When Brenda Payne Sahli and Muhammad Sahli got married, some people said their marriage wouldn’t last. Even the minister they asked to perform the ceremony cautioned them against taking the big step.
 
Why? She’s Christian. He’s Muslim.
 
But love prevailed. On Oct. 14, the Chesterfield County couple will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.
 
“We’ve had many disagreements but not about religion. I don’t try to force my religion on him, and he doesn’t try to force his on me,” said Brenda, a native Richmonder, who still attends the church she grew up in, Calvary United Methodist in the East End.
 
“He believes what he believes, and I believe what I believe. But we both believe in the same God. Had I been born in the Middle East, who knows, I might be a different faith,” she added.
 
 
Talking It Over
“The reason our marriage is strong is because we talked about everything before we were married, even where we were going to live. We agreed that each would keep his or her own religion,” said Muhammad, a Palestinian, who grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. He came to the U.S. in 1961 to go to graduate school.
 
The Quran, the holy book of Islam, states that it is all right for a Muslim to marry a Christian as long as the Muslim doesn’t change his religion, Muhammad explained.
 
The Sahlis met at a meeting of the Chemical Society of Virginia. Muhammad has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of South Carolina. Brenda has a doctorate in pharmaceutical chemistry from the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University.
 
 
Reactions Vary
The two talked about their life recently as Muhammad prepared a Middle Eastern dinner of stuffed squash and Brenda sat at the kitchen table in their Bexley home. They laughed as they recalled the reaction of some people to their plans to marry.
 
When Brenda told the minister at her church that she and Muhammad planned to be wed, the minister asked her, “Do you really want to marry him?”
 
An American Christian friend of Muhammad jokingly said, “The preacher will say: ‘In the presence of Jesus, I wed thee Muhammad.’” In the Islamic faith, Jesus is considered a prophet and not the son of God. Later, when Brenda asked her minister if the name Jesus could be left out of the ceremony, the minister responded, “See, this is only the beginning.”
 
However, Jesus’ name was used in the couple’s wedding ceremony. Muhammad said. “I really didn’t care. My main objective was to have Brenda as my wife.”
 
 
Family Approval
While a few people thought marriage was a mistake for the couple, their families were all right with it.
 
“My mother, who didn’t speak English, was living in Beirut and wanted to see Brenda,” Muhammad said.
 
Brenda recalled their visit to Lebanon as a young married couple. “The men went to one room and the women to another. I was in the room with all of these women talking in Arabic and I didn’t know what they were saying,” she said.
 
“They were admiring you,” Muhammad said, smiling.
 
 
Dual Exposure
Raising their three children didn’t cause squabbles over religion.
 
The children, now grown and living away from home, worshiped in church and in the mosque. Generally, they went to the United Methodist church on Sunday with their mother. The main worship day for Muslims is Friday at high noon, and the children were in school then. But they did go with their father to the Islamic Center of Virginia on major Islamic holidays.
 
“Muhammad always said he wanted the children to be free to choose what religion they wanted to follow,” Brenda said. “All of them took lots of religion classes in college, but only one goes to church now and that’s to a Presbyterian church.” The other two aren’t involved in a house of worship.
 
Muhammad read a verse from the Quran at the weddings of the couple’s three children. That verse was:
 
“O mankind, we created you from a single pair of male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other, not that you may despise each other. Truly, the most honored of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you. And God has full knowledge and is well acquainted with all things.”
 
When the couple’s youngest daughter was married, the minister mentioned Islam during the ceremony.
 
Brenda Sahli said, “It’s nice to recognize the heritage coming into a marriage.”