Changing religion for love

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962. And I'm Max Kennedy, the nephew of U.S.

0:45President John F. Kennedy. We explore what was a terrifying moment in history. The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How close the world came to nuclear war. And what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:12Hello, I'm Rahul Tandon. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. This time in BBC OS Conversations, we're bringing people together to share their experiences of religion and romance. US Vice President J.D. Vance spoke recently about his interfaith marriage. He's a Christian and his wife Usha is a Hindu. They've raised their children as Christians and the vice president said he hopes that his wife will one day convert. His comments have proved controversial, but it got us thinking. How difficult is it to stay together when you have different religious faiths? Later, we'll hear from families where partners have converted to Islam and Judaism for love.

2:00First, though, we're going to meet two couples who, like the Vances, have interfaith marriages. My colleague Luke Jones spoke to Reza, who's a Muslim. He's married to Jessica, a Christian there in Los Angeles. And Hallie is a Christian married to Sukkotu. He's Hindu. Living in the US state of Indiana, Hallie and Sukkotu met at high school 10 years ago. It was very difficult for us, especially talking to like my parents about it. Hallie's parents were very accepting and everything went really smooth on that end. But that was a big challenge for us to figure it out. And it took about a year for us to have that conversation over and over again to fully understand our stance on both sides, what our morals were.

2:42And at the end of the day, like we realized that our morals were pretty similar. I think because we both grew up hearing and seeing in the world and around us that you have to be either one way or the other and the other ways are wrong, that it was a very scary conversation because I didn't know how it would go. So it definitely was a very touchy subject for us. We were keeping our relationship a secret. And so it was just a big struggle. Keeping a secret? From who? My parents are both immigrants. So their main focus, get their son educated and out of college. And so if I brought up the fact that I was in a relationship, let alone a relationship with a white woman who is Christian, I just knew it wouldn't go well.

3:22So I decided to concentrate on your studies. Exactly. Exactly. How stressful, though, to keep it secret. Yeah, it was definitely probably the hardest part about our relationship. Having that discussion, you know, Hallie feeling like she was a secret or me not wanting to share her with my family. but when I did end up telling them it took about a month for them to actually get to know Hallie and see that she actually cares about me and and once my parents like got to really know her now they absolutely love her. Jessica Reza let's hear about you two I want to hear about how you dealt with the whole interfaith thing but first tell us about how you met because just reading the notes here that I've got.

4:02It seems very 2010. You were introduced by email, I read. It was the old-fashioned way. We're the opposite of high school sweethearts. We met in our 30s after having come out of very difficult relationships. I was married to another Christian, and there was certainly a lot else there. And yet, I also had the idea that, hey, if we're both Christian, everything else will work out. It'll be fine. I felt like I had broken all the rules. I didn't believe in divorce. And there I was. And then for Reza. I was in a long term relationship that wasn't very healthy. And partly because there was no real spiritual connection between us.

4:47And so once both of those relationships were over, we had a friend who saw that we were both looking and searching for someone and introduced us through email the old-fashioned way. And it was love at first sight. It was, yeah, I mean, just I think the minute we saw each other, we knew that this was the person for us. And part of what I think drew us to each other was that despite the fact that we were different religions, I'm Muslim, she's Christian, we both had a deep connection with our spirituality. And we talk about this all the time, that it was like we were expressing the same emotion. We were just using a different language to express it.

5:33And so we both felt as we understood each other's lives, as we talked about what we wanted for our lives. And so we both had admiration and we're not lockstep exactly the same in every single thing, but why would, I mean, nobody is. And what are some of the hurdles that you had to clear? well i mean jessica's family they had never actually met a muslim before before her daughter started dating one maybe accidentally and so that was a challenge i mean i think there was a little bit of fear there was a little bit of fear yeah but to be put in context my brother is a an evangelical pastor he leads a church back where i grew up it's not just a hobby yes yeah they're really into it.

6:16Yes, it's a real community over there. That's the right word. But as I never get tired of saying, I think people's prejudice, people's bigotry doesn't come from a place of ignorance. It comes from a place of fear. And I think the only way to defeat fear is through the hard slog of relationship building. And I think once they really understood who I was, not just that I loved and adored their daughter, but also that the way that we express our beliefs in the world is identical, then all those walls came down pretty easily. We had this epic first date where we went to brunch and then Reza happened to have a lecture after.

6:55And he said, well, I mean, do you want to go? And I did. And then I heard this brilliant person speak. And after that, my whole family was in town for my brother's graduation party. I was like, do you want to go? You did. So we were together for like nine hours and he happened to meet my entire family the very first day I'd met him in person. And they were like, who is this guy? So even though there were fears, they adored him. They were blown away by him. I didn't realize that it was so soon then you had to confront all these things. Yeah, it was really funny. It was very funny. And then when I met his parents, I mean, they really just wanted grandchildren.

7:25His mom just wanted grandchildren. Like I've never been physically cornered. And she kind of backed me into this corner in the kitchen and was like, give me babies. And we have four and everybody loves me. So we're good. It was like, I'll get over all your religion as long as you just give me babies. Cicceta, what do you make of that hearing that? You know, I think it's pretty similar in terms of like my parents, like once they really got to know Hallie and understand what she's about. I have three older sisters and I think my mom talks to Hallie way more than all three of my sisters. I say that all the time because I think there's just like a deeper connection between the differences that we have and how to have conversations.

8:03Hallie's very emotional and asks emotional questions. And these are questions that like my mom has never been asked before. And that's something that she really, really appreciates, I think. At first, Suketu had to have that conversation with his parents alone. And then I joined in at some point in our relationship and really talked to them and tried to understand where they were coming from and why they felt the way that they did and why they really wanted him to focus on education. So it's a difficult conversation to have that I can't fully understand, right? But I think as time went on and I really understand their frame of reference and what they come from.

8:38And they both were born in India, and they moved to the United States in their 30s. And how much of a shock to their system that must have been as immigrants. And I really tried to put myself in their shoes and understand, okay, now I forgive them for how things were for however long and how everything turned out. It just it really took time and understanding on both sides. Have either of you guys talked about conversion or had that conversation about how maybe at your core, you do just wish your partner believed what you believe in the way that you believe it? Honestly, no. And I think in marriage, if you're sitting around waiting for your partner to change, it's not going to be fun for you.

9:17So I don't think that it's the correct goal. I don't think it's a healthy goal. I think it's nice to say, gosh, I wish you see some beautiful fireworks. You're like, I wish they could see these fireworks. They're so great. Sure. You want to share things that you love and that have moved you with your partner. That's great. But in this particular area, I think wanting to share and to be understood is different than this person is fundamentally wrong. This person fundamentally needs to change. My way is the only way. That doesn't work for me or for us. We had this discussion. And even before Hallie, like when I had my first girlfriend ever, she was also white.

9:52And her parents, the first day that I met them, asked me if I wanted to convert. So I've been in this realm of like people asking me this question, Like, are you going to convert? Is it going to happen? And I went in and did my own research. I like looked at the Bible. I understood some of the things that were going on. And I solidified my thought of, okay, I'm Hindu. I understand why I'm Hindu. And this is the direction I'm for sure going to be in no matter what. And from that point on, I kind of stood on this. This is me. This is who I am. And when I met Hallie, I said the same thing when we had these discussions.

10:27and I think it came up once like hey like what do you think about the conversation of converting and once I said this is why I believe it and this is who I am and this is my family and I don't think I can do it and I don't think you should consider like yourself to be any different like you have your own religion and we're both individuals that can have a belief in God of the God that we want to believe in whether it be Hinduism whether it be Christianity whatever it is and once we had that discussion. It took maybe two or three more discussions like that. And then we ended up agreeing on the topic of, okay, this is the direction we're going to go and we'll figure it out from here.

11:05And if I can add one little piece too, for us, we have a 14-year-old twins, we have a 10-year-old, we have a five-year-old. We've practiced very regularly together with our family, several different things. We go to church every other Sunday and then on the off ones, we do service together. So we really very much believe in that and feel like that's how we live about what we believe. But then we also do this thing at home, and we used to sort of lovingly call it home church. It's a little ethnocentric, but the gist was we would talk about the breadth of all the different kinds of faith systems and world religions so they could understand what it means to be a human on the planet and all the different ways people think and perceive and walk through life.

11:44Luckily, Rez is pretty encyclopedic as it's called religion, so I could sort of design some part of the curriculum and then he would talk through all sorts of incredible stories from all different faith backgrounds and we look at different texts together. So we really are committed to showing them there's lots of different ways to think and believe and that there's no, not even a little bit of a desire to indoctrinate. We talk openly about what we both believe and as a family, of course, having core beliefs as a family is essential. And then And from there, each of our kids have different things that they're drawn to and interested in.

12:18And at one point, we were a family of a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, and two, we're only dervishes, we're not sure, two agnostic little ones undeclared, which is totally cool as well. What we do indoctrinate them on is the importance of faith. The importance of understanding that there is more to this world than just the material realm, that the true expression of the human condition is striving for the divine, striving for transcendence, striving for God to have a deep spiritual life. But we want to show them that there are many, many ways of expressing this vital emotion, this vital feeling, but we want to make sure that they have the freedom to choose for themselves.

13:08So we go to mosque, we go to temple, we go to Hindu services, we go to Buddhist services, we've traveled all around the world. We've given them a real deep experience of the way in which people express their faith to show them that what they are expressing is so similar, but they may be expressing it differently. And I think that's something that they have understood in a deep and meaningful way. Reza and Jessica in conversation with Hallie and Sukatu discussing how they navigate their different faiths in their relationships. I'm Rahul Tandon and you're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

13:55America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962. And I'm Max Kennedy, the nephew of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. We explore what was a terrifying moment in history.

14:40The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How close the world came to nuclear war. And what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Eric Marante had always been a fighter. Age 21, he found himself with a squad stationed on a bridge in Iraq. On the morning of April 21st, 2007, a truck packed with 3 ,000 pounds of explosives was detonated just a few feet below them. This is a story about a man who turned pain into purpose. Therapy for me is being in the boxing ring. It's just good for your soul, good for your body.

15:27This is season four of Legacy, Defiant. Search Defiant Legacy wherever you get your podcasts.

15:39JD Vance said his wife had no plans to convert to Christianity. But we're going to hear now from two couples whose partners have changed their religion for love. Kylie and Daniel are in California. Kylie converted from Christianity to Daniel's religion of Judaism. And Will and Sana are in Malaysia. They originally met in Canada and Will has converted to Sana's Muslim faith. He now leads prayers in their mosque. Sana was putting her child to bed when we called, so we began by talking with the partners who changed their religion, Will and first Kylie. My decision to convert came after my husband took me to what's called a Chabad dinner.

16:22Chabad is an organization that invites Jews to come and have a free dinner and prayer services. And I had always been interested in Jewish culture. I'd always had Jewish friends and boyfriends, but they were never religious. And when I went to Chabad for the first time, there was this warmth inside of me. And I was an atheist at the time, and I felt that this warmth was God. I decided from then that I believed in God. Then I started looking into a conversion process. And my husband was observant. He grew up in an observant home, and then he left it. So at this point, he was just going for the free Friday night dinners, and he wasn't thinking about me converting or anything.

17:05I grew up as an atheist as well. So I lived a fairly traditional kind of non-religious Western lifestyle, fairly destructive along my path. I had a lot of friends who passed away or got involved with drugs and went down some pretty dark paths. I met my wife and totally changed my perception of a lot of things. And some of those things were about what life can be like with faith. And once I started to look into the faith of Islam, I realized very quickly that the life that I had lived and witnessed for most of my life, those issues that came about and caused the destruction and caused all these problems were resolved through faith and through a belief in God and a belief that God has not left us without guidance.

18:00And from that point on, it was kind of a journey of faith, I guess you could say. And bit by bit, I began learning and I traveled to Bangladesh and Pakistan and spent some time there. And after about five years, I came back and eventually we got married. So that's kind of the very brief version. Well, thank you for giving us a brief version of it. If you hadn't have converted, do you think that would have affected your relationship? I think most definitely life would be different. I think that it's a very difficult question to answer, but I believe that everything happens for a reason and everything that was supposed to happen will always have happened and anything that wasn't meant to be will never be.

18:40So I believe that it couldn't have gone the other way and it happened exactly how God planned. But certainly if we're looking at a hypothetical, I think definitely it would have affected things because my wife is from a religious family. I'm from a completely atheist with a complete disdain and disregard for religion family. So I think there definitely would have been a lot of clashes along the way. And for me, we just probably would not have gotten married. My husband was very firm that he wanted to marry a Jewish girl, a Jewish woman. So looking back, if I hadn't gone on this journey, he probably just would have never gotten married.

19:19I chose an orthodox conversion, which is the most hardcore, despite what you see maybe on Netflix. They really welcomed me in. They were so friendly. I was never rejected. I'm not like Charlotte from Sex and the City. They never rejected me once. And it was just such a warm experience. so yeah I just think he wouldn't be married today I think I wouldn't be married today and it would have been very sad because like Will now we have a family we I think we also have three children like them so it's just uh yeah it's just we're yeah but I like his perspective that you know God wouldn't have planned it any other way this is exactly what's meant to be.

19:57Will it's time to bring in your wife I think to give us some answers. Sunny you've managed it's quite late in Malaysia We have to tell our listeners that. So I think your little one has finally gone to sleep. Yes, thank goodness. If you don't mind me asking, was it important for you that Will converted? yes definitely being somebody that grew up with islam and in a muslim household for our family in particular there was nobody in my entire family lineage from mother's side and father's side that had married outside of not only just the religion but also the culture so a white boy yeah that was that was a very big deal obviously so growing up i knew obviously that was an expectation.

20:44And for myself too, I was very firmly rooted in my faith. And so I knew if I was going to get married that I really wanted to make sure that I found a husband that was of the same faith so that we could have kids and grow up and raise our kids as Muslims. Because we've brought in Will's partner, Sana, let us now bring in Kylie's partner, Daniel. Hi, Daniel. Hey, how are you? I'm doing very well, thank you. And you heard what Sana said there. So Kylie converted to your faith. So was that a similar experience to what Sanna was talking about there? Yeah, I thought a lot of what she said was pretty relatable.

21:20I wasn't, as Kylie mentioned, I wasn't living an observant Jewish life when we got together. When I told her that it was important to me to marry a Jewish person, it was because I want to pass down Judaism. But I didn't really have a good idea of what that looked like until she started converting. And it brought me closer to God and it brought me closer to my faith, I often like to joke that I converted to Judaism with her because I saw the entire religion through new eyes and saw the beauty in it through her conversion. They say the Jewish people are called the chosen people, not because we think we're better than anyone, but because we chose to learn the Torah and we chose our unique mission to spread God's love and light in this world, introduce monotheism to the world, and try to get people on board with God.

22:12So really, it was me choosing what I thought was to go back to my Jewish soul. Every person who is a Jew received the Torah on Mount Sinai, and I believe the Jewish soul traveled to me throughout the generations to get to me. When I did a DNA test, I found out I was 0.08 % Ashkenazi Jewish. And I was like, oh, maybe that confirmed it. The conversion process for a Muslim is very simple. So simply, it's a declaration of faith that you bear witness that there was only one God worthy of worship and the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him is his slave and messenger and that's it and essentially it's just a declaration of faith in your heart because all of Islam is between you and God and there's no intermediaries so you know at that moment I sat there in front of my future father-in-law my future brother-in-laws and the future you know town of people that later on I would become you know the imam in the mosque and lead the prayers So it was a very unique experience in that I never went with the idea of converting.

23:11It was just like, you know, when God calls you, you can either answer or turn away. So I answered and that's just kind of how it happened. Let's give the final thoughts now to Daniel and Sana. What did it mean to both of you? Sana, do you want to go first here? When Will did convert to Islam? Did that bring you closer together, both of you, do you think, in your relationship? I think for me, especially because I never asked him to become Muslim. It was something that he did on his own. But for me, I obviously, you know, deep down in my heart, I was hoping and praying that he would. But it's not something that I ever was like, you have to become Muslim.

23:52Like, this is something you have to do, you know, for us to be together. He just went on it on his own, which was incredible. so for me you know witnessing it it truly was in in a sense kind of like a relief because I knew that that was the only obstacle that was kind of in the way of us ultimately getting married but regardless it was very inspirational to watch him become Muslim and learn things that I technically should have learned 15-20 years prior and it actually inspired me to become a better Muslim myself, I embraced wearing hijab. I started praying, you know, five times a day. I started doing things that I feel like elevated my own faith, just watching his faith journey.

24:36So that part was really interesting. Exactly the same experience for me. Not only did I not push Kylie to convert to Judaism, but I kind of tried to dissuade her from it because I had had tough experiences, which led me to move away from my faith as a kid. I got kicked out of Jewish school. I had a lot of baggage about it. Her persistence that this was who she was and this is what she wanted to do, eventually I started to come along on the journey. And I also, you know, started to wear a yarmulke and go pray three times a day and do all these things that I wasn't doing. So it was amazing for me as well that it brought me so much closer to my faith.

25:22And it was a journey. and I wonder if this is also relatable that we went on together. And I think there's a lot to be said about that, just about going on a journey together, such a profound spiritual journey, in addition to the journey that life gives you without that, that brings a couple so much closer together. Daniel and his wife Kylie in the US and Sana and her husband Will in Malaysia. Thank you to them and all our guests this week for sharing their experiences as ever, fascinating conversations. I'm Rahul Tandon, and you've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

26:23I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.