Search For The Soul Mate When Where And Why For Muslims With Sister Suzy Ismail

So tonight is going to be very different format from what we usually have at MSA events. Typically we have the speaker that does the formal lecture, and

afterwards is the q&a. But we're not going to have that format today. Today, the whole session will be questions that we've prepared for the speakers. So we're going to be hearing the perspective from the brother side from shakes out this lien. And who's our guest speaker today, and from the sister side with sister Susie, our other guests be here today to get the different perspectives on this these relevant issues to students?

Alright, so first question, for sister Susie, what do you think is the biggest obstacle facing sisters for getting married

and shadow in the law of color.

So it's nice to be back here. And of course, I'll keep my introduction as brief as possible since our time is limited. But it was like a walk down memory lane as I was going through the bush Campus Center, getting the undrinkable coffee from your lambdas. And remembering, you know, the the days that I used to spend here, I'm not going to tell you how many years ago, but suffice it to say that it's a little more than a decade. And, you know, I was in the same position that you guys were in where, you know, the concept of education was, of course, foremost in my mind. But you know, a very close second, if not, like, you know, in one and a half place was the idea of marriage, and the idea

of marriage being always, you know, who am I going to marry? Who am I going to end up with, you know, realizing that the partner that you're going to be with, a lot of times shapes the direction that you like goes into. And I think somebody who said it very well, actually recently was a lecture that I had heard, it was the woman who's the CEO of Facebook, was giving a talk. And she received a lot of flack for saying this. But she said, it doesn't matter what career you choose, it doesn't matter what major you choose, what matters most in your life, to a woman's success, is who she marries. And I felt so Pamela, how true is that, not only in a worldly sense, in terms of what you

can pursue, but also from an Islamic perspective, the person that you marry truly can help determine how successful you're going to be in both being Antonia. And that's why it's such a large decision that occupies our mind a lot of the time. So in terms of the question about what do you think is the biggest obstacle facing sisters for getting married? I would say a lot of times, the obstacle comes from within ourselves that as young women, as men, as well as this goes both ways. We set ourselves up sometimes to have incredible expectations, that we have these visions of marriage as ideas of marriage, that are somewhat unattainable and unrealistic. So you know, for girls, you know, we want

to find our Edward from, you know, the Twilight series for guys, we want to Bella or, you know, whoever else happens to be popular at the time, you know. And so we set ourselves up expecting that this is what we're going to measure whoever it is, that's coming to us by you know, this is what we're going to look for. And unfortunately, it's not the right thing that we're looking for. And even though we don't articulate it all the time, sometimes it's, it's back there. It's something that we think about. And you know, what, there was a funny joke that was circulating around about a young man who was not very attractive. I mean, he was downright ugly, okay, you know, and

he wanted to marry a woman, and the woman was very attractive. And so we went to her and you decided to ask her, and he said, you know, would you marry someone who was unattractive? And she said, Yes, of course. You know, I look for what's on the inside of someone. And then he said to her, no, no, would you marry someone who's really ugly? And she said, of course, yes. You know, the deen is important. That is important. And then she asked her, you know, would you marry someone that was like, horribly ugly? And then she said, Yes, yes, of course. It's all about what's on the inside. And then he said, what would you marry someone like me? And then she said, Okay, now you're pushing

it. So it's this idea that on our tongues, we're always saying, This is what I want. And you know, it's all about the deen. It's all about that. But a lot of times when push comes to shove, what we want is an ideal that's hard to attain an ideal that's not really realistic. So sometimes that's one of the obstacles that we find within ourselves. So I've talked about another obstacle.

Really quick, okay.

from just a religious viewpoint, right now, a lot of times we we memorize the idea, we recognize the A Oh, we see the eye on the wedding invitations all the time, that describes the marriage relationship, the air from student to room, that mentions mawatha in the relationship, right. And the ISS talks about the marriage relationship, and it says, Let us know, which means finding tranquility, through love and care. And so many times we miss interpret marriage, or we please the concept of marriage, not with a sense of serenity and tranquility, but with a sense of fireworks.

excitement and passion. And, you know, I usually do this in every event that I speak to, I like to print out the flyer that the event creators made, nobody has to raise their hand to tell me who made this. Okay, no, I really want to know,

whoever made this flyer, it has one thing in common with most of the flyers that these college events usually put together. And the thing that's in common is that there's always the color red, somehow embedded in the in the flyer, you know, either in a heart or in flying rose petals coming down from the sky majestically. But there's always something related to the color red. And when we think of the color red, the color red does not describe serenity, it does not describe tranquility. No, the color red is the color they hold in front of the bull's eyes when they want to make the bowl angry. And yet we we love with the color red. And so we equate this search for the idea that we're

going to find someone who's going to make us insanely passionate, who is going to we're gonna have see fireworks all the time. When in reality Allah subhanaw taala describes the relationship for us in marriage as one that will give us tranquility, through our through care and love. And we can talk about with them a little bit as well.

Okay, so she said, What do you think is the biggest obstacle for brothers trying to get married and have their level of bladder renal salatu salam can be a person who was say they were happy. We know her Madonna. He also want me to send every sinner to a woman if temporarily had

a woman or a man and I love my love tonight and I can't

live now by in Cairo. No one thought it was in Ghana, but I don't mean.

Okay, so I actually found this question to be quite interesting.

Because Well, before I get to why I found a tree interesting. I get the chance to part of like my career. My job now is for those of you don't know, I teach for level two Institute. So pretty much every weekend, I'm going from community to community

across North America, and even like Europe, in the UK and stuff. So question like this, if no pencil person wrote the question, I'm not saying to you, but

it's, I think it's too general. Right? I don't think

there's one obstacle or two obstacles that everyone is facing. And I think it's, it's really specific to the individual. Yeah, there are certain overlying obstacles that everyone faces. But I think as an individual, we each face different obstacles when it comes to issues in our life. And this is why even like the issue of giving it to us and stuff like that, I'm totally against people going online and finding a general photo and then applying it to their life. Right. I honestly feel like our communities need scholars, they need people of knowledge that people can have a relationship with where they can go talk to them, get their advice, and get their help, etc, etc. So

question like that, to me is a little bit too general. If you look at even like the difference between, especially like, with young guys, the difference between the religious crowd, and the non religious crowd, there's a good portion of the non religious crowd around this age. They're dealing with a conflict of their parents want them to get married, or they feel like they're supposed to getting married, but deep down inside, they're like, why should I get married right now? And that's pretty much what this society teaches us.

Where we feel like, if you are not worried about protecting your chastity, you're not worried about being modest, not worried about protecting your deen? Then Really? What reason? Would you have to get married? That's probably the thing about my life sometimes. And I think about those of you that don't know, I wasn't a practicing Muslim my whole life. And I think about if I've continued to live my life, as a non practicing Muslim, somebody who did not care about the purpose of my life, or don't, I didn't think about the purpose of my life. I often tell this to people. And I often actually hear a lot of people say this, well, I say, why would you get married? Right? If you can

just sleep around and do whatever you want? Have fun. And why would you do this? Why I used to find a lot of like young guys that are not religious, or they don't have any, anyone pushing them to be religious, they find themselves in a position where they're like, yeah, let me just have fun for as long as I can, right until my parents or my mom absolutely forces me to get married. And then on the other hand, you have like the religious, religious crew, or the religious crowd, were the brothers, they understand that one of the purposes of marriage is to protect themselves from falling to fitness trials. And also the person said, them told us it's half our religion, etc, etc. And they

face their own set of challenges. So for example, one of the main challenges that I've heard when talking to different brothers, is the whole financial challenge. Am I ready to get married? What does it mean to be ready?

Is it important for me to finish my school and college or whatever? A lot of days, parents, for example, will say, you have to get your medical degree before you can get married, which is like 1215 years, right? And the guy's like, Listen, I can't wait that long. I want to protect my theme. If I want to protect myself. I need to get married before that. And the struggle with the parents. Sometimes it's not being able to meet the expectations of

Somebody that you want to propose to, etc, etc. So like I said, I don't, I don't like generalizing and saying this is the one problem that everyone's facing or this is the main problem. I think on individual people are dealing with their issues, their own separate issues. A lot. Okay, and

it's not to general How does the brother know that he's ready to get married? Okay. This question actually has, I would say, two parts. If you're asking me, how does the person know if they're ready to get married for the *ty our perspective or what to *ty or absolutely requires a view, because the *ty I also talks about the ability, as opposed to them said, Mr. Chabot, Minnesota, I'm in quit up again. So what he said Oh, young people, whoever is able to get married, whoever can afford to get married, then they should get married. And whoever is not able to, then they should lower their gaze in one narration, and another narration mentioned that they should fast. So the

Shetty also talks about the ability or doing being able to afford to get married, the ability actually falls into different categories. Number one, you have the financial ability or the financial capability to get married. And I think that's one of the things that a lot of people, a lot of young people do want to get married. That's one of the things that is obvious to them, some of the obvious issues, where they don't feel like they're financially ready, this *ty out requires a view and that we're seeing from a purely 50 perspective, the *ty requires from you that you are able to provide for your spouse for the basic necessities that you can provide for

them. Obviously, those expectations change and like modern society, where our basic necessities are not so basic anymore. So that's, that's the first answer. The first thing that are part of that, as some scholars mentioned, if you are part of having the means to provide for someone is that you have some type of a trade. And that's how they mentioned that back in the day, what that means is, for us, it means you have a means of obtaining money. So you have some type of profession, something that you can kind of count on and say, Okay, if I have this I can, I will be able to inshallah Tada, provide for my spouse. So when a father is looking to have his daughter married off, this is one of

the things that they should be looking for. It's not an issue of this, whether this person is rich or not, it's issue of, do they have the capability? Or have they reached a place in their life where they have some type of trade, some type of skill, where they can get married, and it doesn't have to be like, you don't be a doctor, you don't be engineer, you can be like a blacksmith, right? It could be like, somebody who fixes shoes, it doesn't matter. But the issue is like, would you be able to make a living no matter how small or how big. So that's the first thing when it comes to ability. Secondly, and this is something which the scholars the past often talk about. And that is, are you

educated enough to get married? But what I'm talking about here is not like a bachelor's or a Master's or PhD, I'm talking about religious education, do you understand what you need to know in order to get married? So the scholars, the pastor would say that it is actually forbidden for a person to get married if they don't understand the rulings of marriage and divorce. Right. So before you get into a marriage, before you get into relationship, do you even understand the rulings or the things that the *ty AI requires of you? So that's, that's another that comes under ability as well. Also, underneath that, the ability I think, for our times, another thing that was important to

understand is the issue of

EMI educated about the opposite gender. Do I know anything about marriage to begin with, apart from like the flip rulings, and then one of the problems that I see, and I want to say across America across like the Western world, is, there was this really recent trend? I would say in the last, like, 1015 years or so, when a lot of young people started getting religious. They were told, like, Listen, the Sunnah is that you get married young, right? And they will say, okay, that's great. You know, as soon as you get married young, I want to protect my Deen, I want to stay out of fitna and get married young. And we went ahead and got like a lot of young people married. And what we saw is

that there was a lot of problems with divorce in those relationships. And these are practicing quote, unquote, religious brothers and sisters, people who have you considered to be like, religious, and they're good, and all that kind of stuff. And the question is, why are they still getting divorced? Like, what's the problem? Are they bad Muslims? Are they not pious? Are they whatever, whatever. And one of the issues, one of the things that we have seen, you might be able to add to this on this, from my experience when talking to people, and doing like couples, counseling, and all that, especially with young people, because I do work moreso with young people is that you

may find a brother, he enters into a marriage, and he doesn't know how to relate to a woman. He doesn't understand the simple fact that a woman will have a different perspective at times, that a woman in certain situations will think very differently than you and there's nothing you can do to change her. Right? You can make her think the way you're thinking. Right and that's just a different perspective looking at it. So a guy may not even understand the same thing on a sister side. They may not understand that in certain ways, guys,

Just think differently, and they perceive things differently. And not understanding that basic fact, can cause a lot of problems early on in the marriage,

not understanding the basics of marriage and relationships, not understanding, like a lot of guys are getting married, not understanding that they're now responsible for another human being, like, my whole life was responsible for myself. And that's it. Right now, after one a household. Now I have to like to budget, my finances and stuff like that. So educating yourself about what marriage really is. And I honestly believe we do have this romanticized idea of what marriage is, don't get me wrong. If a marriage is right, there's a lot of romance in it as well. But that's not all marriages, along with the romance and all the good times or whatever, it's, it's a huge

responsibility. And there's a reason why the prophets have a lot, I send them all that half of your religion, if it wasn't a big responsibility, what would give it the merit to be considered half of your religion? Obviously, there's a lot that's going to be required from you. And obviously, there's a lot of room for reward as well, if you're patient and if you're able to deal with those things. So I would say like a person needs to look at those types of things. And, and ask themselves, okay, like, Am I at the position? Am I at the place now? Where I'm ready to get married? Right? Or I? Or am I at least educating myself? Take care of business, trying to get married? Out of curiosity?

How's the tip of love class? Come here? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I personally say it's incumbent upon any person wants to get married to take that class. Right? Because you do deal with like the flip of marriage and divorce and other things like that.

So sister, Susie, you have one does the sister know that she's ready to get married?

I think it's a very interesting question to their respiratory systems. Because, you know, as a mother, you know, I have the two girls and a son. And I can tell you, my four year old who loves to dress up with, you know, the the bridal veil and the gown and whatnot, she's ready to get married now. I mean,

and again, it's because of that idea of that romanticized notion of what the wedding is like, and you know, the flowers and you know, Mommy, I get to be a princess and things like that. So it's, it's, when you think about from an Islamic perspective, the point of view of recognizing when someone is ready to be married, there's two elements involved. There's Cindy, laku, and sendinblue. So Central Africa is from a mental standpoint, that is the mind ready to take on this responsibility and just touched upon some very important points in terms of understanding what marriage entails. And knowing enough about it before you're ready to even embark upon that path. And soon, and, of

course, is the physical maturity, which happens most times way before the mental maturity happens. So you need to have a connection of the two. But I think what we see in our society today, and we see particularly among you know, our communities is, we have parents, a lot of times we have ads, we have uncles who pressure us, and we'll put an age and say, You know what, you know, Amina, she's 21, and she got married, you're 25, what's wrong with you? Why don't you marry jack, you know, and the same thing for the brothers. Sometimes they'll say, Come on, brother, you know, you graduated, you got a job, what are you waiting for, it's time to get married. And a lot of times, it's this

pressure, this push, you reach a certain age, and you're going to expire. So make sure you get married. And it's enough to cause people to enter a relationship sometimes to enter the marriage without reaching that signal up without reaching that mental maturity, that really tells you already to get married. And the age is different for many different people. It all depends on where you are in terms of your life, where you are, where you're heading, what point you're at. And if you are ready to enter upon that responsibility, if you're ready to take that upon you. And he knows upon a lot of you know, one of the best examples, of course, that we have is the marriage of those who sell

the law, how to sell them. And so tonight, now we know the marriage of those two sides and on the job, there was a large age difference versus when I

was much older than I did on how it was much younger. Yet we know the connection, but those who saw send them

as a lineman was a very strong connection. And both individuals were very ready for marriage, they have that mental maturity regardless of the age. And I think that's where we get into trouble sometimes where we try to put an age on something, and we think, and you know, it's upon alignment. But as I said, all of my memories are kind of coming back to me being at Rutgers here. But I remember I was I was 19. And I was at a gathering and one of the Auntie's had come to me, and she said to me, you know, how old are you? So I said, I'm 19. She said to me, you know, what? A girl She's like a flower. She reaches age 18. And she blooms, and then she dies.

So, you know, and I understood what the analogy was, what the metaphor was, but that was really hurtful. I was like, oh, man, I gotta start looking, you know, and it's and these are the things that we do within our society.

Sometimes that make us feel like we have to get married right now, when we ourselves are not fully sure we ourselves don't fully know whether or not we're ready. So it's important for us to look within ourselves. You know, I usually when I give these talks, I use the example of that movie Jerry Maguire. And I think I'm dating myself by using that example. Because like most of the like, new generations are like, how what? What movies? Do you have you guys seen Jerry Maguire? Yeah. What's the famous lines? And if you've heard we talked about this before, don't answer. Okay. What's the famous lines? And Jerry Maguire?

You had Matt. Hello, you said.

Anyone else? Any other famous signs in German wire? Yeah. Okay. Usually I ask the question, and the guys will answer, Show me the money.

And then the girls will answer you complete me. So the line that I always think of what I think of that movie is that line you completely. But so many times before we enter our marriage, we think that we're going to find someone that's going to complete us, we look for that person that's going to complete us. And we take that idea that shows I just mentioned about the completion of our Dean, half of our dean and think it's a completion of ourselves think that by getting married, we're going to find our other half. And in reality, that's not when you should be at a point that you're seeking marriage. In reality, you need to be complete, you need to already feel whole, you need to have a

right direction that you're going, you need to have your goals, you need to have your dreams before you decide that you're ready to get married before you're ready to seek that other half that society tells us we're supposed to find. And I think also another dilemma that we're running into that we see today is that we are educating our women, we're telling our women go to college, get your bachelor's, don't stop there, get your masters after your masters get your PhD. No, that's not enough, get a medical doctorate. Now, you know, and continue to get educated get educated. And yet many times we have these women who are educated, who are able to articulate and who have reached

that mental level over food have having that up. Yet at the same time, we have men who will come and say, you know, I have my bachelor's, now I have my doctor, I have whatnot. But you know, I want someone who just finished college or I want someone who's still in college, or guess you know, I don't mind, I'll marry someone with a good degree. Of course, you know, careers are very important. But I would like her to stay home and then cook and clean and take care of the children. And there's something that's not matching up here. It's causing a problem. On one hand, we're telling our women to seek education to better themselves. And yet at the other hand, we're telling our men find

someone who will cook and clean and take care of your home. And that's not what was happening. At the time of those who serve alone, it was said that that's not the pathetic examples that we have, that we should look for.

So how does the sister go about finding a brother to get married to? And how does she know that he's the right one? After she does, and how does she get to know him? Okay, so that's a loaded question. That's a whole bunch of stuff, right?

You know, for many of us, you know, many of us are the children of immigrants, right? Many of us come from parents who came from overseas, who came from a time where either their marriages were arranged. And, you know, a good friend of mine was telling me the marriage story of her parents. And she said, you know, her, her father had been living here in the United States. And he went to India, and he said, I would like to get married. And so they gave him three names. And he kind of went, ah, yeah, this one, and we pointed to the first one. And they said, okay, you know, and they, they went to speak to my friend's mother, the friend's mother, you know, really had no say in it. The parents

said, He's good. He goes to America, you know, you'll you'll be set for life. But he's the one. And then she traveled to United States without seeing him at all. And they were married, and hamdulillah. I mean, 35 years later, it worked out for them. But I don't think they ever had this issue of how are we going to know each other? You know, are we going to get to know each other? How do I know you're the right one, you know, me. And Avi said, you're the right one, and you're the right one. And so many of us come from families where this was tradition, or we see it happening around us, we have aunts, uncles, cousins, we have people who didn't have this question of finding

their own spouse of finding out if it was the right one, or if this is the right person for them. And so many of us today, we're not quite sure how to go about doing it. And our parents are at a total loss because they're like, I don't know how to do this, go find someone and you come back or the opposite end, I'll find someone for you. And I'll tell you who it is. So we're coming in this in this age where we're not quite sure how to go about doing it. So how do we do it? There are lots of options these days, some more interesting than others.

Honestly, and I know some of you may not raise your hand, but how many of you have ever been to a matrimonial dinner? And it's not an acknowledge or? Come on? I know some of you have I won't put you on the spot, but that's okay. This is what new innovative ways that our communities are trying to solve this problem having these matrimonial dinners right where it's a little bit like Helen speed dating, I guess kind of right. You get a little egg timer. They put her on the table. You know you get three minutes with the person and the

a chaperone event of course. And then you hop over to the next table, and then the next table. And I asked you at the end of two hours of hopping and hopping and hopping, have you found the right person? Have you gotten to know anyone? No. And so even though this is a step in trying to form this community concept, trying to form a way and avenue for marriage, it's not really the best or the most viable option that we have right now. So instead, we have other ways we try to come up with our own ways of, of getting to know someone or figuring out if it's the right person. So we're sitting in calc class, and we have, you know, Muhammad or Judo sitting two rows down, right. And we look

over and we see my Hemet, and he's always studiously taking notes. And you're always looking at the board. And, you know, I want to see my helmet when you know, I don't know what the somebody sitting next to him drops the papers, Mohammed scoops up the papers, look.

At this must be a good one. You know, look, look how nice he is. And he's always on time and whatnot. But what do we do? We see Muhammad from afar, and we think this might be the one but we don't know what to do. And that's because we've lost that concept of the oma, we've lost the connection, where we have someone trustworthy, when we feel like we can go to someone within the community and say, Listen, you know what, I'm open age now where I'm ready to be married. And I believe that there may be someone who could be a good match to me, what's the next one, and we don't have that anymore, we're missing. And we need to get back to that we need to have the money, we need

to have that third person. Because at the time of Rasulullah, sallAllahu, wasallam. Once again, I'm speaking from a woman's perspective, because we have the example in front of us. That's deja, when she saw the actions of the youth of Hamas on the low it was Allah. And she saw that he was truly that I mean, he was so trustworthy, right. And when he traveled with her manservant, and the manservant will come back and tell her, I have never seen anyone as trustworthy. I have never seen anyone as kind in his dealings with people. I've never seen anyone who truly knew how to interact with other people.

And who was already a widow, at that time, knew that this man had the characteristics that would make a good spouse, she knew that this was the person who truly make make the partner for her that work in the dunya in America. And so what did she do? You know, she didn't go up to those who saw Salah she didn't, you know, poke him on Facebook, or you know, or tweet, or, you know, or text them or know, she went to someone that she could trust, she went to a trustworthy person. And she asked that person she said, she expressed the interest. And so the friend went to those sorts of a low Hollywood salon, and said to him, she asked him, What do you think of marriage? So she didn't just

go and say, ooh, somebody likes you. I know, someone who would know, with respect with adapt in a subtle way. She asked her su sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, what do you think of marriage? And so the source of a lot of them answered, if I had the means and the right opportunity presented itself I would marry. And so she said to him, what do you think of the job?

And so that I saw, So Laura said, like, in his humility, and his humbleness, if you look down? And he said, Oh, no, no, she is far above me. And status, you know, she would never agree to marry people. And so the friend smiled and said, No, you should look into it. You know, she didn't say, she wants to marry you go for it, though. She smiled, and suddenly, and in that way, but also, it's a loss of love knew that this was an indication of someone that was interested in him. And so he was able to pursue it. And of course, we know the marriage.

And we know in a different scenario, of course, we deny a shadow jolanda. It wasn't an eye shadow. This is something that not not many people know, but she was actually engaged, her parents had her engaged to someone else before that, as well. So alojado is Allah and then say, a vaca. In his wisdom, as a father, he realized that the connection between the denial, and the Salah will be one that would far surpass any other connection. And so she became engaged.

And once you reach those age that we talked about cinnamon roll, that's the mental state and the physical state, right. And of course, at that time, we said, the ages variable at that time, that age was much younger than it is today of reaching that goal and that rule. And once you reach that age, and she became this way.

And so, you know, I think sometimes like with this conversation, we have to shift the idea of always saying, How do I know that he's going to be the right person? Or how do I know that she's going to be the right person, because truly, you will ever know if someone is the right person. Because we can look at studies, for example, that show the highest percentage of divorces in America. And this was pulled primarily non Muslims, the highest percentage of divorces in America occur among those who have lived together prior to being married or have dated for two or more years. So those people who live together are the ones that are most likely to have to not have success in their marriage.

So what does that tell you? Even if you live with someone, you're not going to know them? You know, that also selasa lambda has told us as Meredith, that there's three ways that you can know an individual right either traveling with them

doing business with them, or seeing how they interact dealing with them and in their livelihood in their in their day to day with family and friends. So I'm not telling you that when there's a potential person out there, you know, Mohammed's in calc class, you know, don't go invite him for a trip in Bermuda or Mexico. No, that's not how you're going to know Him not not that kind of traveling. Okay. But find out about the person. Let's form that community. And let's, how about oma have someone within the MSA for instance, is there a chaplain here at Rutgers? I believe there is right? She has with us, I believe it's a chocolate, right? The chocolate has connections, he knows

people have a trusted individual that you can go do that. You can say, you know, I've reached that age where I'm ready for marriage. I know, this is potentially what I'm looking for, and have that third person be there. I mean, there's no reason for us to deviate. It's been done for how many years? At the time of lawsuits, a law sudden the marriage was done. Right. Let's go back to doing marriage. Right.

Okay, and she's sad for the other side. How does a brother go about finding a sister to get married? And how does she know that she's the right one? Okay, before I get into question, the line You complete me, I guess for a lot of this generation that was in line that the Joker said to Batman, right.

One of the things that Zelma said when she she alluded to her, she said pretty much in I'd like to reiterate that point is how things worked at the time of the prophets otherwise send them back in the time of crisis send them people when they got married, they may not have like hung out together. But they knew who the other person was, because it was a very tight knit community. And if somebody were to say, like I showed the daughter of a backhoe, everyone knew who she was everyone knew what her character was like, or when your family was like, and so when somebody would go into a relationship, they wouldn't know what type of person they're married. And the dilemma that a lot of

young people are facing now is we don't have like those top communities don't really exist. And we don't have people where we can say, you know, I know this person, I feel comfortable. I've known what they're like their whole life, and not jumping into something jumping into unknown territory, right, or shark infested waters or anything like that. And so I think for one of the brothers for the brothers, one of the challenges is, like she said, it's also for the sisters, is how do I know I'm marrying the right person? Or how do I know this person not going to change? One of the things that my one of my shifts, he said to me, in Medina, we were talking about marriage, and this is

during were studying the fifth book, marriage and divorce. And he said, he said, you know, so a lot of them a shadow of the past, they would say that you don't truly get to know your wife until five years of marriage, right on my ship five years of marriage, like what does that make sense? Like, for five years, you don't know who your wife is, rather than after five years has value not akin to somebody who, like somebody else? He's like, Yeah, he said, even though that's the case,

you when you when you're in a relationship, you grow together, and it's that point, it's not a shock, it's just that you are comfortable with who the person is at that point. Right? So the idea of having like the right one or the perfect one, and I have like a personal jihad against that for finding that right one or the perfect one or that soulmate.

Like the whole concept of the soulmate. I know it's like controversial subject and whatever. But I personally like I don't I'm not down for the whole soulmate thing, right? I don't really see

the validity of of looking for your soulmate. And that's what like one of the things that Hollywood and romantic comedies and Disney stuff like that, they tell you that there's this one perfect soulmate out there for you. I mean, if if my soulmate, you mean, Allah has decreed for you to marry someone, then sure you have a soulmate, no problem, no arguments here. However, if you mean that your soulmate is this person, that as soon as you meet them, you're going to have this magical connection, fireworks are going to go off in the back, and they're going to be perfect, and they're not going to make any mistakes. And they're going to make you happy all the time. And they will be

you'll always be on the same wavelength, never any issues. And that is just not real, right? That just doesn't exist. And the one of the problems that we are facing is looking for perfection, as his sister said, perfection doesn't exist in this life. Right. Perfection is for the Oscar and for a Mises origin. Right? There's a reason why Eliza's origin created paradise for us, right? Because it is in Paradise, that we will find perfection and be like this is perfect. Right? Well, we started looking for perfection in this life. There's there's two main problems. Number one

is that you may spend your whole life searching and never find this person. Because that perfection doesn't exist, right? There's nobody who's going to be absolutely perfect. Secondly, the second problem with that is that even if you do find someone, sooner or later, you're going to be like, wait, I thought you were supposed to be perfect. And then you're going to get upset, thinking well, maybe this isn't my soulmate, right? And you'd be like, well, I don't know if we're supposed to be together because we're not perfect.

Together, right? And one of the things actually talked about in my class, because the * shilling the class I'm teaching next weekend in Java is the is like how

TV and movies and like what effect they have on us and how Hollywood affects us. And I actually do talk about the concept of romantic comedies and how they've affected us. Right. And what we what we see in romantic comedies, one of the things that we're reading the same read comedies in Hollywood, is that it's beginning to affect relationships. I don't know if you know, there's a there's a study that found that couples who sit down and watch romantic comedies together are more likely to get divorced. Right? They're more likely to get ironically, right? Ironically, they're more likely to get divorced. Why? It's because like, the guy is sitting and the girl sitting like the couple

sitting watching, like the notebook or something. And like the sister, she looks at the TV, she sees Ryan Gosling. And she's like, oh, my god, she's so perfect or whatever. And she looks over at her husband.

She sees this, she looks at him. She's like, and he's been wearing those same grimy pajamas. For the past, like two weeks, where is my Ryan Gosling? Right? And these expectations that we begin to build, it's problematic, right? So the right person.

I don't think there is like that perfect soulmate, right? And the whole concept of once you find that person like there, you'll have no more problems. That just simply doesn't exist. I think, I think she mentioned this as well. We need to get past that and start looking at the real issues and start looking for things like compatibility. One of the ways to supplement the whole lack of having that tight knit community is having people acknowledged or respected people in your community, like like she mentioned the story of Tarsus, alum and Khadija viola, where do you have people in your community that you could go to, and if you go by if you go to like certain communities where the

Imam is well respected, and the Imam, respected by everyone in the in the community, you'll find that guys and girls do go to the female, and the male will say, yeah, there's this person that you should get to, you should, maybe this person is the right person for you to marry, he'll bring them together and talk them or whatever. And that's very, very helpful. I think we need more of that, right? We need more of that where we have people have knowledge, or people are respected in committee that we can go to, and seek to help them. Always, always, always the best is to go back to the so now the pastor said, right, where we try to bring that, like, that asked me to like what made

what made what made marriages successful in the time of the prophecy setup. Right? Not to say that divorce didn't occur at time. Obviously, it did. And that's normal. It's part of life. However, what worked back then. And one of the things that worked was, like I said, People knew each other, right? So you know, internet Internet's internet, like matrimonial sites and all that stuff. That's fine. I mean, I, I guess, like, there is a place for that. And it can be used for your benefit. But in the end of the day, like when you want to marry someone, there's certain like key questions that you need to ask and not just ask me, do you need to know the answers to that? Sometimes, like, I know,

what happens is like the brothers and sisters, they have like these set of five questions they send and then you send it back and you get like these perfect answers. And it's like, I don't even know if this is like just written up just for me, is this person going to change like five days into marriage or whatever. So it's really like, knowing someone who knows that person. And that's really the ideal and that's what we need to strive towards? Big Questions like, do we have the same goals in life? Right? Like my one of my goals is I want to become a better Muslim. I want to educate myself about my Deen. I want to get closer to Allah azza wa jal, if you're not on the same

wavelength when something like that, then that's like a big issue. Right? Things like, do you want kids? Or how many kids do you want? Or how do you see raising your kids? Things like that? They're big issues. Things like,

how do I want this person to be sometimes people get into relationships, thinking, I'll change this person, right? Like, somehow, let me just marry this person, because everything seems right right now. And then whatever I want, whenever I want her to be, inshallah, I'll make her be that person, or she will become that person. And one of the things psychologists often talk about is how you should never ever enter a relationship thinking that you're going to be able to change the person, it's not fair to you, it's not fair to the person thinking that you're going to be able to change them, marry them for who they are, if they become a better Muslim, or if they've become better than

100. That's good, right? But to go to a relationship expecting to change this person, it's it's very problematic. So ask yourself that question. Like, am I pleased with the person the way they are right now? Right? Questions like, how does this person treat the people around them? What is their relationship like with their with their parents, with their siblings or their cousins with their community?

Do they have a job they want to do they want to keep their career etc. So these are big questions. And these are the questions that we need to get back to. I'm going to close this section with the issue.

Have staccato, one of the beautiful things about staccato is that we take the means, and then we leave the decision. And we leave not the decision, but we leave the outcome in the hands of a lot of Georgia as allies or just says no put on, either I'm definitely not cut out a lot, then once you have made the decision, then put your trust in a lot. And a lot of times people think of is the Hata. And they think it's like, you're gonna get like a magic answer, right? You think it makes kata it's gonna become clear to them, they can have a dream, or like ETS that accompany them while they're sleeping. And tell them like this is the person who's most American, it doesn't work like

that. When you're making it harder. It's more about placing your trust in allies origin, that when you end up making a decision, that decision is good for you. And if it's not good for you, a lot is gonna pull you away from that decision. That's your choice the color is. So when you make it harder, and you marry someone, right, you've taken all the means you make it harder, you marry someone, and then you don't find hearts, we don't find it's like impossible to arrange for a while makes it easy and you marry this person. Now it's time to say Listen, this is the person. This is my soulmate, right? This is a lot decreed for me to marry. Right? So having that peace of mind and not looking

back at that point, right after you're married a lot. Okay, and then you kind of already talked about this already. But when a brother does find someone that he's interested in, how does he go about, you know, taking the next step? Okay. How do you go about taking the next step? Basically, you send her a text message,

just

the process of, you know, okay, one of the things you have to realize is the way our city is set up, right? It's set up that way for our benefits set up that way for the benefit of society as a whole. So if you look at like why Allah azza wa jal, for example, made alcohol How long? It's it may not the individual may not see the benefit of that. But on a societal level, you realize that you realize the benefit of the HCA mobilizes OSHA to make alcohol, how long so when a lot as origin places certain boundaries and gives us certain parameters. In like our interaction with someone that we're not married to. There's always the hikma and there's a wisdom behind that. So the fact that

the *ty art requires us to go to the wedding, right? The person like her father or brother, whoever makes it will help her make that decision, whoever is responsible for her, having that person involved is for our own benefit. And one of the main benefits that comes out of going to the wedding of the of the sister is it's like a sure way to keep things head up. Right? And one of the tricks of shed bond is to come to you and tell you that you don't really need a wedding, you're a good person, you're not going to cross the boundary. Right? That's one of the tricks or should I thought because it's a slippery slope shaitan doesn't work. Like isn't come tell you right away,

like go commit sin, you'll be like, Are we the bill, I would never do that. Right? This is why shaitaan works in the foot a lot and steps. And one of the ways to protect ourselves from these steps of radon is to take the proper means and precautions. So when we take the precaution of having a woody and being careful about you know, not crossing certain boundaries, or protecting ourselves. And one of the other wisdoms of doing things the right way is that we save ourselves from falling in love. And you may think that's weird. Or maybe like, why would I say that? Why wouldn't you want to fall in love, we should fall in love. It's excellent to fall in love. It's required for a

relationship to work, to fall in love. However, you fall in love after you get married. If you fall in love before you get married, then there's so much you're missing out on. First and foremost, you're missing out on the outcome of having a relationship which is hella and has the blessings of Allah azza wa jal in the relationship because you started things off in the wrong way. Secondly, and some of this something that you see a lot in Muslim communities now is where it likes a guy and girl talk or they like state or whatever, they will call it dating. But they talk and they get involved. And they believe or they they fall in love, right? So they feel like I love this person. And because

of their love, what will end up happening is they'll end up overlooking serious issues, right? Because they're like, I'm love. They believe in the concept of a soulmate, like I feel this way through this person, everything else doesn't matter. And then like five years later, or a couple years later, the realities of being marriage hits you. And you like you forget about that crazy love you felt in the beginning that first like, initial love that you felt, and then you're dealing with real situations now. And I've dealt with cases where a father came to me and he said, My daughter or my son wants to marry a non Muslim. Right, irrespective of the ruling of whether it's hot out not to

marry non Muslim, the the couple will usually say listen, we're in love, we will overcome the difference of religion of the difference of faith. Right? And what ends up happening a lot of the times is that they're not thinking about what they're what's going to happen when they have kids, and you have like Christmas and eat or whatever, like how are you going to deal with that issue. The issue of teaching your kid for example,

That Jesus, as I said, is not the Son of God. Right? That we cannot worship God, we cannot make the call out to Jesus and things like that these are serious issues. Right? And because of the whole falling in love issue, people just overlook that and bypass that. And they're basically they're setting themselves up to fail.

So, yeah, a lot of

for the sisters, if they find someone that they're interested in, how do they take the next step?

The areas where we're going to find compatible Muslim brothers and compatible Muslim sisters, many times what will happen is, again, let's go back to calculus class, right? And we'll go back to the 100. Mohamed sees, I don't know God, or something Judy comes in and Judy says, Hey, Mom, what's up? And Moses says, Hey, Judy, how's it going? I know, he talks to Judy and Judy talks about all kinda, you know, no touching going on, I think, but they're like, Hey, what's up? What's up, and then Mohammed gets up, and he starts walking down the aisle. And he sees Amina Amina, who's been checking behind my desk, right, who was behind, but he might be good potential husband material, and the

hammock looks down. Right? He won't even say Sam, or if he's

mumbling, he was just talking to God, but he can say Salaam to Amina, because we have this dichotomy kind of this idea that if I look at a Muslim sister, if I talk to a Muslim Sister, I still follow that's it. You know, I'm committing huddle on something horrible. But if I say Hey, what's up to Judy, then? That's cool. Because it's just Judy, you don't know. It's not cool. It's not okay to say what's up to Judy. And then when it comes to me that you can't even say Santa Monica to her. And I think this is a really big part of the problem of what do we do when we're interested in someone? What does this have to do if she is interested in someone? And let's say she can't find that

trustworthy? Third person? She can't find that? Mm. She's uncomfortable. She's not sure. So what does she do? I mean, does she just flounder? Does she just wait? No. I mean, Shipside mentioned something very important here. The idea of praying is an absolutely i mean, the concept of diet, the concept of consistently praying, making God Allah, Allah will bless you with that partner, that person that will help you in sha Allah, as I said, game dunya and is very important. But Allah, Allah has also commanded us to take action. So it's the difference between Taiwan and Taiwan.

That when we sit at home, you know, eating a big bag of Doritos, and you know, I know flipping through sports center, whatever it is, and think that's okay. Allah is going to send me the wife, you know, a law is going to send me the husband, all I have to do is make that please a law center sooner rather than later. No, no, no, no, that's cool. That's not taking the actions that are required to view to make sure that you are heading in the right direction. But what Paul means you do everything that you can, and you know that Allah, Allah is the best of all planners. When I say everything that you can, this doesn't mean the back door, you know, the ping or the or the Poke, or

the I don't know what you guys are doing now online. But you know, you know, for many people, I think this is the easiest route, almost the idea of going onto Facebook, or going onto Instagram, or Pinterest, or whatever it is, and you know, making the duck face that, like, you guys know what I'm talking about with the doctor face, right, you know, making the duck face Oh, take a picture of this one. This one's a good one, you know, I'm putting up the duck face up that that's not the way that you're going to find the husband, or that's not the way that you're going to find the husband, who will be the best husband soon that will help you strengthen the demon strengthen your Eman because

the husband was going for the duck face probably has

a lot of pocket issues himself. Okay. So you don't want to take the husband that wants to duck face. Okay. So that's not the way to do it. That's not the way to go about doing it. Okay. And when you think of the internet, even, you know, it's called the World Wide Web for a reason. Because a web consists of deception. A web consists of being able to weave secrets together, right? It's the internet. It's in that it catches you the minute you get involved, the minute you start heading down that path. You're getting into that, that web, you're getting sucked into the idea of how do you even know the person that you're marrying? Is that is what they present themselves online. You know,

we talked a little bit about the knowing slight deviation, but a true story. I teach at the university. And I teach that divide. And many of my students that are very into roles of Warcraft and Call of Duty and all these RPGs I see some men nodding and then that scares me but Openshaw only got three brother.

So I had this one student who was very into World of Warcraft, and he would always play it even in the middle of class. And so I had to ask him, like, what is the fascination? I'm teaching here, you know, you're playing, and he's like, No, no, you know, I'm paying attention, but it's my wife. My wife is on here. So your wife you know you some younger married? I said, Yeah, yeah, my wife. She lives in Vietnam.

Really?

How'd that happen? I said, but we've never met. We'll be married for three years.

You said Okay, tell me more. And so apparently he was a troll and she was a dragon or I don't know sometimes

they they found that love, you know, the big ol world. And they decided to get married and I kid you not there are like Internet shields now and the moms and priests and whatnot that will marry you. So they got married. And this was a summer class, and he was going to meet her for the first time that summer. And I told him, please don't lose touch, please send me an email after you meet her. I told him, you know, this is just, this is a story waiting to be written, like, you have to tell me how it goes. So he traveled to Vietnam that summer, he'd been saving for three years, you know, so he can have enough money to travel there. He traveled there, and he came back. And sure enough, I get an

email from him. And, and he said, You were right.

I went and I and you know, throughout the time when I can tell him, Are you sure I you know, how do you know it's her and whatnot. But rather we Skype all the time. She's beautiful. And he showed me a picture and whatnot. And he said he went there?

And yeah, that so wasn't her. So he'd been Skyping with her cousin all along. She was not what he expected at all. And the fact that she was a male complicated things quite a bit further. Yes. So apparently, it was quite a story.

So yes, anyway, this is a non Muslim. But still, I mean, at this point, he was ready to convert to Islam. Like, obviously, I went down the wrong path, but shows you that you never know when you when you travel down that path, when you travel down that idea, through the internet, through Facebook, through Instagram, through all these popular mechanisms that we have today, that give us a security that make us feel like we can be ourselves, we can be open, we can talk to each other, you know, it's headed, you know, you know, we're not alone, you know, we're still there's people around us in the cyber world. Know, don't get sucked into that, because it's so easy to travel down the wrong

path that way. So do things the right way to do things the hard way, don't take that back door. Again. You know, there are options are having to live and things are starting to flourish. You know, we have the Center for Muslim life here, which I know some of you may be familiar with it, where it's trying to build this community trying to build the concept of having a place where people can get to know each other in a halen format, kind of like, you know, did you ever watch a Little House on the Prairie, and now I'm really giving away my age. But it was a good show, Little House on the Prairie, there was Laura Ingalls and her sister Mary, and they wanted to get married. And they lived

in the 1800s. And they didn't say no pops, I found him. He's like, No, no, there was none of this kind of talk. What would happen is when somebody was interested, and again, the family knew the person, the person would court them, they would come to the home, and they would meet with the family. Because in the marriage, it's not just to individuals, the way that the romantic comedies. And you know, I don't know Batman has some romance in it. But, you know, the way all these shows and whatnot have come to show us it's not just to him and her. It's not just to people that are getting married, it's entire families that are getting married entire communities that are getting married.

And that's the concept of, of finding compatibility on more than just one level combat compatibility. That's more than just I see you using me. You're cute. You're cute. Come on, you're all that and a bag of chips? No, no, there's more than that in terms of,

and there has to be a compatibility on several levels. You know, we know that.

That said, when a man marries a woman, he marries her for four reasons. Does anyone know what the four reasons are?

No, before he's gonna be a man marries a woman for her wealth, for her status, for her beauty, and for her piety. And so marry the one who was most pious, but that is what's the strongest, that should be the strongest strong. So if we look at each of those elements that those men would marry for, when you look at the concept of wealth, again, when we think of wealth today, we think of it as money that Oh, a man should look for, you know, for the woman who comes from a rich family or the woman who has a lot of wealth. No, that's not what it means. It means a compatibility in terms of status, that if someone comes from a family who is used to, for example, being able to take

vacations to faraway places to you know, spend comfortably on this and that, and all sorts of things, in terms of the dunya, it is going to be a realistic component within the marriage as well, that as much as like, remember, you know, the joke we talked about earlier on that on our lips, it might be easy to say, Oh, I don't need a doctor, I don't need someone who has a lot of money. I don't. But you know, sometimes the way that you live, you have to find that compatibility, okay. Then if we look at status, the concept of family, you know, when we say there's marriage, there's something called the north where your family, it's the entire family. It's like the mercy of the

connection that the families are going to have. And you want to make sure that those families have that connection. Because I can tell you honestly that many of the couples that I counsel will come to me and say, you know, we can't be together anymore after 567 years of marriage. And when you come down to the root of the problem, many times it will be my mother doesn't like her or my

My father does not go or she's not good to my mother, he's not good to my family or, and a lot of times it comes down to the family, because you are married to families. And we know that in Islam, we are collectivistic, that as Muslims, we're told to be collectivistic, we're asked to focus on the oma, right? And when we focus on the other, we know the value of the family. And getting married doesn't mean that we're going to completely separate from our family and it's each man for himself or each woman from himself or herself. No, we're still taking those family values with us. So it's important to have that compatibility and family as well. And in terms of beauty.

Men are very visual creatures. And we know that that Allah, Allah has created us differently. Women tend to be more attracted to an individual based upon actions, men tend to be attracted the first attraction, the first level of attraction is based on beauty based on what the eye sends to the mind. And that's the way that was taught us created us. And so yes, what is considered beautiful in one man's eyes may not be so beautiful, another man's eye, same with a woman what may be considered a beautiful action, a woman's eyes may not be so beautiful in another woman's eyes. But it's important to recognize that within yourself, you need to have that comfort level you need to have

that that initial feeling at least a fool of saying, you know what, I'm comfortable here. This this situation makes me comfortable. Of course piety. Because the one who has the deen The one who has the religion is the one that is going to be able to treat the individual that may have enough so that when that initial excitement is gone, when you know you pass that honeymoon phase, when you've gone through the ups and downs, what lies at the core is that loving each other for the sake of allows internal dialogue, knowing that your connection is stronger than any little arguments that you can have, knowing that your connection is stronger than what one parent might say or what one

uncle might say or what one friend might say. And that's because you connected with the right intention and you connected knowing that you're connecting for the sake of Allah Spano, dada, and in that way, your marriage will be blessed in that way you will have been put in your marriage inshallah.