Shadee Elmasry – Understanding Mahr- Islamic Marriage Contract Explained

Of course, we always speak about from the maniche school. Now, the

dowry in marriage is an obligation from the groom to the bride, and

it is an agreed upon amount of what money. It's an agreed upon

amount of of anything of value. It could be a ring, it could be an

action, a service, and it could be money, but it has to be something

that can be objectively measured, and it's to be agreed upon, and it

should be negotiated, usually by the Wali, not by the bride

herself, because she may be embarrassed

to hassle her husband to be but her father would not, right? Her

father would actually feel the opposite inclination he wants to,

sort of not. It is a feeling of, I'm giving my daughter. I'm

handing my daughter from my house to your house, from me being the

main caretaker to you. So he is giving his daughter away, even

though this is not a sale. She's getting the money, not him, right,

but he feels that he wants to make sure that this is done right, and

he ends up he'll probably negotiate better. Now, the Prophet

saw him also advised that the walis, the uliah, in this case, to

not make marriage difficult, or else the Shabab will and not marry

and then maybe do something worse. If they're stuck not being

married, that's the dowry. Now, let's what happens if people

forget? It's possible they forget to include the Maher in their

marriage process, and they actually have a Nikah. And out of

ignorance, there is, oh, shoot, we never did a mA. Are they

adulterers? The answer is no. So this is a pillar of Nikah that it

can be forgotten. Can be forgotten what cannot ever be forgotten? The

wali in the Maliki school, as opposed to the

Hanafi school, you don't have a contract. You don't have a Nikah

if you don't have those two things. So two more things. One is

the dowry, one is the witnesses. The witnesses are necessary for

consummation. So we're sitting in the father of the bride's house.

We're sitting in his living room, and he says, Wallah, you're a good

man, and we know you and we trust you and we're ready to marry.

Someone says, Why don't we marry? Right now, it's okay. It's just

me. Let's say it's me, my daughter, and the the groom and my

wife, right? Let's say, hypothetically, no witnesses. His

mom still not witness. He the male witnesses. So we say, okay,

zawati, I married my daughter to you.

He says they're married, but he cannot take her and go into

another room. Consummation in Sharia refers to entering into

privacy, something where intimacy could occur. It doesn't have to be

a only that, for example, meet me in a in the woods. The Woods is a

public place, right? But intimacy could happen there. So anywhere

where intimacy could happen, that is not allowed until there are

witnesses so that nobody can accuse these people. Nobody

accuses them and says that they did this, that or the other. So

now in this case, they would say, for example, let's go to the

masjid. They drive to the masjid, the man stands up. O people, I

testify to you. I have married my daughter to this man, and this man

has accepted, and he agrees. Call us. You've now made ish hard of

it.

And so therefore now there won't be doubts, there won't be

accusations. So the witnesses is a rokun of the marriage that can be

that is only needed for half of the marriage, which is the

consummation, not the contract. So he's contractually married to

this. They're married, but they cannot consummate the marriage or

act upon it until the community knows minimum of the community is

two male, upright Muslim witnesses. Now we forgot the dowry

and he consummated. We have witnesses. And they went alone and

they lived. They spent the night and they went on a honeymoon, and

oh my gosh, came back when they forgot the dowry. Are we

adulterers? Are we fornicators? No, they're not

if they intentionally left it off, that's different, but they forgot

about it, or they said, let's talk about it later, and they forgot to

talk about it later. So now they agree upon a dowry once they

remember. So two people, let's say they get married without a dowry,

or let's say they get married outside of Islam, then they both

convert to Islam, which, by the way, from North Carolina, I we had

a case like that, not a case, but I met a couple like that. Brother

just visited us here in North front in New Brunswick last month.

He entered Islam. His wife entered Islam. His kids also became

Muslim, right? Whole family, whole family is Muslim. Now, amazing.

Amazing case, not case of case, talking about it like it's okay.

Yeah, amazing story, I should say, right, yeah, amazing story. So he

What would he have to do? Does he have to remarry? Is this

Christian? If he had a civil marriage, you have a Christian

marriage, you have a Hindu marriage, the Sharia deems you to

be married. You just have to fulfill the conditions now that

you missed. So let's say he had gotten married, case like this,

without a dowry. He just paid the dowry afterwards. They have to

agree upon it. What happens if the marriage is already said and done

but they don't agree on a dowry? Well, the MO, as long as they

don't agree on dowry, the wife has to has the right to say, all

right, don't touch me. Then, even if they agree and he refuses to

pay it. Don't touch me. That's why the dowry is important. Mahar

sadaq, it's called the MaHA it's called the Sadak could be called a

dowry in English. I know in India, the word dowry means the reverse.

So we have to be careful of that. So then our situation is there

that they have to get an arbitrator who will inform them of

sadakul mith.

Sadakul mith refers to average dowry. It's salary arbitration,

basically people of your likeness. What do they get when they get

married, right? When they when they get contracts, right? Someone

with your batting average and your stolen bases right and your years.

What is he getting? Those three guys very similar to you. They're

all getting 5 million a year. This one's 4.9 This one's 5.2 This

one's five. You're gonna get five. That's it. So in the case that

they forgot about the Sadak and they cannot agree on the Sadak,

they go with sadaq and myth, and it becomes binding. Why? Because

the marriage is already done. Marriages, they're already

consummated. So let's talk about some other things related to the

sadaq, the dowry, it can be paid over time.

A man says,

you go, you go and you marrying into a very wealthy family. It's

not fathomable that you're going to marry, maybe for, let's say,

for under $20,000 dowry. That's easy in some communities, certain

communities, it's not that that's low, by the way, that's low.

That's low dowry in some communities, yeah, there are some

communities, everyone's involved in certain industries that the

baseline of that industries are going to be rich. It's only the

difference between rich, or really rich, and the rich in those

communities feel poor. They feel poor even though they're rich. So

in those situations,

he can pay it over time.

There's nothing wrong with that concept. So all right, I'll give

you. Let's say it's going to be 10,000 I don't have 10,000 but I

do have a job I can't afford, but I don't have savings. To 10,000

All right, I'll give you three now, and I'll give you one on

January 1 of every year for the next seven years. Now that, let's

say they do that. Let's say they get divorced in year two. So he

paid four. He owes

six more, right?

Does he have to pay those six more than they get divorced? He does.

It's a debt.

It's a debt if he dies

married or not married, we remove that immediately,

and we consider that a debt owed. It is a debt owed. So then the

inheritance happens after is the estate is just divided up.

Afterwards, the estate is divided up after bequests to non

inheritors maximum 1/3 and debts. Now, what is forbidden in the

Maliki school is sadaq, the muqad is valid in certain meth HEBs, but

in the Maliki school, they don't like it. What is it? First of all,

it is that, if you divorce, you owe this much. If you divorce in

year one, you owe 20k if you divorce in year two, you owe 10k

if you divorce in year five, you owe 5k so on and so forth. Or, in

general, if you divorce, you owe 20k Why is this unlawful? Because

it's actually harmful. Because, let's say the man wants to get a

divorce, he's gonna lose his wife half the time with his kids,

probably his half his house, probably half his salary for the

rest of his life. And on top of that, he's gonna lose 20k he's

like, No, I'm not doing this. So what's he gonna do? He's gonna

say, Well, my options in Sharia is for her to request a divorce, and

then I didn't divorce her.

How can I get her to request that divorce? So he'll bother her and

bother her and bother her until she requests the hula, so that he

doesn't have to cough up the 20k or the 25k or sometimes just

ridiculous amounts of money. So you see, that's why Sheikha Abdul,

Hamid Al Mubarak. He says, in our method, we don't allow muach And

it's harmful to her. That's why he says that.