I Have Officially Started Lying

I have finally done it and taken the plunge. I am a full time liar now. When people ask me about how I became a Muslim, and whether that happened because I married my Pakistani Muslim husband, I say "Oh, I converted before marrying him."

That's not a lie, that's true. But if they press me I'll even say I converted before I even MET him, and that's not entirely true. I said the shahada - the statement of faith that I believe in one God and that Muhammad ﷺ is his messenger - the thing that one must say before becoming Muslim - after I met him. BUT! I starting reading about various world religions - shopping around, really, - well before I met him. I was the assistant manager of a book store when I was 20 and I was responsible for the religion department. Then I exhausted my small community college's entire Religion department course offerings. All 100% before ever meeting M or knowing the first thing about Pakistan. M, was, however, the first real, live, practicing Muslim I ever got to know. (Only once before him, a heavily bearded man in a long white cloak used to come into the bookstore to special order stacks and stacks of some hard-to-find religious material. I never read the booklets he ordered. I think that's probably a good thing.)

Here's why I've decided to change my story. Every time in the past I would say that I converted after we'd been dating for 14 months and then we got engaged, it seems like I can never find any legitimacy again. Not among Muslims or non-Muslims. Muslims will likely always think I'm not a "real" Muslim and I converted in name only in order to marry. Non-Muslims will likely also think the same thing, probably along with things like I "had" to convert because a Muslim man couldn't marry me otherwise (which is not true) or that my husband is controlling (also not true.) No amount of trying to change those perceptions seems to work, but of course it could all be in my own head. Some part of it definitely IS in my own head, and some definitely ISN'T, though it's difficult to say how much.

Lying, though, solves all of that. Whatever they think about my conversion, they don't associate it with my marriage. Whatever part of it is my own issues of searching for legitimacy on other people is gone too, because I've invented my own legitimacy.

I avoided lying in the past because I feel bad about it. Lying is wrong. Of course it is. I don't know exactly what is making me lie now, but I don't really feel bad about it for two reasons. First, it's none of these people's business anyway, really. I'm not lying about anything they have a right to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about. Second, in some ways I think it's not really entirely a lie. The PROCESS of my conversion did start way before I met my husband. I had already read parts of the Qu'ran, I had alreadly taken classes in college that explained the tenets of the faith. Perhaps if I'd lived in a more diverse area I would have even visited a mosque before meeting M. In one of the college classes I took an assignment was to visit a local faith organization other than your own. Had I done that before my marriage I think I would had definitely chosen a mosque.

I did choose a mosque anyway, though. Because I had already converted, and married, I wrote about visiting a mosque. I didn't lie though, I told the professor that I'd recently converted and thought I could write the paper with a different outlook anyway, and she was fine with that.

So at least I wasn't lying back then...