I just landed in Iowa for the first time
and now I'm going to my first ever Sunday Mass. I'm definitely the only
Muslim in here, but I'm here with someone who's had a deep connection with Islam for longer than I've been alive. This is Laura and in 1985, she fell in
love with a Muslim immigrant from Egypt, named Kamal. They spontaneously got
married that fall, with an improvised cake and everything. Then got married
again that winter, this time by a priest. It began more than three decades of an
interfaith union that many people still argue is impossible. What happens when a devout Muslim and devout Christian commit to each other to build something
new, without giving up who they are? Laura and Kamal invited me here to small-town Iowa, where they raised three boys, to show me how they did it. My name is Aymann Ismail. To grow up Muslim means to grow up being feared. So I'm traveling
the country to find out for myself if there's really any reason to be afraid
of American Muslims. To hear many commentators tell it, the boom in the Muslim American population is a time bomb. We're just too different. "Western
civilization is in a war." But Muslims are now more than 1% of the US population,
and we're growing fast. And we're also mixing - and to some people, this seems
like a big problem. "Especially when you're dealing with Middle Eastern religions versus Western religions, it's very very difficult. You're dealing with views on
women..." And it's not just on the news. "If Allah is not the basis of that emotion
then in fact it is not pure love." "A disbelieving woman, she's not better than a believing woman..." But the reality is... these marriages are already happening all over
the country and those numbers will likely trend upward. According to the Pew
Research Center, the American Muslim population is becoming both younger and
more native-born, both of whom are more likely to marry non-Muslims. Right now,
13% of us are married to or cohabitating with a non-Muslim, and that means more
Laura and Kamals. Laura and Kamal run this restaurant together.
It's called Relish. It looks like a house because... well, it is a house. They live
upstairs. Every night after feeding what seems to be the whole town, Laura and Kamal hunkered down with the staff for a family-style dinner. Here, they told me
how within weeks of meeting each other they were married. Laura and I were
visiting my sister in Minnesota. My parents were there, my brother-in-law... At
literally three o'clock in the morning we're talking - "Are you gonna marry this
woman?" I said, "Yeah." "When?" "Whenever." He said, "Why don't we marry you tomorrow?" and she said "as long as we can have another ceremony with a priest and my family
present, I'm cool with that." So we got married. I was wearing somebody else's skirt, somebody else's blouse.. because I think I'd only brought jeans... The next time we visit her family, her father doesn't even
bother looking at me. He looks at her and says "Okay Laura, Kamal is married
now - what about you?" And it wasn't totally smooth-sailing. We knew a lot of priests
and I was like "no problem getting one of them to marry us... somehow, my God.. " Was it a problem? "Nightmare!" Oh yeah... family priest like for years and years it was like no and I'm kind of
like... I mean he didn't think about it! One of the priests that had been at the
seminary when my brothers were there did agree to do it, but I didn't think that
should be a problem but I was really naive. They're are fascinating couple, partly
because neither of them felt the need to convert to make the relationship work.
The next morning I went to the mass with Laura, where she goes every Sunday five
minutes to nine - no earlier, no later. And later that day, I prayed with Kamal.. with Laura nearby praying on her rosaries. To talk more we headed above the restaurant. This place is amazing! There's Christian iconography next to
Islamic calligraphy. A Quran next to a Bible. And that led to a story about
how they raised their kids. We discussed it, negotiated it, basically. For me, if we ever would have kids they needed to be Muslim. I really just
wanted my kids to grow up with a sense of God, higher power or whatever. I think
that was really important to me, more so than that they be Catholic or even
Christian. I was like, okay well, that means he gets to do all the religion
talks. I don't have to worry about that, and then I don't have to go through
that whole --- oh why don't why don't you pray with us?
Especially with the oldest, when she would remind him of prayer time when I was
away -- "You're not Muslim you can't tell me what to do!"
So that's kind of why I sit in the back and say a couple decades of the Rosary
or something. There's that thing in Catholic families - you know - the
family that prays together stays together.
I was like, okay well I can pray with them. Even when they decided to raise
their kids this way, Laura never felt the need to convert. You know - that was
never a question that I asked him, it was a question I asked myself. And it's never
a question I asked her. I mean people ask me.. Other people asked me -
and I said, "what's it got to do with me?" Why do I need to convert to
worship a different way? The Catholic Church has that culture of patriarchy,
and Islam as its practiced often has that too, you know. It's not frying pan/fire
- it's kind of like frying pan/different frying pan, you know? Did you feel like you guys had to make a
lot of compromises to make it work? I don't think it was compromises with
religion, actually. We didn't compromise our faith. I don't really believe we have
problems because of religion. We have problems because of marriage.. which is inherited to being married, we have been
working together for the last 20 years... We're in each other's faces constantly.
And we get on each other's nerves. After, I wanted to talk to the couple apart -to really learn how they navigated their early years, especially in small-town
Iowa. I didn't know anything about Islam He gave me the Quran and I think I read
it all, although I don't know how much of it I retained and that when I was like okay, well, there's nothing in here that I have a problem with. I hadn't read the Bible
through from cover to cover, so I kind of was like there might be more in here that's a problem for you... there might be more in here that's a problem for me... Because you grew up in a world before Islam became such a household issue. I can't imagine
what that would have been like if I'd been bombarded with the stuff that
people that are growing up now are bombarded with. "Do you think Islam is at
war with the West?" "I think Islam hates us." It's painful for
me to watch, it's hurtful for me to see, it's like - that's not my kids, that's not
my husband, that's not how I see them practice their religion. I wondered what
it must have been like to move to Iowa. There just aren't a lot of
here. How could that not have had an impact on Kamal, especially with
pervasive stereotypes about how Muslim men treat women? He said that it just
hasn't come up in his personal life, but there have been some teachable moments
around town. Even though I'm not a professor, I just love to teach. You know,
when people find out I'm a Muslim, "is that why you have a beard?" No dude, I hate shaving. There's nothing to do with - you know - so I never really
broadcasted my religion, but I've never tried to keep it a secret. I mean I
follow the saying "don't walk meekly and don't walk proudly, walk comfortably."
After spending two days with them, I was still curious: Did they ever wonder, even
a little bit, if things would have been easier if she just married a Catholic
and he married a Muslim? Some of it is just that you know the man-woman thing
I'm like and some of it is how you were raised. I have a sister who's married to
another woman, I'm like "would it be easier if I fell in love with a woman?" I
mean like at least she'd get me sometimes you know? Ironically enough,
when I contemplate that and I look around with with my married Muslim
friends, I'm grateful for all I have, because I think we'll have more
religious disagreements. Two people are bringing in their own cultural baggage.
Yes, I can't tell you what would have been but from what seeing - from seeing
what's around me, I think I'm just right. As unions like Lauren and Kamal's become more common, the makeup of Muslims in America will change. To me, they show how that's nothing to fear. They raised kids. run a bustling restaurant and still
preserve their faith! And despite the fear both in and outside the Muslim
community, Lauren and Kamal show that it can not only work, but last.
