Islam
Islam accepts marriages between Muslim men and non-Muslim women, with a provision allowing the marriage of a Muslim man to a Jewish or Christian woman. This is provided that the children from that marriage be raised as "believers," a common Islamic term for Muslims. The Qur'anic verses generally quoted are:
| “ | "Do not marry unbelieving women until they believe. A slave woman who believes is better than an unbelieving woman, even though she allures you.... Unbelievers beckon you to the Fire. But Allah beckons by His Grace to the garden of bliss and forgiveness. And He makes His signs clear to mankind, that they may receive admonition" (Qur'an 2:221). | ” |
On marriage to Jews and Christians ("People of the Book"):
| “ | "This day are all things good and pure made lawful to you.... Lawful to you in marriage are not only chaste women who are believers, but chaste women among the People of the Book, revealed before your time, when you give them their due dowers, and desire chastity not lewdness. If any one rejects faith, fruitless is his work, and in the Hereafter he will be in the ranks of those who have lost" (Qur'an 5:5). | ” |
Muslim women are expressly forbidden to marry a non-Muslim man, and conversion to another religion, considered to be apostasy, is, according to some interpretations of Sharia punishable by death:
| “ | "Nor marry your girls to unbelievers until they believe. A man slave who believes is better than an unbeliever...." (Qur'an 2:221) | ” |
Read more about this topic: Marital Conversion
Famous quotes containing the word islam:
“Awareness of the stars and their light pervades the Koran, which reflects the brightness of the heavenly bodies in many verses. The blossoming of mathematics and astronomy was a natural consequence of this awareness. Understanding the cosmos and the movements of the stars means understanding the marvels created by Allah. There would be no persecuted Galileo in Islam, because Islam, unlike Christianity, did not force people to believe in a “fixed” heaven.”
—Fatima Mernissi, Moroccan sociologist. Islam and Democracy, ch. 9, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. (Trans. 1992)
“The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)