Quote:
Originally Posted by loquitur
being Jewish makes it easy for me to answer that question "no."
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Well, I picked "Christian" in the thread title because I figured it was the question that most people had been asked at some point (in North America)--but as I said in the OP, the original question to my husband was, "Are you Muslim?"--because he "looked" like one, I guess.
So when you get asked, "Are you Jewish?" are you surprised? Or is it pretty normal?
Ktsp and I just returned from another trip to the gym with our married friends (who are ethnically Pakistani, and ethno-religiously Muslim--but born and raised in Norway and NYC, respectively)--and it turns out that the same guy had asked them the same questions recently, and that he works at the gym and cleans there. I don't know if he just singles out all of us brown people to ask this question, or what... but we were all chuckling a bit about it. (Our friends are semi-practicing Muslims, but still not terribly serious about their religion--they don't eat pork, but we get drunk together regularly.
) So now we know to watch out for this guy, I guess. My Pakistani-Norwegian friend says that it happens in Norway all the time, even though he grew up there and considers himself to be Norwegian--he gets asked "Where are you from?" all over the place, sometimes followed by the "Are you Muslim?" bit. I guess he's more used to it than us, coming from the US and Lebanon.