Fatima Barkatulla – How to React if Your Daughter Wants to Marry the Wrong Person

			When I was a teenager, I, I told you, I went to Egypt. I went there to study, but I actually ended
up meeting somebody who I wanted to marry instead. And my parents
		

			for freaked out, you know, probably back at home here in the UK, but they didn't show me that they
had freaked out. And the way they handled that entire situation was so amazing. At first, I used to
hesitate to share it with people, because obviously, it's like a very personal thing that happened.
And now I don't really feel worried about sharing it so much, because I can actually see the
benefit. Because people assume that if you're brought up in a religious family, you're never going
to have the desire to marry somebody, you know, practically, they are, you're never gonna meet
somebody, and
		

			basically fall in love or want to be with that person, you know. But these are like really strong,
instinctual, hormonal things, you know, that are inside us. It doesn't matter if you've been brought
up in a religious family or not.
		

			When you have that,
		

			those strong feelings.
		

			The good thing is that if you're brought up in a religious family, you're probably inshallah not
going to act on them in a in a haram way, right? You just gotta want to marry that person, which was
the case for me, right? Like, and I think that's what people should appreciate is that religion,
DEEN isn't there to eradicate those feelings, but channel it in the best outcome possible, right, so
that you have the most noble out outcome from those feelings. So yeah, so like a mom, she she told
me that her daughter was abroad. And
		

			by the way, I don't recommend sending your daughters abroad by themselves. You know, she said, her
daughter was abroad. And he she'd met somebody, and she told her parents, she really wants to marry
this person. And they're really worried because she's very young. You know, and same with me, I was
16, you know, the person who I wanted to marry was older than me. But the way my mom handled it, I
share that with with, I shared it with that mother. And I told her, maybe you can learn from
something from this, you know, you might benefit from this. And that is that she, she showed me a
lot of love. That's what she did. She came to Egypt
		

			and hugged me. She said, Oh, my God, this place is terrible. You know, it's, you must have been so
lonely here. She had to go my dad and said, How could you leave? How could you leave our daughter in
this place, like this type of accommodation, and whatever, right? Dad is like, into dropping people
into the deep end, so that they learn to swim. And she basically moved me out of the very lonely
kind of situation that I was in
		

			and moved me in with some really excellent sisters from from the UK, and from America, as flatmates
and that completely changed everything. You know, I think you can't really overstate the importance
of who you're hanging out with, you know, think that's very important. And then my mom did a
wonderful thing. She said,
		

			she was very intimate with me, you know, in the sense that she, she, she was very close to me and
showed me a lot of love, and allowed me to open up to her about what I was experiencing and what I
was feeling. She tried to find out, you know, like, how I had met this person and things like that.
And she realized that I just wanted to marry this person. And so she said, Look, why don't you take
me to his house?
		

			Like, why don't you take me to meet his family, and Allah knows what is good for you. And, you know,
if this is the right person, then we'll help you get married, which was really cool. If I had to
say, Yeah, I would never
		

			with my daughter, right. But that's what I wanted. And literally, I was like, Okay, then, you know,
and I take my mom to his house. And,
		

			and I think just seeing her in the same room as him. Something just happened, you know, like, I just
realized who I was, and what family I was from and why I was in Egypt. And all of those things, you
know, and
		

			I didn't leave this these rose tinted glasses that had been
		

			over my eyes just fell away.
		

			Strange experience. So one moment, I'm a 16 year old who's thinking, This is it, you know, this is
the person there's nothing you know, and that's what happens, isn't it? Like, when you age you think
this is the one sort of thing right? And then the next minute I'm like, oh my god, he doesn't pray.
I
		

			started realizing that the things I was judging him on as being the ideal person. Were not my usual
standards are not the things that really matter, you know. And for some reason, having my mom in the
same room, as him allowed that to happen, that realization.
		

			And so then without even saying anything, my mom said, yeah, so you know, we've started the process.
Let's see. Let's see how it goes. You know, my mom took the fight away from the situation. Do you
see there was no fight that in there anymore? There was no, yes. There's no forbidden fruit? At all?
Yes. You didn't feel the need to rebel against parents authority. Because we've, whether we like it
or not, we've grown up on Disney. Right? Like, we've grown up on Princess Jasmine, you know, wanting
to marry this guy who her dad won't let her Mary and, you know, and he's showing her the world and,
you know, taking her away from the law that's so oppressive, right? We've grown up with that.
		

			That's, that's in there somewhere. And sometimes we don't realize how it's affected us, you know,
but I'm sure it has. And I think the way my mom handled it, men, like you said, there's no, there's
no fight there, there's no, there's no need to rebel, because, oh, I could marry this person, you
know, my parents are not against it. And so then I just slowly stopped wanting to marry that person.
Just happened, it was strange. But my parents were clever enough to know
		

			that that was a sign that I should probably get married. And so I did very soon after that, you
know, they helped me to find somebody and to get married, I think the recipe that you articulated,
which is important. They're giving you the almost the choice, or a little bit of freedom and your
own
		

			volition for decision making, right? But they didn't do that without giving you a foundation, the
way my mom handled it, I encourage parents that, you know, first of all, disowning your children,
right, or kind of throwing them out, that's not going to work in a society that is ready to embrace
them, the society out there is ready to embrace them. There's a world out there that's ready to take
them on if you're going to throw them out. That's never the wait, but I think some parents they do
		

			overreact, you know, in situations. So I think the fact that my parents almost gave me that respect,
you know, they actually you have, you have the right to like somebody, you know, for marriage, you
have the right to, to choose, and to have your own preferences. You know,
		

			I think that's hugely important for this. If it was important to me, it's important to every young
person, especially growing up in the West, because the outside world does give you that respect that
sense anyway, you have freedom, you have autonomy. If your parents don't allow you to feel that,
then of course it's going to have you're going to start feeling like you're being oppressed right