Chapter Five
Marriage in Islam I
Introduction
Introduction
Putting aside Islam’s theology (doctrine of God), eschatology (doctrine of life after death), and theodicy (God’s exculpation for the existence of evil in the world), Islam is about the human family. Without an Islamic-style family, probably none of the goals Islam has mandated for humanity can be achieved. Indeed, outside the family, Muslim life and living are impossible. This shows the centrality of marriage, as a social institution, for Islam. Only within and through the instrumentality of marriage are the divine purposes for humanity and the fulfillment of human destiny achieved. Understandably, Prophet Muhammad said that marriage is half the religion and one who does not marry is not of his ummah, or people. Indeed, the spirit in which he seems to have spoken in behalf of marriage and religion would seem to suggest that marriage and a married state and if the spouses act and behave toward each other in the ways prescribed by the Qur'an and Sunnah do not only add up to half the religion of the Muslim, but that they constitute the more important and the better half of Islam. All the rest, viz., the five Pillars of Islam—Shahadah (testimony of faith: "There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah."), Saum (fasting during the month of Ramadan), Salah (ritual worship: five daily prayers and the Friday prayer), Zakah (payment of the mandatory charity), and Hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah at least once in life-time); abstaining from what is prohibited as haram, or unlawful, and doing what is enjoined as halal; enjoining the good and forbidding the evil; justice, fairness, and equity in muamalat, i.e., the social, economic, commercial, financial, and political affairs, dealings, and walks of life; fighting in Jihad, or war, against the enemies of Islam; plus all the supererogatory acts of kindness toward the generality of humankind do not equal up to being truthful and honest, loyal and faithful, and good and kind in family relations and in meeting one’s family obligations, i.e., toward one’s spouse, children, parents, and other relatives, all of whom and more are included in what in Islam is called the family. The unmarried man or woman, except a minor, is simply not a member of the ummah, or the Muslim community. As it is the filial duty of the parents to see to it that their children are married, once or before they reach puberty, so it is the filial obligation of the children to urge that their parents, if they are divorced or widowed, to urge them to get married. But the Muslim man or woman does not remain in a state of singleness for, by doing so, he or she goes against the most fundamental teaching of Islam. Technically, he or she ceases to be of the ummah of Muhammad. The Prophet said: "Marriage is my Tradition, whoever keeps away therefrom is not from my community." More than the difference of the unity or trinity of Godhead between Islam and Christianity, it is the absence of celibacy that distinguishes the former from the latter. It is not merely a matter of doctrine; it is a matter of how human life is lived. The Prophet put it forthrightly: "There is no monkery in Islam."
The Prevalent
Forms of Marriage in Arabia before
and
at the Time of the Advent of Islam
Before the presentation of the doctrines of marriage, as revealed in the Qur'an, a reference to how marriage was practiced in Arabia might be of help in the appreciation of the reform of the institution of marriage by Islam. When Islam arrived in Arabia, many different forms of marriage were prevalent in the Arabian society. Both polygamy (plurality of wives without limit) and polyandry (plurality of husbands up ten, twelve) were prevalent. Also prevalent were the mutah (temporary marriage for pleasure), istibda (sending one’s wife to a desirable man with a view for her to be impregnated by him), marriage by exchange (one man gives his sister or daughter to another man and he gives his sister or daughter to him in order for both men to avoid having to pay the purchase price for a wife), marriage by outright purchase of a woman, marriage by capture, marriage by inheritance (inheriting a woman or women), maqt marriage (marrying one’s father’s widows and/or divorcees—other than one’s own natural mother), and the service marriage (when and if a man was unable to pay the purchase price, he worked for his prospective father-in-law for so many years to marry his daughter—this is how Moses married the daughter of Jethro). In
addition to these forms of marriage and variations on them, men and women lived together in the manner of akhdan, or secret cohabitation; sifah, or experimental cohabitation to see whether they wanted to get married after so long a period of cohabitation; and as master and concubine. All these and more ways of cohabitation and sexual union were commonly practiced in Arabia, depending upon what "permitted" means. In a word, a very great deal of freedom and choice were permitted to both men and women to enter into sexual union with each other.72
We may note in passing here how some of these marriages worked in actual practice. In the case of istibda marriage, "the husband would send his wife to go to specified person after the menses and he would enjoy the pleasure of sexual intercourse with her. He would then not himself have intercourse with his wife until her pregnancy from that man was ended. In this way, people tried to get a son of high birth with noble qualities. This type of marriage was called nikah al-istibda, indicating insemination."73 In case of polyandry, or the plurality of husbands, "several men would go to one woman and enjoy sexual pleasure with her. When she had a child from one of them, after a few days, she would send messengers to all her lovers to call on her. They were bound to come to her and none dare refuse. Then she would say to them all that they fully knew that they had been having intercourse with her. Now a child had been born. Then she would name the father of the child and ask him to name his child. The child would go to the person she had named and he could not refuse to take it."74 There was another polyandrous form of marriage in which, when the child was born, all her husbands would gather and call in a "physiognomist, who would, on the strength of his knowledge, identify the father of the child, and no one so named could refuse to accept the responsibility of its maintenance."75
In the Prophet Muhammad’s
youngest wife, Aisha’s, own words, as reported in Hadith:
2. The husband used to tell his wife to go to such and such a person at the close of the period of menses when she was clean, and be benefited by him, meaning that she should indulge in the act of intercourse with a complete stranger. So long as her pregnancy by that stranger did not become apparent the husband abstained from intercourse with her. Once the pregnancy was confirmed, the husband approached her if he so wished. This practice during the period of Jahiliyah was a device to get a son of high birth with noble qualities. This illicit relationship was known as Nikah-e-Istabza, or denoting insemination by another.
3. The third form of Nikah was that several men used to visit a woman and derived pleasure from her. The number of the woman’s lovers was always less than ten. When as a result of pregnancy by any one of them she had a child and some days had passed on this birth, she used to send emissaries to all her customers [husbands] to call them to her. None dared abstain. When they were gathered together in her presence, she used to say to them that they knew their position well. They all came to her for intercourse with her. A child had been born to her. "O thou such and such this child is thine! Name the child as thou are pleased." The child went to the person she named and he dared not refuse [accepting the child as his and raising him or her].
4. There were women who had flags hoisted at their residences. These were professional prostitutes. Every one who liked used to go to them. Whenever one of them gave birth to a child, all her visitors used to gather together at her place, a physiognomist was called and on the strength of his knowledge, whomsoever he identified the new-born with, it became his, and on no account could he refuse to accept the responsibility [for the child].76
At the same time also existed
what was called, in the proper sense of the term, marriage by contract.
In this type of marriage men proposed to women through their fathers or
guardians. In other words, fathers and guardians of the candidates
for marriage proposed marriage on behalf of their sons and daughters and
wards to their counterparts. Matchmaking was their prerogative, as
the fathers and guardians. Obviously, mother’s had an initial and
crucial role, for they alone could visit the homes and the families of
the prospective or potential candidates for marriage and even talk to the
"girl" or the possible or potential bride. When the proposal was accepted,
a marriage contract (including the amount of dower and its time and method
of payment and other terms and conditions of marriage) was written down
and signed by the parties involved, i.e., the man and woman to be married
together; nikah, or the wedding took palce; the actual payment of the dower
to the wife, if the same was to be paid before the consummation of the
marriage, was made; and with all said and done, the marriage was consummated.
If all this was done in the prescribed way, "it was a full-fledged marriage
with all the contractual responsibilities and normal marital consequences."77
Abd al Ati goes on: "Islam approved only of marriage by contract, marriage-like
cohabitation with slaves, and, according to the Imami Shi’is [Shi’ites],
the mutah temporary marriage. Any other form or means of sexual behavior
was unequivocally forbidden."78 These three forms
of sexual unions are considered even today religiously, ethically, and
legally permissible in Islam, with the qualification that the marriage
by contract is the standard form of marriage today in all Islamic societies
and cultures; cohabitation with slaves is no longer practiced, because
slavery has been abolished by man-made laws in Muslim countries since the
1950s; and mutah, or temporary marriage is practiced by the Shi’ites
only.
Some Paradigms
of Marriage Exemplified in the Sunnah
and/or
the Sirah of Prophet Muhammad
As I understand the terms Sunnah and Sirah, that whereas as the former refers to the actions, legal decisions, and sayings of Muhammad as the Prophet of Islam and the Messenger of Allah’s message contained in the divine revelation he received from Allah, and the latter as his personal conduct both before and after the call and the beginning of his prophethood and messengership at forty years of age. Muhammad married a number of times, reportedly fifteen times. Of these only one of his marriages he contracted before the fifteen years of his prophethood at the age of twenty-five to his employer Khadijah, an independent and wealthy businesswoman in Makkah, who proposed, or to be precise, sent her proposal of marriage to Muhammad through the good offices of a third party in the manner of the time and place. The proposal was accepted and the marriage took place and proved a happy one, lasting for twenty-five years, and ending only with Khadijah’s death. During their married state, the couple had several children born to it. It was noteworthy that at the time of marriage, while Muhammad was twenty-five and a young man of humble origins, though of high birth, with little prospects, Khadijah was, besides being rich, a twice married and widowed woman, with several children from her previous marriages, fifteen years older than he. Thus, their marriage was Muhammad’s first and Khadijah’s third.
The message of Islam was, to say the least, rejected decisively and categorically. During the first decade, which is to say, until her death, Khadijah believed in her husband, remained loyal to him, and supported him emotionally, socially, morally, and materially with her wealth in the preaching and propagation of Islam. Indeed, she was the first person who accepted Islam and earned the eternal honor of being the first Muslim, accepting the message of Islam and repeating after Prophet Muhammad and reciting Shahadah: La ilaha illillah, Muhammad Rasul Allah, or "There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah."
The paradigm of marriage that can be derived from the marriage of Muhammad to Khadijah is, I think, that the age difference; difference in the economic and financial statuses of the man and the woman; the fact that the man is the hired hand of the woman; the further fact that the woman is widowed, has children from a previous marriage or marriages, and is the single female head of her household; and, crucially, too, that it is the woman who took the initiative and proposed marriage are not, ought not to be, a bar to a marriage.
The next marriage of Muhammad, after the death of Khadijah, though he had acquired as wife another widow, was to Aisha. She was the daughter of his best friend and most trusted Companion, Abu Bakr, a man two years younger than he and whom Muhammad called his brother. Aisha was six and already betrothed to someone else. Again, he sent his proposal of marriage to Aisha to Abu Bakr, who hesitated a bit, on account of she being six and Muhammad being over fifty and virtually a niece to
him. But the Prophet’s counsel helped him overcome his hesitance and, in the end, Abu Bakr accepted the proposal, broke off her betrothal to another, and Muhammad and Aisha were married. Prophet Muhammad waited until the time the young bride came of age—age of majority being nine years in Islam—when he consummated the marriage. As we know, Aisha became Prophet Muhammad’s favorite wife and remained so until his death nine years later. According to a doctrine of the Qur'an, the wives of the Prophet were regarded ummuhat-ul-Muslimin, or the Mothers of the Believers. Therefore, after the death of Prophet Muhammad they could not be married to any other man, because every Muslim man stood as a son to his widows. Consequently, widowed at eighteen, Aisha lived nearly half a century afterward as an honored widow of the prophet and as the symbolic Mother of the Believers, a single, celibate woman. As the widow of Prophet Muhammad, her contribution to Islam is great in that she is the narrator of more than 2,200 ahadith (plural of hadith), or Sayings of the Prophet. (No matter how good a rationalization for forbidding the widows and divorcees (and concubines?) of the Prophet from re-marriage to other men, some of whom were rather young women—Aisha was only 18 when widowed—I cannot help thinking that this was virtually akin to "symbolic suttee" on their part.) I wonder what became of Maria Qibtiya, the Prophet’s slave-girl with whom he had fathered their son Ibrahim and whom he never married through nikah, an Islamic wedding, but who became his wife by virtue of being umm-ul-walad, i.e., by becoming the mother of his child and also a freed woman. She was not a "Mother of the Believers," as was every one of the nine widows whom the Prophet left behind.
The paradigm of the marriage that can be derived from the marriage of Muhammad and Aisha, I think, is that, again, the difference between the ages of the man and woman either way—his wife Khadijah being fifteen years older than he and Aisha being forty-seven years younger than he—is acceptable for an Islamic marriage. When orthodox, traditionalist, and fundamentalist Muslim today oppose the legal fixation of the minimum age for marriage for girls, their best argument is that even the Prophet married Aisha when she was six years of age. As such, it is a winning argument, too.
One other marriage of Prophet Muhammad also set a paradigm of an Islamic marriage. This was his marriage to Zainab bint Jahsh. With his marriage to Khadijah (his first wife of whom we learned above), he had acquired, besides her natural children as his step children, Zaid, whom Khadijah had adopted as her son before marrying Muhammad, as his adopted step son, too, by virtue of marrying Khadijah. After the marriage, Zaid became known and was called Zaid bin Muhammad, or Zaid the Son of Muhammad. Zainab was of the Quraish tribe, Muhammad’s own tribe, a cousin of his, and a beautiful young woman. Zaid was a black man of Habshi, or Negroid, origin. At the suggestion of Prophet Muhammad, the two were married, even though Zainab had made abundantly plain that she did not want to be married to Zaid, but they were married.
As was to be expected, this marriage did not prove a happy one, and Zaid and Zainab were divorced. Upon their divorce, Prophet Muhammad took Zainab for a wife. Even with all the laxity of marriage and sexual union that existed at that time in Arabia, this marriage was looked upon highly unfavorably as an inappropriate one. One simply did not marry one’s adopted son’s divorcee. It just was not the done thing. This, obviously, embarrassed the Prophet and gave him pain. However, it was a perfectly proper, appropriate, and moral union according to Allah. Allah exhorted and admonished the Prophet that he was needlessly anguished over the opinion of the jahil, or ignorant and morally depraved fellow Arabs. Hence, it became the occasion for a divine revelation in approval of it, i.e.; the marriage of a man to the divorcee or widow of his adopted son and, by extension and/or implication, to his adopted daughter.
At any rate, not only Muhammad and Zainab were married which marriage ended only with her death six years later, but also the institution of adoption was abolished in Islam. The Qur'an revealed: "Nor has He made your adopted sons your sons. Such is (only) your (manner of) speech by your mouths" (33:4). Thenceforth, Ziad ibn Muhammad became known and came to be called Zaid ibn Harithah; Harithah was his natural father.
Thus the marriage of Prophet Muhammad and Zainab bint Jahsh, not only provided yet another paradigm of Islamic marriage, i.e., the legality and therefore morality of a marriage between a man and his adopted son’s divorcee and/or widow,
but also an occasion for the declaration of the false pretence of treating one’s "adopted" children as one’s own children. By implication, a Muslim man could/can legally and morally marry a so-called "adopted" son’s divorcee and/or widow, he can also marry his own daughter to his "adopted son," and he can also legally and morally marry his "adopted daughter." Obversely, a Muslim woman can "adopt" a son and, on becoming a divorcee or a widow, can legally and morally marry him. Also, she can "adopt" a daughter, marry her to a young man, and, when and if he divorces her or she dies, leaving him a widower, she can legally and morally marry her "adopted" daughter’s divorced or widowed husband. But she could not marry him if she had been his foster mother or wet nurse, i.e., she had breast-fed him. In Islam a foster mother or foster brother or sister is as good as a natural mother or natural brother or sister. The rationale is that it is only one’s natural children that are his children.
Prophet Muhammad contracted
a number of other marriages, all of which have some paradigmatic value.
He had a variety of reasons for making these marriages. Some of these
were:
The Doctrinal Basis of Marriage in Islam
The doctrinal basis of marriage
in Islam is laid down in the Qur'an and elaborated and supplemented in
the Sunnah of the Prophet and exemplified in his sirah, or personal
conduct, as we saw above. I want to construct this doctrinal basis
of marriage in Islam by citing certain verses of the Qur'an, under the
following heads:
As Islam has no concept of priesthood, so Islam has no concept of marriage as a sacrament. The Islamic marriage is, however, a sacred institution and it has been prescribed as a religious duty and obligation of every Muslim. I take it that it is impossible—i.e., a contradiction in terms—for a Muslim, male or female, to be a devout Muslim and be a celibate. Choosing to remain permanently or even for a long period of time a celibate (unmarried), beyond the age puberty, for want of means or divorce or the death of the only spouse, is not an option available to a Muslim. In a way, it might even be said that in the celibate state, when and if brought about by choice, the Muslim neither enjoys the grace of God nor remains in the good grace
of the Muslim community. In the celibate state, the Muslim man or woman is a freak. Marriage is half the religion of the individual—at a par with prayer, fasting, payment of zakat (prescribed charity), and hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah).
But for all that, the Islamic marriage is a civil contract between a man and woman. A woman may enter into a single contract of marriage with only one man at a time. But a man may enter into more than one contract of marriage with a maximum of four different women at the same time. It is an indispensable condition of an Islamic marriage that the parties, i.e., the man and the woman, must enter into a marriage contract in all good faith and with the sincere intention of a permanent union, cohabitation, joint house-keeping, and the goal of procreation. But either party permits the dissolution of marriage through divorce. Hence, whereas an Islamic marriage is entered into to last for a lifetime, it may in point of fact be ended the morning after the wedding with or without consummation. It is after all only a civil contract entered into by two parties who may also end it at their will. Justice Aftab Hussain writes:
A marriage-contract, as a civil institution, rests on the same footing as other contracts. The parties retain their personal rights against each other as well as against strangers; and according to the majority of [fiqhi, or Islamic jurisprudential] schools, have power to dissolve the marriage tie, should circumstances render this desirable.83
What categories of women may the Muslim man not marry?
The Qur'an is highly clear
and telling about it. Prohibited, as a rule are those related in
the first degree by blood, fosterage, and marriage. The Qur'an
declares:
Who will marry what kind of man or woman?
The general rule is that
piety and character are the primary considerations in marriage. Hence,
the righteous shall marry the righteous and the unrighteous the unrighteous.
Two verses of the Qur'an put this clearly and forthrightly as follows:
Yes, Islam allows polygamy
(or polygyny), or the plurality of wives. But Islam forbids its obverse,
viz., polyandry, or the plurality of husbands. The maximum
number of wives permitted at a time is four. However, the permission
is conditional. The condition is that only when and if the man thinks
that he can treat all his wives equally justly. Two verses address
the issue of polygamy in Islam.
Ye are never able
To be fair and just
As between women,
Even if it is
Your ardent desire.
Qur'an, 4:129
Can a Muslim marry non-Muslim?
The Muslim man can marry
a non-Muslim, specifically, a Jewish or a Christian woman. The Qur'an
with an important condition that she be a kitabiya, or believer
in the Torah or the Evangel permits this.
Here I would like to warn that in principle I am not opposed to the marriage of Muslims to non-Muslim women. This is of course allowed by God, as revealed in the Qur'an and stated in the prophetic traditions. It is a practice which Muslims, throughout the ages, have followed. (The Shi’ite Muslims, however, tend legally to prohibit permanent marriage with scriptuary [People of the Book: Jewish and Christian] women, but permit such marriage if it is temporary (mutah), and some of the Shi’ite jurists, regard such permanent marriage as lawful). What I would like also to point out is that marriage to a non-Muslim woman, especially a European or an American, usually involves some harmful aspects which, fraught as they are with greater danger, should not be overlooked.85
All in all, the Conference participants were not in favor of the marriages of Muslim men with non-Muslim women.
Are divorced and widowed persons allowed to remarry?
Yes, both divorced and widowed men and women are not only allowed, but also exhorted and admonished to remarry. Beyond the age of puberty and up to the ripest old age, both men and women are commanded to maintain themselves in a married state. The obligation in general of all eligible Muslims—male or female—to marry applies equally to those who have been widowed or divorced. This was a crucial difference between the Islamic and Hindu religion in the subcontinent, where it was considered an unforgivable sin for a widow to remarry. As we know, in olden times a widow was burnt alive in the ritual of suttee on the funeral pile of her deceased husband as a mark of loyalty to him.
What is one to do when and if he does not have the means to marry?
The basic counsel of the
Qur'an to those who cannot afford, because they do not have the necessary
and/or sufficient economic and financial means to marry, is to be patient
and wait till God, in His Bounty, gives them the necessary and/or sufficient
means to marry. In the meanwhile, however, they are exhorted and
admonished to be chaste by suppressing, repressing, and/or sublimating
their sexual drive through religious and spiritual devotions. Two
verses of the Qur'an that counsel patience are the following:
On the other hand, the Qur'an
also admonishes that no living being ought ever to despair of God’s Providence
and fear poverty, for that is a sign of the weakness of faith in the Bounty
of God. It is He who creates all beings and their means of sustenance.
Hence, a Muslim ought neither to forego nor postpone marriage on account
of lacking the means of supporting a wife and children, for God will provide.
He will not abandon a married couple and its children to thirst, hunger,
and to the mercy of the elements. God has a stake in an Islamic marriage,
too. After all, it is by marrying that a Muslim takes possession
of and fulfills half of his or her religion. The Muslim has to believe
this and act accordingly. This seems to be the intent of the following
verses of the Qur'an:
There was prevalent in Arabia at the time of the advent of Islam infanticide of baby girls, though not as much for fear of poverty, as for the fear of Arab men of a possible or probable social disgrace in future on account of their daughters being kidnapped by men of another tribe or being captured in the age-old Arab custom as a captive of war and turned into a sex slave by the enemy. Apparently, at the time the only sure preventive measure to which a proud Arab could resort was to kill his infant daughter.
But infanticide by way of honor killing is different from killing on account of the fear of poverty, which is the theme of verses 6:140 and 6:151 of the Qur'an. Of course, infanticide for any reason is forbidden and made unlawful by the Qur'an. Killing of children on account of the existing means of economic sustenance is forbidden as well as on account of the fear of the same in the future. Whether these verses also mean that Muslims are forbidden to use contraception and birth control so as to not have children or to limit the number of children to a certain number, because they think, believe, or fear that they cannot and would not be able to provide for more than so many children is a debatable question. At the very least, the Qur'an forbids the killing of children, i.e., which has been born, for fear of poverty.
To be sure, according to verses 11:6 and 20:118-119 of the Qur'an, quoted above, God told Adam and Eve, when they were installed in the Garden of Eden, that there was plenty to eat and drink and they would not go thirsty and hungry and without clothing and shelter. His Providence was abundant and all around them. By implication and interpretation, God’s Providence applies as to the provisioning of food and clothing, drink and shelter upon earth as well. As to the propriety of this understanding of God’s Providence in this world to all His creatures, your guess is as good as mine about whether humanity can rely on it and be fruitful and multiply and populate the earth, as God would have it. If I were to venture an opinion, it is that perhaps the belief of the Muslim masses: "Allah Raziq," meaning, "God is the Provider," is the single greatest ideational factor, responsible for large-size Muslim families—half to a dozen or more children—which is to say, overpopulation, in most countries in the Muslim world. "Allah Raziq," or "God is the Provider," edifies the Muslim mind and elevates the Muslim spirit, but whether it makes for a sustainable demography certainly poses a question. However, that is another topic. So, back to another question pertaining to marriage.
When is the right time to marry for the first time?
A Hadith, or Tradition,
of the Prophet, as to the right time for the first marriage of the man
or woman, is as follows:
But there are representatives of the orthodox and traditional who have given long exhortations to their disciples and followers, who numbered in hundreds of thousands in the past and today number in hundreds of millions, to postpone their marriage until after finishing their education and settling down in a job or trade and make sure that they can take on the economic, financial,
and social burdens of marriage, family, and
children. One such was Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi madhhab,
or school of Islamic law, who is followed by half the Muslims of the world.
He has written:
Seek learning in the prime of your youth and at that age, in which your time, your heart and your mind are free of preoccupations, then apply yourself to seeking your future. For multiplicity of children and a large family is a perplexity to the mind. As soon as you have the means, turn your attention to marriage.87
Does Islam lay down, prescribe, and/or recommend a method of finding the suitable person to marry?
Islam makes marriage obligatory
for both men and women and prescribes the categories of women that are
forbidden to marry and that the adulterer and fornicator shall marry the
adulteress and fornicatoress, and the impure shall marry the impure and
vice
versa. But the Qur'an prescribes no particular method of finding
a possible or potential husband or wife. Again, it is the Hadith
that provides some pointers, but it, too, prescribes no particular method
for making a match for marriage. Though the Qur'an looks down upon
the intermingling of the persons of the opposite sexes, admonishes both
to lower their gaze when and if they should encounter one another, and
observe strict proprieties of speech, behavior, modesty,
hijab (veiling),
segregation of the sexes, seclusion of women (girls above the age of nine)
and definitely not meet persons of he opposite sex privately, avoiding
religiously meeting alone, the Prophet, however, did counsel, indeed admonish,
his Companions to see the woman before marrying her. For example,
Mughera bin Sha’aba reported the following Hadith, or Tradition of the
Prophet (Sahi Bukhar, "Marriage"):
immediately suppressed and its rememberer and/or reciter sternly rebuked, now it has become the oft-remembered and/or recited. But more about it in its due place. Suffice it say that, if the Muslim way of life has to survive and flourish in the Muslim communities in the West, in America in particular, the teaching of Islam on finding a prospective husband or wife has to be reinterpreted, reconstructed, broadened and widened. As it is, the whole method of arranging marriages belongs to a Muslim life form of the past even in the middle and upper classes of the Muslim societies/Muslim world.
Does Islam permit or require the man and the woman, contemplating marriage, to negotiate, agree upon, and write down a marriage contract before the nikah, or the wedding, and the consummation of marriage?
In his Book on the Etiquette
of Marriage, being the second book of the section on "Customs" in his huge
work, Iihya, or The Revival of the Religious Sciences, Al-Ghazali
(his full name being Abu Hamid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Tusi al-Shafi'i
al-Ghazali, d. 1111), easily the greatest theologian of Islam and known
in his own life-time and remembered by the later generations as Imam Hujjat
al-Islam [Proof of Islam], writes that an Islamic marriage is transacted
or contracted, which is to say that it comes into existence, as a result
of the following four conditions being met. These are:
2. Consent of the woman if she is a nonvirgin adult (thayyib balighh) or a virgin adult given away in marriage by someone other than her father or grandfather.
3. The presence of two witnesses openly known for fairness. If both enjoy a blameless record, then the establishment of the contract is decreed.
4. A declaration (ijab) and a related acceptance (qabul) encompassing the term "marry," "given in marriage," or some similar term, pronounced by two individuals charged with the responsibility, neither of whom is a woman.88
We may mention in passing that nikah, or a marriage contract with an intent of permanent union and with the aim of procreation, is different from mutah, or a marriage contract with an intent of temporary union and with the aim of sexual pleasure over a mutually agreed upon and specified period of time for a payment for the sexual services rendered by the temporary wife, at the end of which period this type of marriage dissolves itself automatically. Unlike nikah, or permanent marriage, in mutah, or temporary marriage, a Muslim woman may give herself in marriage. Depending upon the agreement between a man and a woman, transacting a temporary marriage, its duration may be as short a time-period as it takes to have a sexual intercourse or as long as 99 years.
The temporary marriage under
a mutah transaction or contract is prevalent in the Shia branch of Islam
and is actually regarded by the Shia as "the glorious law of Islam."
They find the source of this law in verse 4:24 of the Qur'an, as do the
Shia ulama, or scholars, and fuqaha, or jurists.
Interpreting this verse the Indian Sheikh Abrar Husain writes:
You may raise the question about mutah, or a temporary marriage for pleasure in Islam, that it is virtually, practically, and actually religiously rationalized prostitution, and you might even be right. If so, what would you call the sexual intercourse with the woman you take out on a date, spend money on her, and have a sexual intercourse with her. Also, remember the judgment contained in the remark by George Bernard Shaw, which he delivered when he said that marriage is legalized prostitution. He was speaking, too, of the Christian monogamous marriage at a time when not all the Western countries permitted divorce either. I am only posing it as a question. If anything in Islam, I think, it is the mutah, or temporary marriage for pleasure, which comes closest to what is, called consensual sex in the West.
Who will look for a potential spouse, negotiate the terms of the marriage contract, and decide on other matters concerning marriage?
Given the requirements, rules of the Shariah, and the admonitions in the Qur'an and Sunnah to both men and women concerning modesty; hijab (veiling of women); lowered gaze, when and if talking to a person of the opposite sex; ban on meeting one of the opposite sex privately, i.e., unchaperoned; segregation of the sexes; seclusion of women; utter lack of the freedom of movement and deliberation; prohibition of the mixing, intermingling, and socialization between the male and the female in Islam; and, above all, the subordination of women to men—of the daughter to the father and of the sister to the brother—under the patriarchical system of the Islamic familial and social order, with the authority to make decisions about the timing of the marriage and the man whom the woman, a daughter or a sister, would marry, the all important question is: who decides when to marry, whom to marry, what terms of the marriage contract to agree on, and all the problems, issues, and inquiries that a marriage match and decision to marry someone involves.
Hitherto in Muslim society, in the search for a prospective bride and bridegroom, their parents, guardians, and middlemen have handled discussions, negotiations, and decisions about marriage.
There has not been in Muslim societies and cultures anything even remotely resembling what is called in the Western societies and cultures premarital dating and courtship for marriage, and, to be more precise, what results from it, i.e., the love marriage. No one ever pops the question of all questions: "Will you marry me?" to which the person, usually the woman, replies, "Yes" or "No." No matter how she responds to the question, asked of her by the young man, proverbially on his knees, she usually never answers: "You have to ask my father whether he will marry me to you or not!" To be sure, there is the precondition to an Islamic marriage of ijab-o-qubul, or "offer and acceptance," too, but the father of one makes the offer to the father of the other, who accepts or rejects it. But Islam does require that no one will be offered in marriage without her consent. It is further stipulated that a woman, who was married before and who is now divorced or widowed, may give her consent to her father or brother or male guardian by voice, but the mere silence of a never before married girl, when a proposal of marriage is presented to her by her father or brother or male guardian, will indicate her consent or acceptance of the proposal. The paradigm case is that of the Prophet’s marriage to Aisha. The Prophet, aged 51 years of age, proposed marriage to her father Abu Bakr, his best friend and companion, who put it before Aisha, aged 6 (six) years, I suppose as a mere formality, who kept silent, which is what is called in Islam the free, voluntary, and informed consent of the woman to her marriage to a particular man. Muhammad and Aisha were married.
Are there no men and women who do not want to get married, in other words, who would choose to remain celibate?
I take it that the Muslim answer to the above question is that no Muslim has the option, according to the intent and spirit of the teaching of Islam, to remain a celibate, which means not merely remaining single but actual abstinence from sex—heterosexual, homosexual, or any other kind. Not only is it unnatural, but a refusal, denial, and rejection of the most precious blessing that God has made available to, permissible for, and obligatory upon humankind. The Islamic phrase for it is kufran-e-naimat, or refusal to accept a gift from God, which is akin to the refusal to believe in God.
To be sure, in all societies some people, both male and female, do not want to get married and choose to remain celibate. Of course, whether they abstain from sex is another matter. Official celibacy is not necessarily actual abstinence, as we know only
well from the news reports of scandals even among the clergy, who take the vow of chastity, but who, reportedly, engage in heterosexuality or homosexuality or both, opportunistically and secretly. Whether they routinely engage in masturbation is anybody’s guess. The Prophet has a saying: "There is no monkery in Islam." To marry and procreate is a religious duty of the Muslim man and woman. It is half his or her religion. According to the Hadith, Tradition, marriage is the most favorite and cherished social institution in the sight of Allah, and, indeed, a Muslim who does not marry does not belong, according to his Tradition, to Ummatan Muhammadan, or the community of Muhammad. At least for men, marriage exists even in Paradise where they will be married to the houris of Paradise, with whom they will have sexual intercourse in the full sense of the word, except that they will not procreate. What is more, no Muslim believer in Paradise will have an erectile dysfunction. For men certainly, Paradise will be a place of "perpetual erection" and the orgasm will last for a couple of years at a time. Indeed, men will have no chore or assignment in Paradise. There they will have nothing to do except enjoy the virgins of Paradise. What the Muslim man enjoys of sex in this world—permission to have four wives, easy divorce with a view to exchange old wives for new ones, and the permission to have concubines, maids, and slave-girls, too, without a limit, plus, at least, according to Shia Islam, the permission to practice mutah, or temporary marriage, solely for pleasure, as one’s libido demands or as one seeks a variety of partners from time to time, is only a fractional pre-vision of the sexual bliss of Paradise.
Hence, if there are Muslim men and Muslim women who would prefer to remain celibate, they ought not to be, because by doing so they displease God. Unlike non-sexual beings, God and the angels, sexual beings are commanded by God to marry and procreate in this world. A Muslim may not choose to remain in an unmarried state, for wanting to devote his or her life to the worship and/or work of God; wanting to dedicate one’s life to the pursuit of knowledge; wanting to serve humanity and alleviate human suffering; or for not wanting children for whatever other reason, as for instance poverty or for not wanting to shoulder the responsibilities of marriage, family and dependents; for not wanting to take a chance that a daughter or only daughters will be born to one; and/or because one is living in "bad times" and in an evil society, replete with social and moral evils and, therefore does not want to get married and have children due to the fear that they will grow up to become socially evil and personally immoral; or for whatever other conceivable reason. Al Ghazali even rejected the reasons of women who want to avoid marriage, because they regard pregnancy, carrying the fetus to its full term, giving birth to the baby, and suckling it for two years unpleasant, inconvenient, messy, and painful (especially the delivery). In a class by itself he mentioned the woman "who avoids marriage out of disdain for having to lie under a man [during sexual intercourse] and thus attempts to emulate them. Undesirability [in this case] is not due to abstinence from marriage per se" [rather due to the fact that she experiences humiliation on account of being beneath the man in the sexual act].90
In Islam, the only permitted and acceptable alternative to marriage and sex and procreation within marriage is concubinage and sex and procreation within concubinage. Marriage is by far the better way, though the Qur'an permits sex and procreation within both and the Prophet made use of both the institutions in his life. To these two, upon which all Muslims agree, we can add the institution of mutah, or temporary marriage, as a permitted arrangement for sex and procreation.
Is the virginity of the man (boy) and of the woman (girl) to be married together a condition for the first marriage in Islam? What happens when and if the bride is found not to be a virgin on lailat-ul-dukhul, or the night of the entry, or the wedding night?
Though there is no verse of the Qur'an which states directly and expressly that either the bridegroom or the bride or both have to be virgin at the time of their first marriage, the teaching of the Qur'an can be so constructed or construed that the two ought to be virgin at the time of their first marriage in the light of the commandments of the Qur'an that forbid all forms of two-person sex, i.e., both heterosexual and homosexual (including lesbian) activities before marriage and also that those who have committed adultery and/or fornication will marry only those who have likewise committed adultery and/or fornication. In other words, a pure and chaste (virgin) person will marry a pure and chaste (virgin) person of the opposite sex. So much for the doctrinal requirements in the Qur'an for the first marriage in Islam, as to the matter of purity, chastity, i.e., virginity. In the Hadith, there are Sayings of the Prophet, which showed a definite preference for marrying a virgin woman. Building on a
Saying of the Prophet, in his dissertation
on the Muslim marriage, translated under the title of Marriage and Sexuality
in Islam by Madelain Farah, Ghazali made the case for virginity as
follows:
(a) First, the virgin will love the husband and feel close to him, which will favorably influence their conjugal attachment. The Prophet said, ‘Marry the loving woman’: for the natural disposition is to be attached to the first mate with whom one has had intimate relations. On the other hand, a woman who has experienced men and life may not be satisfied with some of the qualities that differ from those she is accustomed to, and may, therefore, loathe the husband.
(b) Second, it engenders a greater measure of his love for her, as it is a man’s nature to be somewhat repelled by a woman who has been touched by another husband; that would contradict [a man’s] nature regardless of what might be said [to the contrary]. Certain natures find it more repulsive than others do.
(c) Third, the virgin does not yearn after the first husband, because, in general, the surest love is that which is engendered with the first loved one.91
2. Ird is an attribute both of individuals and of a group. A man has Ird, but it is in large part a reflection of the Ird of his family and his lineage…
3. Enforcement of norms defending Ird is
carried out primarily by the agnates: father, brother, father’s brothers
and agnatic cousins. The men are the possessors of the Ird…
4. Once lost, Ird is difficult to regain.
It can be lost through a single act in a brief space of time, and may take
generations to restore…
5. The Ird of a family can be raised or lowered, depending on the demeanor of its women (and the conduct of men towards its women)…
6. The penalties for violation of the norms surrounding Ird are severe and may include death. These are the penalties inflicted by men on women of their own family…
7. Ird is a matter of reputation even more than of fact…
8. Ird is primarily a possession of the males, but the women of the family may come to take responsibility for the observance and enforcement of the code.92
Many unfortunate Muslim girls and women are killed every year in Muslim countries—I have read news reports of a couple, at least, being killed in the United States, too—by their own fathers and brothers to rescue, recover, restore, and raise the Ird of the family.
But can a human society or community be found in which some girls or women are not guilty of sexual improprieties before or after marriage? I do not think so. There certainly is none on record. I am sure the same is true of the Muslim society, too. Prophet Muhammad’s own young (fourteen at the time) and beloved wife Aisha was accused of adultery and the scandal brought disgrace not only upon her father, the venerable Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s trusted and foremost companion, but also on him. Of course, he sent her to her father’s house and everyone surmised that he would, at the very least, divorce her and leave the matter to Abu Bakr to deal with his allegedly adulterous daughter. At long last—how fortunate for everyone concerned—a divine revelation was sent by God to Muhammad, which, to the immense and understandable relief of Aisha, declared the innocence of this Mother of the Believers, and thereby restored the Ird of her father, of her husband, and of the Muslim community. That ought to be a lesson to all Muslim girls and women not, never, to take a risk or chance of allowing themselves to become suspected, rumored, or reputed for being an unchaste wife or not a virgin before their first marriage. With the abolition of divine revelation, no verse is about to descend from Heaven today to clear them of the scandal, if, God forbid, they should become targets of one.
A Muslim father is morally and socially responsible to give a virgin daughter as a bride, at the time of her first marriage, to the bridegroom. But how is a father to ensure that? Well, all in all, he has God, i.e., the Qur'an; the Sunnah, i.e., the Prophet; the fourteen hundred year old Islamic Tradition; Islamic society, state, and the Shariah, or Islamic law; and the ethics and ethos of the Muslim society on his side, all of which empower him to use and apply any and every measure, precaution, and preventive strategy to ensure that his daughter shall remain pure and virgin until her first marriage. It a is tall order but the vast majority of Muslim fathers have filled it so far and their daughters and all concerned have cooperated in the meeting of that parental responsibility of the father. The Muslim strategy has been to erect and maintain physical and social barriers in society, making it difficult, if not impossible, for boys and girls, and men and women, not related immediately by blood or marriage to meet one another, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, creating and maintaining an ethical, psychological, cultural, and attitudinal environment in society which both discouraged and forbade the mixing and socializing between persons of the opposite sexes, beyond a certain age, usually nine years for girls, when a girl in the Muslim culture is considered to have achieved the age of majority, in other words, she is ready for adult sexuality. The veiling of women, segregation of the sexes, confinement and seclusion of females within the four walls of the home and within it within the women’s section of the house, prohibition of girls to go to school, play or talk with boys, or leave the home without a male member of the family escorting them, denial of permission to women to work outside the home with strange men, strict supervision and control of girls’ and women’s activities, movements, and interaction with both men and certain kinds of women were all designed to ensure the chastity of women in general and the virginity of the premarried girls in particular. At the same time, it was hammered into the heads of growing girls from earliest childhood that the only fitting and proper life in store for them was that of marriage, family, and domesticity, as a wife and mother—the life of vagina and womb, as it were—and they would risk it all by not maintaining the reputation of being pure, chaste, and virgin beyond the least shadow of a doubt in the eyes of even their ill-wishers. Above all, they must bring an unbroken hymen to their first lord and master, the husband, on their wedding night and bleed, too, when he goes into them.
But, on her wedding night, even a Muslim girl might not bleed, especially in our time when marriages are delayed, often times, till she is in her twenties or thirties, or later. Of course, if she was not actually a virgin, that will explain this. But what
when she is actually a virgin—the penile penetration
of her vagina having never been the case—yet her hymen may still have been
broken somehow. Both possibilities are there. I once met a
graduate Muslim female student from a Middle Eastern country in a seminar
at the University of Southern California who was living not very secretively
with a graduate Muslim male student from another Middle Eastern country.
What was more, she was also engaged to be married to a cousin of hers in
her home country and the wedding was to take place on her return home after
her doctorate from USC. Often a number of us took our coffee breaks
together and talked freely, openly, and frankly about all sorts of matters
amongst us. Once a Latin American classmate of, a young woman, asked
this Middle Eastern classmate of ours as to what she would do if her husband
noticed on their wedding night that she was not a virgin…might he not divorce
her the next morning? For me the question in itself was daring one,
but I was shocked and surprised at the answer. "But he will find
me a virgin on our wedding night. Before I return to my home country
and marry him, I’ll get a couple of stitches. He will find me more
virgin than he can handle." Everybody burst into roaring laughter.
I had heard of that sort of thing, but it took more than a few moments
for me to get the joke. Since then I have read about it in a great
many Western and Muslim sources. Fatima Mernissi writes:
But the hymen is not only
a biological entity; it is social construct as well. Through biological
intercourse, the woman jeopardizes her vaginal hymen, but, by placing herself
outside the female social space, she jeopardizes her social hymen, hence
the segregation of the sexes and the seclusion of women. The following
statement of Lama Abu-Odeh conveys this sense:
Be that as it may, to quote
Mernissi, this poses a crucial question:
