Why is it that the worst thing we could do to our parents is fall in love outside of their culture, or fall in love per se?

Why is it that when we have learnt to walk, talk, eat and sleep side-by-side with people from all walks of life, a lifetime with them just isn't part of the equation?

What is it about them' that terrifies the older generation?

It's not that I'm a coward, but if I ever thought I was falling in love with a white, black, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Oriental Muslim, I'd run as fast as I could in the opposite direction.

It's not that I'm a coward, but when push comes to shove, I would not want to risk putting myself in a position where I would be asked to choose one or the other.

Not long ago a young man wrote into Asian Image because he was being asked to choose between his family and black girlfriend.

A few weeks ago, I read an article in Closer on how a Pakistani Muslim was on the run with her white husband after her family vowed to kill them both.

And then there was the girl who wrote into Asian Image because she was terrified of telling her parents she had found her own man.

It both shocks and angers me that decades after we packed our foreign bags to start a new life in a foreign country, we are still having to fight for our fundamental rights.

Yet everyday, people the world over are killed for having dared to fall in love with the wrong' person, serving as a reminder that love was never ours for the taking.

I guess the some people would argue that they worry about their children being able to adjust to a different culture, but how about those objections you make when our chosen partner is from the same culture?

You argue that on paper at least, arranged marriages are a lot more successful'.

As valid as this argument may be, arranged marriages are, and have always been an amicable arrangement between two parties. Love at first sight is a Hollywood phenomenon that unfortunately does not extend to the real world.

How then is someone supposed to decide the outcome of the rest of their life based on a few hours?

I know I couldn't. I don't want to marry someone I think I can live with, I want the person I know that I could never live without.

I wish I could tell you that falling in love is not a cardinal sin, it's a basic human right.

The bottom line is that in some distant part of my brain, I think I know that the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) married women from different cultures, but then again, I could be wrong.

Regardless, we live in a multicultural society where we spend more time with those we work with than we do with our own families.

For those of us who no longer live at home, we take what little Muslim contact we can get and cherish every second of it.

Sometimes, this leads to falling in love, not because that is what we had planned all along but because love strikes in the unlikeliest of places.

As the younger generation, we don't care about colour because we have been taught to overlook it.

We don't care about their families culture because our culture is the same - British. For an adult to stand there and tell me that I cannot marry a Bangladeshi, Pakistani, black or white Muslim because of their parent's country of origin is like telling me that because I am from Blackburn, I cannot marry someone from London, Bolton or Preston.

Yes, the children of immigrants still practise their ancestral cultures, and yes, sometimes integration is a key problem but don't they say the first step to conquering your fears is to face them?

It is striking that when an engagement is announced, people ask whether it was a love marriage or arranged?

Marriage should always be about love regardless of whether you were introduced by parents or not.

But isn't it weird that we should feel compelled to ask this? There is now an increasing number of us willing to stand our ground to marry the person of our choice regardless of their colour or culture.

This for some comes at the cost of the family they have known their whole life. If you're extremely lucky, you get to keep both but why should this still have to be a gamble?

In my heart of hearts, I know this won't last forever. I hope that we as the parents of tomorrow will have been taught a valuable lesson by our own parents to never interfere with our child's partner of choice.

Part of me is praying like mad that by the time I decide I would like a man to make an honest woman of me, cultural differences will no longer be an issue.

A girl can dream can't she?