“You know you’re Muslim if…

…you find your Mormon neighbors' attitudes towards dating overly liberal."

A few weeks before we set off for Oklahoma from Georgia, we had dinner with a nice Mormon family that lived in the other cul de sac of our development. We were swapping complaints about the permissiveness of American society and how popular culture relentlessly sexualizes children, when the father declared in outrage, "There'll be no children dating in our house! Nothing of the sort before she's 14. Not a day earlier." I'm sure his definition of teenage dating is a lot tamer than what's sadly the norm out there in the steamy jungle of secular society, but I was tempted to blurt, "Fourteen?!? She'll be lucky if I let her 'date' before 30!"

And she'll thank me for it. She might manage to have a bit of a childhood, insha'Allah.