Conflicting Advice: Marriage

I found some aspects of this article quite insulting. I don’t agree with any of this “western” style marriage.

Sounds like you’re a conservative guy! Other people might find that approach restrictive. I think there is room for both...but it’s interesting to see how one can approach the same issue from two different perspectives.

I agree with ghee; some ppl find themselves in situations where their parent’s cannot help. where their masaajid have ‘waiting lists’ in the hundreds of guys looking to get married and no women on them. and just about every single, young, able person in all muslim communities is looking to get married—its the talk of the town with the youth.

so it can’t possibly just be right to sit there and do nothing and say, ‘well, its written !’. the results of your actions are written, but its still your responsibility to get up and make things happen. thus, im going to have to side with P.G. on this topic

Heh, I probably shouldn’t be posting in regards to this topic...but I’ll go ahead anyways…

I’ve tried everything suggested by both PG and CG, but not the online suggestion.

What sort of Muslim matrimonial sites are the best ones?  Or do I have to check out lavalife.com? 

um… you are trying to address a very important subject but wtih all due respect, in all the wrong ways, i was so confused at the point of this article..

1.  there are no good guys out there

2.  conservatives and liberals have contradicting opinions on things?

actually i can’t even make a list, i really have no idea what you are talking about…

-saad

btw..your approach to the conservative guy was still more accurate than the “progressive girl,” that second part was completely… umm contrived and not natural…

so yeah, important topic but think it through more

What are you confused about exactly? No offense, but the concept seems pretty simple to me - two approaches to one problem: a “conservative” Muslim view and a “progressive” Muslim view - pick the one which works best for you. Or don’t pick either.

Lots of people have gotten married through their parents’ connections or the masjid and by joining Islamic youth groups or the internet. The suggestions by both authors work in real life, it’s just a matter of which ones you are comfortable using.

no no.. when i said i am confused of the “point” of the article, i mean, not the “form” of what you guys are trying to do, but what the article in the end accomplishes in doing.

there is in fact not “two views"… even though i am against categories, if you want to play that game, there are

In Aqeedah: Maturidis/Asharis

Fiqh: Four madhabs of Sunni Thought, within which you have lots of different opinions on subjects like marriage, and other social issues.

Ideologies: Ikhwanis, traditionalists, neo-traditionalists, sufis, salafis, neo-salafis, deobandis, progressives, liberal, perennialists (the martin lings camp), etc.

Within each of these groups you have hundreds of branches, so what exactly do you mean by conservative and liberal? and this is where my problem is

When you write from a conservative guy"/"progressive girl” perspective (ignoring the fact that you are not accurately depicting both sides)… you are polarizing the community with these titles and categories that you are not even representing properly.  i guarantee you that the person who wrote the “progressive” portion would not be accepted by the progressive movement and even if she/he was, it doesn’t reflect “progressive thought.”

my point is, this article comes across as simplistic pundentry like CNN’s Crossfire where you see an argument between a Republican and Democrat.

look, i respect you guys for trying to add some light to this discourse, its a very well intentioned endevour, i just, with all due respect, don’t agree with how you guys did it, thats all…

-saad

Ok, that’s quite a bit clearer than your first comments. Perhaps we can get the magazine to rename the article:

“One individual’s particular conception of a conservative viewpoint on a topic juxtaposed against another individual’s particular conception of a progressive viewpoint on that same topic, neither really capturing the essence of the labels affixed to their opinions”

That’s pretty catchy, don’t you think?

On your “natural” and “contrived” comment - I wonder if there’s another species other than humans where the parents or Imam’s (alpha males?) are involved in their offspring’s mating. In my opinion, parents and Imam are the best way to get married - but I recognize that doesn’t work for everyone.

wow, you replied everything i said (which i felt was a detailed explanation of my position) with a very well written piece of sarcasm.. i never claimed that parents/imams are NOT the best way to get married, furthermore, not to mention you misunderstand the meaning of the word “natural” when i used it.

anyways, i disagree with this particular section and the idea of addressing issues using “conservative guy” and “progressive girl” and i explained my reasons in detail above, take care and best of luck. may Allah bless your efforts

-saad

but yeah, we don’t need to argue anymore… we just have different opinions… SEE.. there are not just conservatives and progressives, theres 100s of different opinions

i know it may be annoying when someone critiques something you write, but isn’t it a good feeling that people care enough about what you are reading to reply? so in that way, i would say, a critique is the highest form of compliment..haha

take care man

Always worries me to see the only posts getting comments have to do with marriage .. makes me think there are serious issues here ... we have many young people who want to get married and things arent just working out ...

Agree on the misintrepration of natural. Agree with the serious issues people are having getting married.

I asked earlier, about some suggested websites and didn’t get any response.  So I decided to check some out and then share with all of you what I’ve learned and what I think are the best sites out there.  I’ll also mention how I’ve become totally disillusioned with the whole idea of looking for marriage and how I’ve abandoned it altogether.

After googling for matrimonial sites, I had a list of 4 established websites out there that looked credible.  In the end I signed up to two because some were exclusively pay to use, and others didn’t seem very large.  So I signed up to shaadi.com (note the 2 a’s, there is a shadi.com but it’s exclusively pay to use) and qiran.com.

Shaadi.com is a primarily indo-pakistani site targetted to that demographic (and so you would have the variety of religions represented in that site), whereas qiran.com is exclusively Muslim, with an international scope. 

On both sites I popped up my picture (I’ll admit it’s a silly pic) as well as some info (you can search for Amir_OS on either site), and one lesson I’ve already learned is that beyond talking a bit about myself, I should speak a bit on who I’m looking for.  Initially I stayed away from doing so, as I realize that Allah (SWT) can will any sort of girl for me and so any self imposed restrictions or stringent demands would be wrong.  But as I’ve received offers, I realize that I should probably add some.  Some offers were from all over the World, from all different age groups, from all different backgrounds.  A lot of these different backgrounds/ages seem a bit too different for me, and I now see that there isn’t anything wrong in setting some sort of limits. 

I found that there was a lot more activity at Shaadi, than at Qiran.  Like I said, I had pics up (which are important to getting more views) on both, but on Shaadi I got 5 times the visits and offers.  Shaadi also actively looks for potential matches and sends the emails to you, but I’ve found this to be useless as none of the long lists of matches for me were even Muslim to begin with. 

Being free, both allow for limited forms of communication.  You can unlock other forms (in the form of direct messages) by paying a monthly fee.  Most have messaged me (as they’ve paid) and left me their email address, effectively working around any barrier to communication.

Searching and browsing is easy enough.  But being the shy guy I am, I never really bothered to go about this.  I did it once with my mom, and we both went through North American and UK listings, and found that most entries pretty much had the same text as I did.  Very general niceties with little detail.  It looks like the only way to find out about someone is to simply get into contact with them and discuss details and specifics.

One factor that irks me somewhat is the anonymous nature of these sites.  People can put up misleading profiles, and things like height, age, weight, could be embellished.  Most of the offers I got had no pictures, and while initially I wasn’t against that at all, it’s something that now concerns me.  At first, I thought that a picture wasn’t really the first thing I needed to see, that if I simply judged people by how they looked, it would be superficial and illogical (physical appearance is only one aspect of beauty).  But after talking to some potential mates, I found that we invested time in getting each other’s contact info, getting our mothers involved, and having our mothers learn more about each potential spouse...and then when I see a picture, I’m simply not attracted to that person.  And I feel bad when this happens.  Who am I to judge another? I’m not Mr. Handsome myself.  Allah (SWT) can easily take my eyesight and physical appearance would be the last thing on my mind.  Allah (SWT) can take away everything I’ve been blessed with so that anyone willing to marry me should be someone I consider. 

So the lack of a picture concerns me more because now I’m thinking in the back of my head, “don’t even consider an offer without a picture”, and that scares me to an extent.  I do think it’s logical now, for the sake of efficiency, to see whether or not we should bother investing a good week into finding out a lot about each other when in the end I can’t see myself being attracted to that person.  But on the other hand, I really don’t like judging others in this manner. 

So the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth, and I don’t see the benefit in repeating that same process over and over in hopes to find a match.  There’s something bothersome about it and I really don’t think this online matchmaking thing is for me. 

I’ve talked to a few friends who did recently get engaged/married and a common theme is that it happened out of the blue, and that they weren’t actively looking to get married.  So my current gameplan is to forget about it altogether, focus on what I’m doing now as far as school and work is concerned, and then leave it all up to fate/destiny.  While I did want to get married many years ago, stressing about it does nothing to help the situation (didn’t help me get married yet), it just...adds stress.

*hides in a corner and cries* j/k

haha, funny story. it’s inevitable with most Muslims I think. I completely sympathize with how uncomfortable and awkward it makes the entire idea of marriage. it’s good though, it’s like a conscience.

The thing is, you can’t really trust your sense of attraction. It’s just the outer layer of your sex drive which, if you are the person that your writing conveys, to date has been akin to a bear in a cage that’s being kept hungry and taunted with food.

For more on how the attraction mechanism can be influenced negatively (and positively, though negatively by default in this culture), see Anam’s article on Modesty. It’s not just for women.

The bear’s gonna get out, gorge to its fill, then resume life as a bear. Do you want to wake up one day a week after marriage and realize that perhaps you compromised too much for the sake of finding someone suitable to your attraction’s whims (put that in context by realizing it’s a sex drive in a premarital state, like that bear in the cage).

Just having a sex life at all would effectively control the sex drive. And would fulfill that particular justification for marriage. So where’s attraction come in? It seems you might be getting derailed from your original intentions because a little advice from Western culture has snuck in and embedded itself in your brain. You need to be aware of the fact that its there, that its alien, before you can work around it.

It’s funny. Nobody knows better than Westerners that you don’t need to be thoroughly attracted to a person to have sex with them. It is, after all, how the majority of them control their own sex drives and ‘stay sane’… the problem is that they do it outside of marriage and switch partners repeatedly because Western society keeps caging up that bear again and taunting him.

It’s going to be heard enough finding someone suitable even if attraction WASN’T an issue. This also illustrates the pitfalls of trying to go it alone.

Since we’ve established that not only do Islam’s injunctions avoid it, but it also seems just plain illogical to trust that bear in the cage with anything, you really can’t be the person in charge of this. This is why the Islamic idea of marriage places the responsibility on the parents for the first marriage (even for subsequent marriages, the affairs have to be handled through them as intermediaries in order to observe Islamic customs of modesty). It’s not required for later marriages because the person has already gained the experience of how much sex/attraction and other things really matter to their needs or not. You’re almost there as you are consulting with your parents at least. The only decisions that need to be taken by the Muslim person in question is that they want a marriage at all, as you have already done.

So basically, I’d suggest giving it another go and putting your parents on the point. If they are up to the task (though if they aren’t, they are jeopardizing themselves because this is a God-given right of yours over them), then all you need to do is get enough willpower to trust them and go through with it. If they aren’t, and many peoples’ folks aren’t these days, then you’ll have to do some serious self-confrontation in order to deal with the issues Western civilization has put upon you.

One thing’s for certain. You cannot bank on the natural decline of hormones that comes with age for your first marriage. You can’t really just wait it out until your tastes change. Though waiting has other benefits (if you’re trying to address the issues in the meantime), it can still be a detriment if all it’s doing is to reinforce these issues into habits which grow harder to change with age.

My own personal advice to you would be that if this physical attraction is the only thing obstructing the way now, then deal with it now before something truly crazy gets in your way later. Believe it or not, I had just recently made a rant/post on my own blog advising people to do what you just did. But if you can deal with your issues, you should. NOW.

PS: i remember reading a quote from a muslim of one of the first few generations of muslims to his son. something along the lines of (rephrasing from memory) ‘i’ve raised you, fed you, educated you, and married you off… may Allah save me from your sins now’… and that being the general approach to parenting. that first marriage was almost a basic part of becoming an adult. you just weren’t a completely developed person until after you had been through that. nobody really knew who the real you was until after you were placed into the role of a ‘real’ person. only those who found that they didn’t need it (usually after at least one marriage) would later go on to marry or re-marry late if at all. this is why for instance, the Shafi’i madhab places a much weaker emphasis on marriage/nikah than the Hanafi madhab. it was said Imam Shafi’i (ra) waited very long to marry, and when he did, he married the woman reputed to be most ‘ugly’ that he could find. when asked why, he said even his nikah was a jihad (against his Nafs). and obviously that’s taking into account he fulfilled every right due to her as he would to any beautiful woman.

A useful, enlightening, and beautiful talk on love and marriage:

http://www.meccaone.org/audio/Love%20&%20Marriage%20__%20With%20Shaykh%20Yaser%20Birjas.mp3