Me and my wider family come from a traditionalistic South Asian background of Islamic faith, and whilst I’ve had conflicts with my own journey of religion and aspects of our culture, they are really conservative in their views and tend not to be tolerant, especially when it comes to interfaith or interracial dating. They’re narrow minded in their views which always grated on me, but they’d only express that judgment within the family and not publicly. A few years back my mom and dad grew apart and got divorced, and we’ve always been close. So I could see it was tough for her watching him being able to openly date others of different backgrounds. She’s always been someone who was open minded and not judgy, and I felt she was way too open minded for our family but she lived a life that restrained her. I’ve always noticed that she’s more relaxed and herself and less on edge around non Muslim guys, but whenever I’ve jokingly teased about that or seriously tried to ask if that’s what she wants, she tells me to forget it and doesn’t talk about it.

Even though we’re close, I’ve never been open about it with her (and I’m worried to) but I’ve always felt that I have more in common with western guys who aren’t religious especially because they‘ve never been judgmental with me and didn’t feel a need to push that lifestyle on me just as I never would with them. My own bad experiences with Muslim guys put me off, and naturally I’ve always been attracted to the complete opposite, but I’ve never took any action on it out of fear. I’d be really happy if she found someone like that for herself, and equally it’d give me some room to also do that?

I feel like we’re both in similar positions but for different reasons, but I wish we could speak about it together so I could get some advice on how to navigate dating guys who aren’t Muslim and if they’d even want that because our family can be really strict? Not against a message about this, advice is welcome.