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In 2010 approximately 15 percent of all new marriages in the United States were between spouses of different racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds, raising increasingly relevant questions regarding the multicultural identities of new spouses and their offspring. But while new census categories and a growing body of statistics provide data, they tell us little about the inner workings of day-to-day life for such couples and their children.JewAsianis a qualitative examination of the intersection of race, religion, and ethnicity in the increasing number of households that are Jewish American and Asian American. Helen Kiyong Kim and Noah Samuel Leavitt's book explores the larger social dimensions of intermarriages to explain how these particular unions reflect not only the identity of married individuals but also the communities to which they belong. Using in-depth interviews with couples and the children of Jewish American and Asian American marriages, Kim and Leavitt's research sheds much-needed light on the everyday lives of these partnerships and how their children negotiate their own identities in the twenty-first century.

Over half of all American Jewish children are being raised by intermarried parents. This demographic group will have a tremendous impact on American Judaism as it is lived and practiced in the coming decades. To date, however, in both academic studies about Judaism and in the popular imagination, such children and their parents remain marginal. Jennifer A. Thompson takes a different approach. InJewish on Their Own Terms, she tells the stories of intermarried couples, the rabbis and other Jewish educators who work with them, and the conflicting public conversations about intermarriage among American Jews. Thompson notes that in the dominant Jewish cultural narrative, intermarriage symbolizes individualism and assimilation. Talking about intermarriage allows American Jews to discuss their anxieties about remaining distinctively Jewish despite their success in assimilating into American culture. In contrast, Thompson uses ethnography to describe the compelling concerns of all of these parties and places their anxieties firmly within the context of American religious culture and morality. She explains how American and traditional Jewish gender roles converge to put non-Jewish women in charge of raising Jewish children. Interfaith couples are like other Americans in often harboring contradictory notions of individual autonomy, universal religious truths, and obligations to family and history. Focusing on the lived experiences of these families,Jewish on Their Own Termsprovides a complex and insightful portrait of intermarried couples and the new forms of American Judaism that they are constructing.

The challenges of cultural and religious diversity that face European and American societies today are not a new phenomenon. People in the Middle Ages lived in pluralistic societies, and they found highly interesting ways of dealing with religious and cultural diversity. While religious and political authorities commanded people to stick to their kind, some people explored the borderland between religious identities. In medieval Iberia, Christians and Muslims challenged the legal authorities' prohibitions against crossing religious and cultural boundaries when they engaged in mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians or converted from one religion to the other. By examining the topics of conversion and mixed marriages in legal texts of Muslim and Christian origin, Pluralism in the Middle Ages explores the construction of boundaries as well as the reasons explaining such constructions. It demonstrates that the religious and social boundaries were not static, nor were they similarly defined by Islamic and Christian medieval cultures. Moreover, the book argues that Muslims and Christians in medieval Iberia did not constitute clearly separated groups, since various categories of people haunted the boundaries between them: false converts employing taqiya strategy (taking on an outward Christian identity while practicing Islam in secret), those engaged in mixed marriages or interreligious sexual relations (and their children), and converts, whose conversion may be perceived as sincere or insincere, total or partial.\"

The forces of cosmopolitanism, globalization and neoliberal policies have advanced interfaith marriages globally. This study looks at the phenomenon of interfaith marriages between Muslims and Christians in Zongo communities in Accra. Zongo is a Hausa word used to refer to communities that have historically been associated with itinerant Muslim traders and which also served as Muslim enclaves in the Gold Coast. Today Zongo communities, which were once predominantly Muslim, are now religiously and ethnically pluralistic. There is a discernible mix of adherents of other religions in Zongo communities. In the study, we show that although doctrinal differences between Muslims and Christians serve as fundamental reference point in prohibiting interfaith marriages, there are other factors that make a future of more frequent and tolerated marriages between Muslims and Christians in Zongo communities in Accra seem doubtful.

'Til Faith Do Us Part is a fascinating exploration of the promise and peril of interfaith marriage today. It will be required reading not only for interfaith couples or anyone considering interfaith marriage, but for all those interested in learning more about this significant, yet understudied phenomenon and the impact it is having on America.

Why are young people dropping out of religious institutions? Can anything be done to reverse the trend? In Got Religion?, Naomi Schaefer Riley examines the reasons for the defection, why we should care, and how some communities are successfully addressing the problem. The traditional markers of growing up are getting married and becoming financially independent. But young adults are delaying these milestones, sometimes for a full decade longer than their parents and grandparents. This new phase of \"emerging adulthood\" is diminishing the involvement of young people in religious institutions, sapping the strength and vitality of faith communities, and creating a more barren religious landscape for the young adults who do eventually decide to return to it. Yet, clearly there are some churches, synagogues, and mosques that are making strides in bringing young people back to religion. Got Religion? offers in-depth, on-the-ground reporting about the most successful of these institutions and shows how many of the structural solutions for one religious group can be adapted to work for another. The faith communities young people attach themselves to are not necessarily the biggest or the most flashy. They are not the wealthiest or the ones employing the latest technology. Rather, they are the ones that create stability for young people, that give them real responsibility in a community and that help them form the habits of believers that will last a lifetime.

This study seeks to explain the concept of the permissibility of interfaith marriage, as found in the interpretation of Surah Al-Maidah: 05, within the cultural context of Arabic society. It explores  cultural systems, which influenced the socio-anthropological understanding of this permissibility. The research employs a qualitative approach, utilizing muqaran (comparative) and hermeneutic interpretation methods alongside an anthropological perspective. This study demonstrated several key findings on interfaith marriage in Al-Maidah: 05. The verse conceptually permits Muslim men to marry women from Ahl al-Kitab (People of the Book) under certain conditions, according to various scholarly interpretations. The text also indicates that Muslim men may marry women from Ahl al-Kitab who are independent and able to preserve their honor (muhsanat), provided they pay the dowry. Some scholars assert this permissibility applies without restriction, while others limit it to Ahl al-Kitab before Islam or to Ahl al-Kitab Dzimmiyyah, excluding Jews and Christians in some interpretations. The permissibility of such marriages from a socio-anthropological perspective reflects a continuation of earlier interfaith marriage practices among Arabs, influenced by the patriarchal social system, which was later redefined according to the Islamic perspective . Thus, the concept of interfaith marriage in Al-Maidah: 05 is deeply rooted in both pre-Islamic cultural practices and evolving Islamic jurisprudence, indicating that interfaith marriage conception has Quranic relevance.

The Torah Unabridged is a detailed examination of legal reasoning in the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on the exegetical operations by which biblical laws related to intermarriage were applied to circumstances and persons that lie outside the sphere of their explicit content, this book reconstructs the ways in which laws regarding intermarriage evolved, were interpreted, and were applied across time and place. William A. Tooman argues that the \"exegetical impulse\" to expand upon the gaps left by laws relating to marriage in the Torah is expressed in several distinctive ways in later texts in the Hebrew Bible. Adopting a diachronic approach, Tooman examines the techniques biblical writers used in their appropriation, expansion, and manipulation of legal ideas within earlier biblical texts in order to apply the laws to more situations, circumstances, and people. Tooman's analysis reveals that from Exodus to Ezra-Nehemiah, legal reasoning on intermarriage moved in a singular direction: toward an ever-greater restriction of marriage between Israelites/Jews and gentiles. The final chapter sums up the ways that this was accomplished, summarizing the logical and exegetical operations executed in the process of expanding the relevance of these laws, and describing the hermeneutical assumptions that motivated the process. Grounded in a detailed philological analysis of the Hebrew texts, this tightly argued monograph is an important impetus to further debate in the field. It will be welcomed by biblical scholars and by specialists in the history of law.

The issuance of Supreme Court Circular Letter (SEMA) Number 2 of 2023 concerning Guidelines for Judges in Adjudicating Cases on Applications for Registration of Marriages between People of Different Religious Beliefs has caused problems regarding interfaith marriages in Indonesia. Both conceptually and in practice, interfaith marriages have long been controversial. Using a human rights approach, this article analyzes SEMA's position in the hierarchy of laws and regulations and the impact of SEMA Number 2 of 2023 on the independence of judges and the practice of interfaith marriages in Indonesia. The results of the analysis indicate that SEMA Number 2 of 2023 is contrary to human rights principles, especially the principles of religious rights, the right to choose a partner and the right to get married. Although the content of SEMA should only be related to technical matters of court processes, SEMA Number 2 of 2023 targets the substance of citizens’ rights; it asks judges to reject requests for the validation of interfaith marriages, even though the issue is clearly regulated by the Law on Population Administration. As a result, the chances of validating interfaith marriages through court decisions are closed. This policy not only limits the independence of judges in deciding such cases but also violates the human rights of citizens.

This qualitative study captures the experiences of young women in an interfaith marriage, in a social context where ethnic/religious identity is not contested or threatened. In-depth interviews were conducted with ten women to understand through narrative the conflicts and challenges they experience and how they cope with them. Narratives explored not only the present difficulties in the lives of women in interfaith marriages, but also the past experiences. It is under this framework that the cultural/religious transition of these women were studied. The collective experiences of these women were organised under six main themes: role of religion, views on being associated with another religion, initiation of interfaith relationships, problems and conflicts experienced, reactions of in-laws, peers and society and coping and adaptation. Results suggest that although these women experience challenges, such as rejections, threats to identity and discrimination, the multicultural context of Mauritius facilitates integration of conflicting religious identities.