wfn.org | New Jersey family mixes Methodism, Islam

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Sept. 9, 2002  News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.
10-21-71BP{397}

NOTE: This report is a sidebar to UMNS story #396. A photograph is
available.

A UMNS Report
By Amy Green*

MAPLEWOOD, N.J. (UMNS) - Anisa Mehdi was born to a Christian mother and
Muslim father. She grew up learning Mohammed's teachings and
celebrating
Jesus as God's son before marrying her Methodist husband and taking a
job
with the United Methodist Church.

But Mehdi, 46, has since returned to her Islamic beliefs and is raising
her
two daughters with the same religious diversity of her upbringing.

She knows the mix of faiths makes her family unique but says it has
never
been disruptive. That's why she is troubled by those who can't accept
the
variety of ways to worship God, whether it's with arms raised in a
church or
kneeling in a mosque.

"I feel very privileged that I was raised in an interfaith home," says
Mehdi, now an independent broadcast journalist in Maplewood, just
outside
New York City. "It expanded my knowledge of the world."

Mehdi's parents met while working with migrant workers as part of a
volunteer Quaker project in Oregon. They were from opposite sides of
the
globe, Beverlee Turner the daughter of a Baptist minister from Nova
Scotia
and Mohammad Mehdi from Iraq. They wed in the early 1950s, had three
daughters and raised them as both Christians and Muslims.

Mehdi's father accompanied his wife at her Methodist church on
Christmas and
Easter, and Mehdi's mother joined her husband at his mosque on special
occasions. The girls grew up celebrating both Christian and Islamic
holidays, and Mehdi sang in the choir at her mother's church. The
couple
wanted to ensure their daughters were ready to choose their own
religion
when they grew older, Mehdi says.

"To be exclusive about a faith group was to actually limit our
education,"
she says.

Mehdi joined a Presbyterian church in New York City in her early 20s to
sing
in the choir with her longtime best friend, but eventually she joined
Morrow
Memorial United Methodist Church in Maplewood. She and her husband,
Peter
Zimmerman, 47, were members of the church for nearly 10 years, and she
became co-host of the weekly United Methodist cable TV show "Catch the
Spirit."

Yet Mehdi was troubled by her difficulty in believing Jesus was God's
son
and felt dishonest singing the Christmas carols she sang as a child. So
she
returned to Islam four years ago.

Zimmerman says his wife's decision encouraged him to rethink his own
faith,
and he began attending Bible study classes regularly.

"It's tough to avoid the fact that there's a remarkable number of
parallels
among the faiths," says Zimmerman, an environmental risk manager for a
property redevelopment firm.

The couple now are raising their daughters, 10-year-old Janna and
8-year-old
Katherine, in the same way Mehdi was raised. They read to the girls
from
Christian and Islamic children's books and teach what they feel are
fundamentals of both faiths -generosity, kindness, respect and honesty.

How do they make it work? Mehdi says it isn't complicated.

"We don't do anything but really pay attention to what the message of
God is
through his prophets," she says. "God has instructed humanity to treat
each
other with respect and love, and so we try to do that."

# # #

*Green is a free-lance writer in Nashville, Tenn. She formerly covered
religion for the Associated Press.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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