Blog: Interfaith Marriage & Relationships - GW

Today on BBC News we are focusing on the multi-faith society with the issues of interfaith marriages and relationships.

The first issue with interfaith relationships and marriages is that many couples either break-up or end up just staying as a couple with no legal marriage rights. The reason for this is because their religions are stopping them from being able to progress in their relationship as there would be many complications in a marriage. One of the complications may be that because of their faith it may mean that they are only allowed to marry someone who has the same faith as them or the fact that there are two different faiths may mean that they can not be married as they each have different rights and regulations that may hold them back.

Another issue with interfaith marriages and relationships is that it many lead to them having lots of arguments between themselves and between their families. This is because the fact that the couple with two different religions are together may annoy the families and if that annoys them then any proposal of a marriage may leave them in uproar. The families may decide to keep the couple apart and tell them that they have to marry someone of their own faith otherwise they don’t want anything to do with them and their community may shun them. Due to this it may progress into one partner asking the other if they will convert to their religion. This can have major issues as many people think that it is a great prejudice and discrimination against their faith and may suggest that their religion is superior. Also it wouldn’t be far for the partner to choose to leave their faith and have to choose over their families or their beloved.

Our final issue is that after interfaith couples marry they tend to find that they have to face tough decisions and problems about the way that they choose to bring up their children. Most religions encourage parents to bring up their children into their religion and consequently not allow them to learn of other religions.

This is an issue because the parents will have to choose between which faith they will choose to bring up their child in. Also most religions teach that only those who follow their religion will have a good life after death and so the parents may worry that they wont see their children in the after life if they don’t bring them up in their religion and so makes them have a difficult decision that may lead to arguments and in some cases divorce. Finally nowadays people care a lot about what society thinks of them and so may the interfaith couple may have to deal with social and peer pressures which may make them put pressure on their children to remain in either one parents or the others faith and stick to their traditions etc. This can be an issue for them because it is essentially making the child choose between their parents and that isn’t far for a child to have to do that.

 

G.W.