Married at 25, divorced at 27 (I)

In the Quran 22:32, the Fashioner and the Sustainer of the universe issues the command that reads – “Marry off the free singles among you, as well as the righteous of your bondmen and bondwomen. If they are poor, Allah will enrich them out of His bounty”.  In other words, parental duty and responsibilities shall […]

In the Quran 22:32, the Fashioner and the Sustainer of the universe issues the command that reads – “Marry off the free singles among you, as well as the righteous of your bondmen and bondwomen. If they are poor, Allah will enrich them out of His bounty”.  In other words, parental duty and responsibilities shall be deemed to be incomplete unless and until spouses are found by parents for their children. This is because, for some primordial reasons, our success as parents is inextricably linked to the success that our children find in their own lives. To take this beyond all reasonable doubts, the leader of humanity and the last Prophet says, “Marriage is part of my tradition; whoever repudiates it does not belong to me.”

However, despite its importance in Islamic tradition and its socio-cultural value, two trends have become prevalent nowadays. The first relates to the aversion that youths of today now have for this tradition. The second, perhaps more concerning, is what I would refer to as the attrition rate of divorce among young couples in our contemporary society.  Hardly is there a Muslim family today without its own spinster or bachelor who desires wedlock but is yet to or cannot find one; youths who nurse no desires for, and in fact loathe all references to marriages.

Yes. Some of our youths cannot find wedlock today because their suitors do not satisfy or possess “the specs” – qualities that range from presentability or appearance of the potential husband to possession of affluence and influence. Some of them are also in the wilderness of bachelorhood and spinsterhood as a result of the insistence of their parents that only suitors from their towns or villages shall be approved or accepted. It usually does not matter whether such suitors possess the basic understanding of Islam; it usually counts for nothing whether such suitors have no pedigree in Islamic calling or not.

Others among our youths, utterly buffeted by the extremities of the current economic situation, have consequently taken the decision to exclude marriage from their priority list. As far as these youths are concerned, the promise made by the Almighty to believers that He shall enrich them from His bounties (Quran 24:32) finds no attraction. For them, the counsel of Prophet Muhammad that it is incumbent on the Almighty to assist those who venture into wedlock out of their desire to remain haste enjoys no credence.

Thus, for these youths, marriage shall become due when they become multimillionaires. For the girls in the group, age is nothing but a number. Unless and until the ‘right’ man comes forward, life as a spinster shall remain the only option! As I write this, I am involved in ‘searching’ for spouses for girls aged over thirty: some are even over thirty-five! I know of daughters of brethren aged below thirty who are yet to find suitable partners! If your son has the ‘specs’, and he is still unable to find the right sister, feel free to contact me.

But the third category in this ‘triangle’ is perhaps the most concerning. This belongs to youths who have been in and out of marriage. They are young; they are still in their late twenties and early thirties. They were once married; they are now divorced. Some of those in this group became separated from their spouses for reasons that are ribald, jejune and unbelievable. Some of them resorted to divorce in reaction to vectors that bordered on outright accretion and infraction of the fundamentals of Islam.  Or how else might you make sense of the argument of that brother who divorced his young wife simply because the latter neglected to attend to the pot in the kitchen on time, an error that nearly led to a fire outbreak? Only recently, a young couple filed for separation because the husband preferred sleeping with the light on, while the young wife’s preference is to sleep with the room in complete darkness. There is no doubt that when a man or woman decides to neglect prayers or engage in practices that border on Kufr or shirk, a valid basis for divorce is established.

However, where issues between Muslim couples do not bother on the fundamentals of the faith, where disagreements occur based on ordinary human predictions, Imam al-Shafii’s counsel gains credence. He is reported to have advised his student, Yunus Abdul A’Ala, as follows: “O! Yunus! Hundreds of issues unite us and only one issue divides us. Don’t try to be triumphant in all differences. Sometimes, winning hearts is more important than winning arguments. Don’t demolish bridges you built and crossed, for you may need them again one day for your return. Always hate what is wrong, but do not hate the one who errs. Hate sin with all your heart, but forgive and have mercy on the sinner. Criticise speech, but respect the speaker. Our job is to wipe out the disease, not the patient.”