Maryam Amir – Can a woman live on her own

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.