My niece is probably my favorite person in the whole world. Funny, knows what she wants, kind, loves animals, empathetic, not afraid to stand up for herself, strong willed but not obnoxious about it…the list goes on. Just a very cool and loving young woman.

Her mom is Christian, but not a Bible thumper. She believes what she believes and that’s it. She doesn’t make it her entire personality. Her dad (my brother) is agnostic, he doesn’t care one way or the other.

She has a boyfriend that she met in High School. Good kid, I’ve met him a couple of times. They have been together for a few years. His parents are from the Middle East, (I’m not going to say from where, this isn’t political). They immigrated to the States, he was born here. He is fully American lol, can speak both languages, but has no accent, played football in High School, nice guy.

He is not particularly religious, eats pork, drinks alcohol etc., Fully Americanized. They want to get married eventually, but his parents were against it because my niece wasn’t Muslim. I don’t think this is something that is even imminent, just something they were discussing. Her bf said they could never marry because she wasn’t Muslim. He didn’t care, but his parents wouldn’t allow it. I’m not sure why he cares what his parents think because he is not the devout. I don’t have more details than that.

So my niece decided to convert. She took it very seriously. I can go into more detail for specific questions, but she follows the rules of dress, diet etc., She goes to mosque, she goes to “class” to learn to be Muslim, (I don’t know what it’s called), she is learning the language.

My feeling is that while she is very seriously about it, she is only doing this so she can marry her boyfriend. While I can see that she is taking it very seriously, if she had never met him, or if his parents didn’t care that she wasn’t Muslim, she would never have converted. My personal feeling is I don’t care what she does, I still love her no matter what. Except for how she is dressed and that doesn’t drink anymore, she is still the same person. It’s funny that his parents require her to follow the rules of Islam, but not their son.

So, we have a family group text of about 20 people. She has always been in this group. We use it to say Happy Birthday, Happy Anniversary, Happy Fourth of July etc., Of course we also use it to commemorate Christmas and Easter even though most of us are not religious.

I sent out the normal “Happy Easter” yesterday and she replied that I shouldn’t have done that, because while it wasn’t that big of a deal, it was slightly offensive to her because she is not Christian. Again, most of us are not religious, it’s about Easter eggs, and ham, and peeps lol.

She asked that I not do that in future, including Christmas, and I said absolutely not. I told her that if she didn’t like it that she was free to leave the group chat. She said she didn’t want to leave the chat because she wanted to keep up with the family, and it was up to the rest of us to respect her religious beliefs. I reiterated that’s not going to happen.

She asked me how I would feel if she wished me a Happy Ramadan or any other Muslim holiday. I told her that not only would in not bother me at all, I would be honored that she thought enough of me to include me in her celebration.

I know I’m not the asshole, but I would appreciate any other perspective.

Edit: I am a long time lurker. This is a relatively new profile. I only posted this because Easter was yesterday. I fully support whatever my niece wants to do. I would never tell her about my opinion of the situation.