Were Your Parents Really Muslim?

Kerry: You raised a couple questions for me in your parents' testimony. The one is, what did your parents really believe beforehand? Were they full-out devout Muslim believers, or were they kind of something on the side for them, just a cultural thing? And your dad's response to your mom's faith, in my experience, isn't typical in this context.

Samir: Yeah, those are great questions. My parents, I think you could say a couple of different things about my parents' faith. First, I think, to a large extent, religion and culture are so tied together that it's hard to see where one begins and the other ends. And so because of that, I think it would be hard to say, are they very devout Muslims? Are they normal Muslims? They don't care about religion? I think, in that kind of spectrum, they were probably very average. My mom used to fast every single year; my dad used to do his prayers. But they were not fanatical or extreme in any sense.

On the other hand, when it comes to my dad's side of the family, they are much more conservative and religious than my mom's side of the family. My mom's side of the family, people are much more educated; my grandma was highly educated, used to work for the government, and their family believed men and women should be educated. My dad's side of the family, on the other hand, Kerry, when I look at my cousins even now, as a 6-year-old even, they have a complete head covering when they leave the house, and so they are much more traditional both in terms of culture and in terms of their religious beliefs.

Kerry: And then your dad's response to your mom's faith, he just thought this is a phase, this will go away. He wasn't furious that she might be Christian. I've just heard so many stories of things where one spouse converts out of Islam; it can just be a huge, I'll just say a huge issue in the family, I'll put it that way.

Samir: I agree, absolutely. I think there are situations, and we have heard of situations where there are issues of divorce, there is issues of threats. Not long ago, two years ago, we had a family where the husband actually got married to a second wife and threatened the wife, and she wasn't even a Christian at that point. She had just taken a Bible, and she had begun reading the Bible, and the husband had seen that and said if you say anything or if you disagree with what I do, I will take you to the government and say that you have been reading the Bible. And there are, of course, times where husbands, where wives are actually killed or family members are killed because they changed their religion.

The situation was a little bit different with my parents. One part that I did not share earlier was when my mom, when my grandpa from my mom's side of the family was killed, my mom as a five-year-old orphan was sent to Russia. And same thing with my dad; Russia was in USSR at that time, was in Afghanistan, and they used to send young children to the USSR to train them to become communist leaders and send them back into the country. And my parents were a part of that program. So they grew up in a way culturally, despite the fact that USSR was atheistic, I think a lot of they were culturally much more western and open in some ways. So because my parents grew up as classmates, they genuinely loved each other, my dad genuinely loved my mom and wanted the best for her. Except when you live lies, when you believe lies about yourself, about society, about your spouse, both husband and wife, I think you can easily make life a living hell for your partner. And so despite all of that abuse, my dad, when he saw my mom, he loved her, and when he saw a smile on her face, he didn't want to take that away.