sandinista!

Some people on the board are more hand holdy touchy feely in their interactions here than others. Some are more acerbic. Honestly, when I was in major information seeking mode here, I learned more from the latter than the former. Mileage will vary. That's how Internet boards work. All kinds of personalities post on them, some you'll like more than others.

But even Peter Pan was relatively civil in this thread, which was like, whoa. It was weird how suddenly things got so derailed after really pretty tame commentary.

This is one of the best things I've read on this board.

She has a way of doing that.

Msheesha!! It's Groundhog Day!

Ding ding ding!

Now we've reached the "Alleged Moroccan guy talking ####### about Moroccan women" mark. These threads all follow the same trajectory.

This thread meets all the marks. SuperMENAmen wise beyond their (young) ages, a healthy amount of "My Mohammad is totes different", and a drizzle of "American mens are all lousy slobs". I feel an American Queen lurking out there, just waiting for the right time to

make its entrance though.

Your "token phrase" is classic!

Ding ding ding!

Honestly that's how I interpret the following.

What we have then is:

Percentage of people who said it is sometimes justifiable to target and kill civilians:

Mormon-Americans 64%

Christian-Americans 58%

Jewish-Americans 52%

Israeli Jews 52%

Palestinians* 51%

No religion/Atheists/Agnostics (U.S.A.) 43%

Nigerians* 43%

Lebanese* 38%

Spanish Muslims 31%

Muslim-Americans 21%

German Muslims 17%

French Muslims 16%

British Muslims 16%

Egyptians* 15%

Indonesians* 13%

Jordanians* 12%

Pakistanis* 5%

Turks* 4%

*refers to Muslims only

http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/08/surveys-show-muslims-in-every-country-less-likely-to-justify-killing-civilians-than-americans-and-israelis/

The problem is conflating Islam/Muslims with political and regional points of view. I will have to say that it is difficult to find the point where a religious view and political views end and begin but it would be a mistake to generalize being Muslim has more to do with the polls you cite than do regional and political issues.

Adding, I am actually a couple years older than my husband. (insert token phrase about gee, it's a good thing he's such an old soul and I'm not really all that grown up, and am lucky to look so much younger, etc etc)

What business is it of yours to speak about women marrying men young enough to be there kids. That's just speaking hateful and you have a lot of hate amongst yourself/inside to say such. Your not a older woman married to a younger so really your opinion is blurred and not needed here.

The numbers jive. My kid will be nearly as old as the the OP's fiancé when I'm her age. How that's hateful is beyond me, it's just numbers. No one's been rude or hateful about it. On the other hand, you've been rude and snippy since you first chimed in here, as well as being completely off point.

Non MENA people can study MENA norms, cultures, and standards until the cows come home. What ultimately matters in the situation of an American woman who is significantly older than her fiancé, with a significantly larger amount of adult life experiences is what that man's life experiences are and his relationship skills and abilities to relate to a wife who is at a completely different place in life, with those life experiences formed in a completely different place from where the guy is coming from. If he doesn't have the actual experience, as is common in MENA, does he at least seem promising? Squawking at Futureberberwife, like it's anthropology pop quiz time, doesn't have anything to do with what she was asking. Yea, north African norms are way different from north American. Everyone's clear on that. What matters, and what I think Futureberberwife was getting at, is how does the OP plan on dealing and adjusting to that? Can she? Will he contribute and try equally as hard? That'll be up to them. Hopefully it works. Lots of people have tried, and some have succeeded. Lots haven't. But anything less than Pollyanna is like hateful, blah blah blah.

Yes! I totally have nothing good to say about all the MENA guys, all the time. Without fail.

Yessss! It's the big meanies on VJ saying meanie stuff just to be jerks. No

basis at all! MENA consulates, especially in the cases of dramatically large age gaps where American women are older, are just randomly some of the most difficult, scrutinizing consulates in the entire world out of sheer coincidence. No basis at all!

Lol, the mods should babysit and open a thread about this. One would think if it's the undeniable, dominant, prevailing phenomenon where the majority of totally mismatched and culturally bizarre relationships where American women marry MENA guys young enough to be their kids were outdistancing everyone else in marriage longevity, the threads wouldn't need mod creation to come into existence. But ok. No one denies there's a few scattered long term age gap couples out there. But the odds are heavily stacked. That's all anyone is saying here.

She would be fine in regards to "the rules", but what the consulate thinks of long gaps is entirely up to their discretion and whims. People get denials all the time over things over things that are technically ok per the rules, but raise big red flags for the interviewer when assessing relationship authenticity.

OP--It's another piece of the bigger picture, and the significance of the long gaps between visits is going to depend on you and your fiance's own unique relationship details. There's not a big, generic pie chart that you can plug different scenarios into and find within a tenth of a percent how big of a piece that issue is. I'm of the "more time knowing each other is really good and important" vs "going and spending a month with a guy after chatting online for 4 months is ideal" school of thought, but there is a wide range of opinion on that here.

I had long gaps in between visits and a long gap in between when i first started talking to my then fiancé, and first meeting in person. It worked for us, with the other aspects of our relationship. I had spent a grand total of of 13 days in morocco when we filed, but my husband had letters and such dating back over 3 years to bring to his interview.

The chasm between what responders are actually saying and the OP's replies keeps getting wider and wider. Not to mention coming across as really dismissive and condescending to the posters who have been actually living these experiences, and are beyond just having spent a couple of vacations with their SOs.

"Aren't in much of a honeymoon phase"?? You're not even pre-pre honeymoon phase to be grappling with. Not even close.

If you've been divorced since May of this year, but have been proposed to by multiple guys, richer, older, closer than the Egyptian wunderkind, that raises multiple alarm bells, as opposed to proving amazing, super woman desirability prowess.

Regardless, I hope the discussion continues despite that, because there's some really good points being made here by several posters, and important issues to consider that other readers might benefit from.

Your situation in regards to his having not met them is not uncommon. There have been many, many approvals out of MENA without beneficiary meeting petitioner's children. It's a usually very small and minor piece of the big picture, rather than a big dealbreaker.

they asked my then fiance about my son's name and age, and if they had met.

the other questions above are not at all uncommon though, in various situations.

adding, they knew full well they had already met, i sent pictures of this occurring. but the questions the COs ask are rarely just about the direct answers, they're looking for all kinds of other clues with body language, etc when discussing bigger issues.

I forget sometimes that there are still places in this country where vegan strip clubs aren't a matter of course. Or that it's even novel that someone is a stripper yet still somehow a regular human.

The Sex Jihad story playfully weaves together a history of fatwa misreporting (like the famous faux phallic fatwa), haphazard research and knee-jerk reactions (the Queendom of Saudi Arabia debacle, the Yemeni child bride hoax and the guy too handsome for, again, Saudi Arabia) and a weird, uneasy obsession with Muslims and sex. It especially feeds on the trope of Muslim womens bodies as disposable for the unquenchable appetites of Muslim men. This in turn also obscures the agency of Muslim women in sexual relations as ones to only ever serve males. Michaelson additionally asks:

Why would women coming into Syria prioritise sexual favours when there is a large body of evidence showing that there are female fighters on the ground?

So what then can we make of the Interior Ministers statements? Dismissing them is not an option, yet questioning them certainly is as ultimately we dont have enough details about the story from the source itself, Ben Jeddou, whose information more than likely came from within the intelligence service in his ministry and not (hopefully) from online gossip sites. How did these young girls, some allegedly as young as thirteen, get out of Tunisia, into Syria, out of Syria (pregnant) and back into Tunisia with what seems to be ease? Why are only Tunisian women being sent to wage this sex war? Why not Pakistani? Chechen? Libyan? Who is escorting these women? Or are they traveling alone and if so how and where are they getting across the borders into Syria?

What we do know is that, according to the Tunisian government, at least thirteen Tunisian girls are missing, several hundred Tunisian men have allegedly gone to join Syrian rebels, several thousand have been stopped from going to Syria and we know that sex (especially in terms of sexual violence and exploitation) is an inseparable part of any conflict and war. Yet the near exclusiveness of only Tunisian young girls being groomed for a holy sex war brigade (perhaps unwittingly building on the stereotype of North African women amongst Gulf/Levantine Arabs), the lack of evidence and corroborating reports from journalists, aid workers and activists on the ground in Syria, false fatwas and the history of delegitimizing groups, ideas and movements through accusations (whether these are true or not is irrelevant) of sexual deviance (eg. Here, here and here) call into question how this story is being used by the Tunisian government itself. After all, it has a strong interest in countering the growth of Salafist ideas and sympathies within its own borders.

When it comes to stories that involve Muslims and sex, international news media are quick to publish and gloat about the varying ways in which Muslims (by extension generally any and all brown folks) are so incredibly sexually repressed that they resort to sexual deviance, which is always at the expense of their women. The words Sex and Jihad are two SEO-happy terms that elicit strong emotional responses and outrage as well as clicks and news-makers are well aware of this. Instead of putting in some time to verify information or, at the very least, offer cautionary language most, if not all, American news media reported the Sexual Jihad story as the hard (no pun intended), cold, exploitative truth. As Ive written elsewhere:

Predisposed ideas and conceptions of Muslims and of gender relations in the Muslim world and Muslim countries make it easy for sloppy and reactionary journalism to gain momentum. They love to publish it, and we love to read it. Theres something wrong with this equation, but we still continue to gobble it up every time its thrown in our collectively gawking face.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/mmw/2013/09/officials-claim-tunisian-women-are-waging-a-sexual-jihad-in-syria-but-whats-the-real-story/#more-14102

If your food intake isn't providing the vitamins and minerals you need, you're doing it wrong.

$1.99 chicken also insures that animal lived and died in unconscionable and inhumane conditions. Same with the egg prices. And milk. Mmm, love the taste of antibiotics and growth hormones in the am.

That's devil talk. And coming from a female and Muslim to boot, that's Super Devil talk.

(Hint, Super Devil is on the right)

Yes! I love capes.

Status Updated Date change today but case still in AP what is it means can anyone tell me rightly

Dunno, but digging this thread up to post this question seems like a good place to learn.

I voted for the 2nd option, but am strongly in favor of NGO humanitarian aid. This is where I've been contributing.

Www.mercycorps.org/Syria

I'm like totally befuddled- am I missing some posts here or something where anyone has said it's ok or excusable that brotherhood / supporters' violence or vandalism has occurred? I've read some Godawful twisted, morally bereft defenses of military and police force slaughter of anyone and everyone in their path with no impunity here, and those same excuseniks seem to have no concept of scale or grasp of exactly what it means when a massacre like this is perpetrated by a government while other big deal governments essentially cheer them on. But whatever. Coups are cool.