Why am I writing this blog? The reasons are many, read on and I hope you'll be intrigued enough to want to read more and comment.
I'm a British Pakistani Muslim woman and I was disowned by my family when they found out about my having a white boyfriend, and later marrying him.
As any interaction with men is forbidden in my family 'disowned' refers to them finding out about my boyfriend, their reaction to it and the emotional blackmail which it involved. This was the same when we eventually married and was very difficult to cope with, I could never have anticipated how hard it'd be.
Now, after splitting up with my husband, i'm back in contact with my parents. This hasn't been the successful reunion i'd imagined either. Now i'm single, they see it as an opportunity to force me to be "Good", to use one of their terms and get me in line with their principles.
That's the main focus. When I was going though this I really could have done with knowing there were other women like myself going through a similar situation, it would have helped me enormously. So I hope the blog might make some readers think, "that's exactly what happened to me, that's exactly how I feel" or make others think, "how can this happen to someone in Britain, in this day and age?"
There have been lots of effects from my disengagement from my parents. I was a successful research scientist but changed careers as I couldn't cope with the intellectual demands of a research job on top of everything. I developed chronic back pain and eventually my marriage broke up, the reasons for which were many but my family situation was a significant factor. Through therapy i've come to terms with it and try and apply these techniques when I interact with my family now, but it's still hard.
As there's so much talk around what it means to be British Muslim in the media these days, it's been forgotten what kind of background we come from and that's an important factor in understanding what drives extremists, as well as moderate Muslims like myself. I can only give a snapshot of my family and community, but I think it's relevant in the current debate around terrorism. It'll show what it's like living between two cultures which are at extreme opposite ends of one another and how these affect basic everyday life, before one even gets into a debate about suicide bombers.
For some light relief there's a section on dating. I'm single and dating after eight years and it's strange! There will be my stories and those of my friends, but from an British Asian perspective, which doesn't get covered in all the 'sex and the city' type columns in newspapers and magazines. Reactions of family to potential boyfriends will be covered, as well as our own influences from our upbringing in how we date and the type of men we choose.
There are also a lot of other topics covered to provide more understanding of Pakistani culture in Britain - our customs and rituals, our belief system, how we practice our religion. This is discussed in the context of marriage, divorce, education and growing up.
I will eventually include stories from people of other minority communities as well, to see how they compare.
I hope you enjoy reading and feel free to leave comments. If you have any experiences or stories which are relevant, please mail them to me, regardless of your ethnicity, to asianidentity@hotmail.com.
Enjoy!
Identity
