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ABSTRACT
This study examines attitudes towards interfaith relationships between individuals living in the conflict state of Israel. An exploratory method was used and interviews were conducted with Jewish Israeli, Christian Palestinian, and Muslim Palestinian students currently living in Israel. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes that emerged from the interviews. Four main themes were identified: (i) negative attitudes towards interfaith relationships, (ii) importance of familial approval, (iii) societal pressure in Israel, and lastly, (iv) preservation of cultural identity. These findings demonstrated that overall, participants were adamantly opposed to engaging in interfaith relationships; the main concern was pleasing their parents. Another concern was adhering to religious teachings, which forbid such relationships. Participants also stated that conserving one’s religious and cultural identity in a conflict state was of utmost importance and interfaith relationships were perceived as fraternising with the ‘enemy’. This paper demonstrates that attitudes towards interfaith relationships may be uniquely shaped by living in the conflict zone of Israel, whose citizens are particularly concerned with preserving their cultural identity – whether they were Muslim, Jewish, or Christian. For a society such as Israel where religion and culture intermingle, this paper suggests that interfaith relationships may not be readily welcomed.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the participants who partook in the current study, for their time and for sharing their stories.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Dr. Siham Yahya is a Clinical Psychologist and researcher. She is a Palestinian raised in Israel and currently based in Sydney, Australia. Her main topic of interest is the interaction of culture, religion, and family pressure on interfaith and cross-cultural intimate relationships. Yahya also studied peace-promoting schools in Israel.
Dr. Simon Boag is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Macquarie University where he teaches personality and culture, psychological theory, and research methods. He has published over 20 papers on topics covering personality and psychological theory and has also written on the history of personality psychology in Australia.
Miss. Anika Munshi obtained her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto in 2011. She is currently a PhD candidate. Her research interests concern how young adults negotiate their romantic relationship decisions following parental rejection.
Dr. Tal Litvak-Hirsch is a researcher and lecturer at the management and conflict resolution program at BGU. In her PhD she researched dilemmas of Identity and ‘otherness’ in Israel. In 2005 she was a Fulbright scholar at Earlham College. Currently, Tal's research deals with the psychosocial effects of trauma and terror in Israel, within the context of the long-term effects of the holocaust, dilemmas of identity and otherness, and peace education.
Notes
1 To avoid confusion, please note that by Palestinians, the authors are referring to Arab Palestinians living within Israel (as opposed to the Palestinian Territories).
2 This is a figure of speech, to convey the extreme devastation that the father will encounter.
3 Gentile, non-Jewish person.
4 It should be noted that there was a difference between the two genders with regard to intermarriage and breaking societal norms in general. It is perceived that it is easier for males than females to do so in the Palestinian culture and easier for females than males in the Jewish Israeli culture because of religious reasons (in Islam the father carries the religious identity of the child and in Judaism the mother carries the religious identity).
5 Aliyah is a Hebrew word, which means, ‘ascend’ and is used to describe the immigration of the Jewish people from the diaspora to the land of Israel.