Lauren Booth – How To Get Married l Heart to Heart Advice
AI: Summary ©
The Muslim speaker advises against rushing into marriage and not asking too much for the Herzegovina, as it is a gift given to a woman. He suggests taking the "row packages" seriously and getting advice on it. The segment also touches on various aspects of a family's relationship, including financial and family history, and emphasizes the importance of praying for the best.
AI: Summary ©
Peace be upon you, Lauren Booth here.
So every episode I'm going to be bringing
you some of my tips and truths about
life as a Muslim.
So we're going to kick off with that
contentious issue.
By the way, I'm going to be drinking
during this because I've been trying for the
last half hour to record something that seems
nice and casual, but when you've been a
journalist for 20 years, casual looks like, hey,
how are you guys?
It's really nice to see you.
We'll be back in a casual unless there's
food around.
So this is a, um, oh, it's a
really nice piece of Turkish bread.
Okay, let's get going.
This is me being casual.
Marriage.
So when I came to Islam, I'd just
been divorced about six months.
This was in 2010.
I've been Muslim nine years now.
So this is going to be my ninth
Ramadan coming up.
So I was wondering, how do you get
married?
Now, before Islam, obviously I'd been a journalist,
I'd been on TV, so I had loads
of male friends.
In fact, I would say that I'd been
a misogynist.
What about you?
Have you got many friends of your own
gender?
Or are you addicted to friendships with the
opposite gender and all that flirtatiousness?
Please don't get me drawn into we're just
friends.
Suddenly somebody looks nice.
They're great to be around.
You love their company.
Kind of very similar to a crush.
Anyway, that's where I come from.
That's been my experience.
The number of times before I came to
Islam, I got myself into sticky situations with
guys who said, hey, I just want to
be your friend.
They really didn't.
Anyway, marriage.
Are you looking to get married?
Are you Muslim?
Are you young?
Are you old like me?
I'm over 50.
Just want to get that out there.
I'm not embarrassed about my age.
I think every single age has a joiter
to it.
Tips and truths about marriage.
Are you a new Muslim?
If you are, I wonder if you haven't
heard this.
Type yes below if you have.
All you need is a pious brother.
That's it.
Some of the sahaba, the friends of the
prophet, peace be upon him.
They would marry, the woman would marry, and
the gift would be just a line of
the Quran.
You don't need anything else.
Don't worry.
A believing man for a believing woman.
As long as he's got a beard, as
long as he's got a long shirt on
that goes to the ground, but not to
his ankles, mind you, then you're in like
Flynn.
I'm tired of finding convert sisters sort of
given the dregs of of our community.
A pious man is the very highest in
the community, but what we get offered is
the guy who's got no money, no character,
no dean, no family support, but he knows
a line of the Quran.
Would you let your child get married to
someone like that?
You go to your daughter.
What you should aspire to as a believer
is someone with nothing to offer, no good
manners, but knows one line of the Quran.
So why do you do that to new
Muslims?
I've known too many sisters, and sisters, beware.
You don't need to marry right away, but
marriage is the best form of lifestyle.
Especially in the dean when you're not going
out and you're not doing all this mingling
in the evening and you've got time and
you want to commit to your beliefs and
you want to commit to a family and
a household.
It's brilliant, brilliant.
Get it wrong, it's death, a living death.
So my number one tip, right?
First tip, don't rush into marriage.
Don't marry any old, you know, he'll do.
This one's not married.
We don't know who he is, but just
marry him.
Number two, how about this?
Don't ask too much for the maha, right?
The maha is a gift that the man
gives that's of benefit to the woman, okay?
But it is a gift.
It doesn't have to be something like she
needs urgently.
It's a gift and it's meant to be
weighty enough that it's going to matter if
they break up and he has to take
it back.
And it has to matter that he's got
to give it to the woman.
Do you see?
It's a weighty gift.
It's something that binds them together.
So it shouldn't be nothing.
In fact, I was speaking to Brother Ali
Dower, the YouTuber Ali Dower, about a couple
of weeks ago about marriage and he said,
sisters, in the West, there's no excuse for
less than £3,000, right?
£3,000 is a good barometer.
Brother doesn't have it.
If he loves you, he's going to work
for it.
So tip number two is take the maha
seriously and get advice on that.
Know what it is.
It is an embarrassing thing to say.
Because we all want to say, hang on,
you know what I'm worth?
I'm worth a Lamborghini, my friend.
But I see that happening all around the
Muslim world.
And the pious young brothers don't feel they
can get married.
They're being pushed into extramarital, premarital affairs, zina,
right?
Into sin because the families of the young
girls are saying, we need this Lamborghini and
a house and you need to have, you
know, £50,000 in the bank.
And the brother's like, well, yeah, I'm going
to have to be £40,000 then.
There are certain things that you have a
right to ask and to value and to
want.
That's the looks of the person.
Have they got some wealth?
In other words, can they look after you?
We're not talking a great deal of wealth,
but you know, you're going to be looked
after inshallah.
You've got to like the look of them.
There's got to be attraction.
So many converts, we go into a marriage
and we say, Fissa bilillah, the deen is
enough.
There are different factors you're allowed to ask
for.
And family, good family, really, really important heritage.
Your kids are going to look like this
family.
Yeah, you better get on with them to
a degree or at least think that some
point in the future you can.
It's horrible.
Believe me, it's horrible if the family rejects
you.
Tip number three.
So I was at a young sister's house
the other night, lovely family, Indian heritage, living
in London.
And I said, so she's 23, you're going
to get married then?
And she went, I said, oh no, what's
happened?
I'm really sorry.
Have I put my foot in it?
And the mum said, yeah, something bad's happened.
I said, oh.
She said, let me tell you the bad
thing.
I said, if you're sure.
I said, what is it?
She said, well, we had a meeting with
a boy and his family last year and
it went on.
We had about six meetings over a few
months and then it didn't work out.
They weren't compatible.
I said, that's brilliant.
Brilliant.
Why are you downhearted about that?
Because it didn't work out.
But that's the process.
You're not meant to just take the first
one that comes along.
It's an interview process.
It's the most important interview process of your
life because unlike jobs, which will come and
go and careers, which are changed dozens of
times in a lifetime.
Now, the marriage is the thing that is
the cement.
Believe it.
Believe it as someone who's had divorces.
It's painful.
It wrecks marriages.
You want to get this one right.
You do more interviews for university than you
do for marriage.
Making a mistake.
So I said, that's great news.
So here's the tip.
If you go, if you have like a
few meetings with a brother and it doesn't
work out, it was never meant to be.
That's you being saved from awkwardness or much,
much worse two or three years down the
line.
Right?
Nothing wrong with it.
Nothing bad.
Just go your separate ways.
Leave each other with peace and start again.
And truth is this pray, pray for the
best.
You know, sometimes we get a bit downhearted
and we ask Allah to Allah from the
crumbs of the King of Kings tables.
So imagine if you go, you're invited into
a meeting with a member of a Royal
family.
And when you get there, the King says,
now ask me for anything, anything at all.
What do you want?
Ask me.
And right now I'll give it to you.
And so we're standing there and we see
a cat bowl in the corner and we
think, Oh, that'd be nice for my, can
I, um, yeah, can I have that cat
bowl, please?
The King would say, are you sure that's
all you want?
I can give you anything that you see,
feel here in all of my kingdom.
And you go, no, I'm all right.
I'm good.
Thanks.
Just the cat bowl.
First of all, you'd be a bit rude
because that's a pointless little thing.
You haven't credited the King with what he's
able to give.
You haven't accepted or acknowledged his generosity to
you.
My life turned around six months ago by
the grace of Allah.
When I started really, really praying, really praying
for someone to be everything, everything that I
wanted, deen, dunya, studies, ilm, caring, financial, the
lot.
I said, Oh, you know what, Allah ta
'ala, please just give me the best of
the lot of it for me.
It might not be the best for you,
you know, but the best for me, the
one that matches me.
And guess what?
I got an email from a brother and
it's so far, so good.
Hamdulillah.
So also final one, sisters, don't let anybody
tell you that over 50, you can't get
married.
And don't sisters of any age, don't let
anybody tell you that in the Muslim community,
there aren't good brothers.
They're good brothers.
They're waiting for sisters who don't ask for
Lamborghinis.
Over and out.