Maryam Lemu – Marriage Gems – What made you decide to get married?

			I
		

			know, the decision for you to get married was not as straightforward as it is for a lot of people.
And I think maybe if we share this story, it'll help those who are planning to get married,
hopefully, to do it, right. So what was behind your decision? Well, the interesting thing is, I'm a
product of polygamy, and the first of 26 children. And growing up, I think the minimum number of
wives My father has had at one time is three, so and life, for us individuals being the sum of our
experiences, that experience of growing up in a polygamy a large polygamy for that matter. With a
lot of children, I learned a lot of things, some very good, some not so good. But that experience
		

			essentially prepared me for the kind of husband I wanted to become for the kind of father, I wanted
to become the kind of partner I wanted to become. So essentially, taught me the do's and don'ts of
having good family life of relating with your wife of being a father, to your children, and so on,
and so forth. So I started deciding on what kind of husband I'm going to be very early in my life, I
should say, by the time I was maybe
		

			10, to 15 years of age, I'd been thinking about the kind of husband I'd like to be and the kind of
relationship I'd like to have with my wife. And I think this is such a reality for so many. We grew
up seeing what our parents do, how they relate with one another. And you are saying that what you
saw the good, the bad and the ugly, you were able to filter and take away the ones that you felt
were not pleasant, you wanted to make sure you do it right. And you don't make the mistake of what
you saw. That was an unpleasant, absolutely, not just in my immediate family, I had uncles and
aunts, and I saw how relationships or marriages were not working as they should. And I was a very
		

			curious child. So I asked my father a lot of questions, when I saw traditional things being done in
the family of the asking me about his religious life that is traditional. And ultimately, it got to
the point where I asked him, On what basis would Allah judge us? Is it going to be on tradition? Or
is it going to be a religion? And my father just looked at me with a smile and said, Fine, it's
going to be on religion. And I'll oftentimes ask him about certain norms that just seemed out of the
ordinary, they didn't seem proper. And he was way ahead of his time. He was honest with me, he would
say, you know, he called me being the eldest son, you say, yeah, that is not the way it's supposed
		

			to be. So earlier on, my father gave me that opportunity to ask, there wasn't that distance between
the Father and the Son, and he was liberal in the sense that I could ask him a ton of questions
about what's right and what's wrong. And that really started me thinking, how am I going to relate
with my wife and I decided very early, it's going to be strictly based on the teachings of the
Quran, and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Sallam