LONDON — It took ten years for Shafiq and Sarah to decide to get married. The two met through friends while in college and developed a close friendship. But their respective religions - Shafiq is Muslim and Sarah is an evangelical Christian - held the pair back from romantic involvement. ‘It took a long, long time because we both had our faiths and we had to reconcile that,’ said the London-born Shafiq, whose parents came to England in the 1960s from Pakistan. ‘I had big reservations,’ said Sarah, sitting in the kitchen of her West London home. ‘I’d be lying if I said it was an easy decision.’ (*Some of people interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject matter.) Yet four years and one son later, the couple says they have no regrets. Tolerant of each other’s beliefs, they live together, practicing different religions. ‘What’s made it easy is that we are not from different cultures,’ said Sarah, a smiling, blonde 34-year-old, who was born in Wales. ‘We have a lot of common ground.’ As Muslims become more integrated in the West, marriage to people of […]