Is my son being naive????

The other day, when he was parking (you need a permit)he was approached by a young muslim girl who offered him some free parking tickets
This is the bit I find really confusing?
If you need a permit to park are these visitor parking permits? Does she work for the Council?

FWIW we lived (very happily) in Muslim countries for many years and I agree that there is something very odd about this behaviour. A girl who's religious enough to cover her hair just would not do this. I suppose it's just minutely possible that she was striking a blow for western type freedom, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I'm not implying that there must necessarily be some nefarious motive, but at the very least she could be in serious trouble if any traditionally minded relatives came to know about it.

Wasn't it a daft question in the first place?

Starbird and sunlover:
I would like to Thank you also for your input. Having someone there and meeting in a crowded coffee shop is a sensible suggestion and would indeed stop any trouble in its tracks.

As I said previously hopefully this will all fizzle out and my concern will all be for nothing!

GrandtanteJE65: Thank you for your reply. More like the type of response I had expected.

I think everything you have said is a worthy comment and along the lines I had originally felt myself, except for the part about myself going as chaperone, which I hadn't thought of and is a good idea.

Hopefully this will die a death as lots of ships that pass in the night do. But I was concerned for all the reasons you highlighted because she lived so close by.

Your measured and thoughtful post has given me back a little faith in humanity, which frankly was stretched very thin reading some of the other more....'excitable' replies!

By the way Thanks for having the curtesy to talk/write TO me and not ABOUT me in the third person.....a much more civilised and acceptable form of communication!!

Thanks again

Anyone's daughter likely to go out in the street and start chatting to a young man who was parking?
Anyone's son be spoken to in the street by a strange young woman and invited immediately in for tea? Would he tell you if he were?
I speak to strangers in the street sometimes, we rarely get further than an exchange of pleasantries about the weather.

As a historian of religion, I do know a lot about Islam AND I have Muslim friends. I can assure you that no well-brought up Muslim girl or woman would invite a total stranger of the opposite sex into her home, if she lives alone. So either the young woman lives with her parents or is married, if she meant her invitation as your son thinks in a purely friendly fashion.
Obviously, some Muslim women are prostitutes, so that might be a possibility, or she could be even more devious and planning as someone suggested to cry "rape". Other scenarios present themselves to my cynical mind too, she could be a pickpocket, or have a husband or brother at home ready to do the mugging.
If your son is interested in getting to know this girl better then his only possibility is to invite her to a café for a cuppa in some other, preferably distant part of town, unless he invites you, his mother, along as chaperone.
However, he should realise that no religious Muslim girl can marry a man of another faith without running into very real difficulties with her family and the local imam, and living with a man she is not married to, is out of the question as well. So unless your son is contemplating converting to Islam, my advice would be to steer well clear of this girl and others like her. There is definitely a sub-text here, that is quite impossible to read when none of us was in the street when and where the incident occurred.

IF it's genuine, she probably has a father, uncles, brothers, even a husband who wouldn't be happy about the liason.

Well, not really...Now if he'd gone in with her and then refused to tell his mum what happened, that would have been interesting!

But didn't it give us a lot of fun while it ran?

Well the OP didn't show much love and peace in her answers did she ?

As op hasn't returned it has all the hallmarks of other fakes threads we ve had Come on, open a new thread, give a strange scenario, get everyone commenting, giving opinions, advice then disappear Really not worth continuing
Light blue touch paper and retire

Yes, it had occurred to me but after OP wrote my adult children live a very 'peace and love' life style, and find any negativity oppressive. (among other things) I decided she probably wouldn't understand why the situation would be any different if it was her daughter who was involved.

Has anybody like me thought of what our response would have been if OP's daughter had been offered free parking permits and the invitation to a cuppa in a strange man's house?
I am guessing 100% "RUN!"
Just thinking.
Would OP even have asked?

Sunlover you are assuming that everyone is a normal rational person like you (and I hope) me, but there are all sorts of cookies out there, from political agitators to those with bees in their bonnets about some subject or another, or just trouble makers and the mentally unsettled.

That someone could be bothered to make up a situation like this and run with it doesn't surprise me at all.

I must be the naive one! Can't imagine why anyone would bother to make up situations.
If the post is true I would think the race/religion of the girl is immaterial. It would be very unwise to accept a young girls invitation into her house. As someone else has said maybe meet for a coffee in a public place.

This scenario presented by namsnanny is panning out in a similar way to many other such posts which will end up going nowhere. The whole tale is just not at all authentic . GN has seen so many of these "time wasting" attempts at stirring up whatever. The poster is true to the pattern of someone with nothing better to do with their time. The protests by the OP that the story is true . I have a rather nasty feeling that we have have encountered you before of GN.

My first message didn't show so I write another - now you have both!

Perhaps he could arrange to meet her somewhere public like a coffee shop, and have a good reason for not going straight home afterwards to avoid offering a lift.
Best of all would be if he could arrange for another female to be there.

It would be wiser for your son to suggesr meeting her for a tea/coffee in a very public place eg Costa or similar, and for him to be going elsewhere first, and not going home straight afterwards, so that he does not give her a lift. If at any point he does decide to invite her round, or visit her home, he should take a 'sister' or other female relative until he knows the girl and her family well enough to be sure that all is as it seems.
Sadly much as we may wish to mix and be friends, in this day and age we should go carefully until we are sure of the situation.

OP, yes, your son is being incredibly naive. This is why incredulity has been expressed on this thread.

I don't think it's wrong to come to conclusions about people based on what they wear. I think that is quite normal and, speaking biologically, an important survival technique humans have evolved over a very long time. A hijab is a badge, just as , say, a Christian cross on a chain round one's neck is, some Jewish men's side ringlets of hair, or a Sikh turban. These things tell others something important (to you) about you.

What's wrong is to act in prejudicial ways based on your conclusions.

If you can't tell your son your worries you can't have a good relationship with him. My 3 DSs know I worry about them constantly and accept it comes with the job.

It was just a thought. I think young women brought up in this country are likely to be more forward than someone who has emigrated here. Just because they have adopted traditional dress doesn't necessarily mean they have adopted all strict cultural traditions. That's jumping to conclusions.