Maryam Amir – Can a woman live on her own
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the importance of women being able to live on their own and navigate the digital world, as it is often difficult to find support in society. They also mention the need for a fatwa based on personal preferences and privacy laws, and recommend studying the rights of women to address issues related to women's issues.
AI: Summary ©
Many sisters have asked me whether or not they can live on their own
because they want to study in another state, country, work
somewhere else, and also, especially, particularly because
they experience abuse, emotional, neglectful abuse in the home.
Sadly, many sisters have been taught that the only way they can
live on their own is if they actually get married and leave her
home, which is honestly devastating, because so many
sisters then look to marriage as an escape from their family home,
and sometimes marriage is a more abusive circumstance. Able to get
out of that circumstance, divorce and go back home, they're stuck in
this cycle, and they're made to believe that it's what Islam wants
from them, when, in reality, Islam completely allows for a woman to
live on her own. Ideally, she'd be able to find roommates who she
aligns with support one another in their process. Yes, she can live
on her own as well. And binbaz Rahmatullah Ali, when he was asked
about whether or not a woman can live on her own in another
country, he said, Yes, the proof is simply that there is no
evidence to say that it's not allowed. That is the proof in and
of itself. But I want to navigate with you a fatwa online that
you're going to come across if you look for this question, plenty of
online resources that are really not necessarily representative of
all Islamic scholarship, but rather personal opinion, and I'm
going to share with you how to navigate that. Inshallah, this is
absolutely no hate to this website or the scholar who answered it
respectfully. I don't know anything about either one, but I
just want to give you an outline for how to process what it says.
So first, after being asked if this is permissible, the proof
that they provide as prohibition is the verse and stay in your
homes. We've spoken about this verse in a different video. This
verse has two different recitations, la Karna, oh, or lo
Karna. Lo Karna is to stay in your home. Wa Karna is to be subtle or
tranquil, but even wa Karuna has different understandings amongst
the scholars, whether it means that the default is to stay home,
unless you need to leave, or the default is to be out and about,
but that this specific command came for the Mothers of the
Believers. Rogilo anhon, this scholar, uses this verse to say
that it is a requirement for a woman to really stay at home
unless she needs to leave direly, apparently.
But that's his interpretation of this verse, and he uses it as his
proof for why a woman cannot live on her own to his adhere to his
interpretation of this verse, like she could move out, live on her
own and still mainly stay at home. So it doesn't. It's not a proof in
and of itself. What is his other proof? In Islam, a woman is well
protected by her guardian. This is more important in this era of evil
and immorality. In the past, it was about merely protection of
women from men. Now the issue is even more than that. It's an era
of technologies and social media as well. A person can easily get
caught up in that when one stays with one's guardian, that
decreases the risk of fitna. There's a lot of assumptions being
made here by this individual, and that is about the world and about
society and about social media, all of those things can absolutely
be true, but to make a fatwa based on personal perspective of these
tools and society in general is not really solid evidence in and
of itself, that's personal opinion or personal perspective, without
looking at
clear cut proof. He does, in fact, say, we prefer you to continue
staying with your parents. So there is a personal preference
mentioned, and that's important, the acknowledgement of personal
preference also. This individual comes from a another country, and
maybe in their society, it is very unsafe for a woman to live on her
own, so perhaps that could have been used. The other point is that
there's a mention of staying with one guardian, it decreases the
risk of fitna, but sometimes the Guardian is the person who causes
the fitna. Sometimes the Guardian is an abuser of a man or a woman,
and so leaving that environment is actually safer for the person
living in the home. So sisters, if this is your circumstance, when
you're trying to navigate what to do, please make sure to speak to a
therapist. Please make sure to consult people of knowledge that
you feel comfortable with. But please know that you have options.
And I think it's important for us to recognize that sometimes fatawa
that are widespread online do show one particular perspective that's
not all of Islam, and when we believe that's all of Islam, it
really can start impacting our psyche when it comes to women's
issues, because unfortunately, the vast majority of information in
English when it comes to women's issues are not necessarily
and Breath of Islamic law addressing women and the
incredible rights of women, and I recommend studying those rights
with institutes such as these. I.