my report. Answering those comments took too long, so I wrote another to enable her to understand those she considered her enemies. That included her parents as well as her in-laws, in addition to myself. Though my part is insignificant.
The sender had also married a Muslim. She’d experienced what
my ESL Training classes referred to as “culture bumps” from her interactions
with her in-laws. She’d also told her parents to just deal with it. In
her defense, I have to admit that she was receiving pressure from both sides.
All she really wanted to do was love her husband and be left alone. Apparently
the religious issues were not too important to either of them. She wanted
everyone to get over their zeal and learn to be more tolerant. That seems to be
a key word these days, and sometimes we overuse it.
It
is a common sentiment, a supposed solution to learning how to get along. At the
end of the letter, she told me I needed to stop reading Billy Graham. That made
me laugh, but it was not at her. It was late and I wrote her a response that
was not as gracious as I would have preferred. The longer piece I
didn’t type up, meaning to follow through the next day or so. I did not and
then I misplaced the notebook it was in. Since this is merely an introduction to the problem, I will also post the other, a more complete reply.
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