Although my ex-husband formally converted in Al-Azhar, he did not take a Muslim name. That was enough to render his faith as “questionable”. Shortly before midnight, after touring Damascus, we were interrupted in our hostel room by a rude wake up call – literally. An aggressive voice at the door said, “We are the night staff, we need to check your marriage certificate.” Although we had shown the precious certificate to the afternoon staff earlier, the night staffs were not convinced. They wanted to check it one more time – at around midnight. “This is a Muslim country, and you claim to be Muslim,” one of them said. The two hostel staff looked bemused and offended when I responded angrily, “Yes, I am Muslim, and I have the right to choose my husband.”
Even in my native country Egypt, officials, hotel employees and others we met on tour questioned his Islamic credential.
We had, however, a particularly challenging encounter at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. To enter the Dome of the Rock, my ex-husband was asked to perform ablutions (the ritual of washing before prayers), apparently to prove he was not a Jew. According to one of the guards, this was a necessary ritual because “Jews occasionally want to break into the sacred site.”
In England, the challenges and grilling continued. One night was particularly distressing when a well-educated, senior medical colleague of mine (a doctor) volunteered, “to educate me” about how God would punish me if my husband stopped performing his Islamic duties. This colleague then said, with no small degree of condescension: “I know a girl who made your stupid mistake; she was eventually punished by God who cursed her with a rare skin disease.”
(h/t Mike)