My brother left islam because....

Salam Ms. MashaAllah,

I'm not African american and I'm not Arab or Pakistani, however, I know from personal experience as well as hearing stories from friends that Pakistanis and Arabs tend to stay amongst their own kind. 

I don't think it's racism, but Pakistani and Arab people want to be with someone with a similar culture

This is going to be a long post so here goes:  Muslims born into a religion are also born into a culture.  They spend their entire lives in this environment that is fostered by their culture and religion.  Put stress on the world culture.  It's plain scary when they are supposed to leave this culture that they are so familiar with when they marry who is from a different culture.

I myself am a convert and I rejected the ideas given to me when I grew up.  I have no culture.  My culture is Islam and I found it hard to understand why a Pakistani, or Arab women would be hesitant to marry me.  However, it dawned on me that if I do marry a woman who is so deeply entrenched in her culture, I'll be pulling her away from something familiar to her.  I won't get their Urdu or Arab jokes, I won't understand so many things about their culture 

People tend to be very conservative.  They don't want to go against the grain and so they continue marrying within their own community.  Some Pakistanis marry their first cousins...which I think is weird.  I have Egyptian friends who insist on marrying Egyptians only...not other Arabs.

I'm not offering an excuse just an explanation. 

I must agree that in some cases racism is the motivation for these rejections.  If someone is stupid enough to be racist, they are not worth being with in the first place. 

That being said, just because one girl rejects him doesn't give him the right to join a religion that most wouldn't call Islam.  That shows a weakness in character. 

Personally, I don't know what is going to happen to me.  I could be alone for the rest of my life theoretically, however, I'm not going to let that fact affect my beliefs.  Allah decides whatever He wants with people.  It's our duty as Muslims to accept Allah's decision and make the best of what we have.  There are millions of Muslims around the world that go hungry every night.  Does that mean they should leave their religion because Allah gave them a bad lot in life?

Those who persevere in hardship and obey Allah will be given a far greater reward in the hereafter anyway. 

I tend to ramble...sorry.

Assalamu alaikum,

I am not arabic or pakistani. To me preference to marry a person that have the same culture is perfectly fine.  Because marriage is not just temporary things, this life time. You have to deal with him/her everyday "forever". So the more similarities the easier to deal with. Even in the same race most successful couples have similar hobbies, characters, education and soon. Because this is one of the important recipe to be success in marriage, this doesn't mean that the is no successful mix marriages. But the percentage say so.

I am a married person, I marry a person that has the same race but different tribe, we have a Little bit different culture and habit. Even then sometime we have difficulties to compromise a certain things.

However, to me the point is culture not race. This means, mix-race marriages will be more common in the 3rd generation of immigrants. Because they have enough distance from their ancestor culture. They go to the same school system, grow in the same environment, have similar hobbies, they both like football (not soccer), baseball (not cricket) and so on.