Shadee Elmasry – What Is DESTROYING Muslim MARRIAGES – Shaykh Mahdi Lock Reveals
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the high divorce rates in Muslim communities, highlighting a woman in Birmingham who was in a divorce case and a man in Birmingham who was married on a weekend. The course covers the book "The Book of barrel" by Sheikh Abdul angleja, emphasizing the importance of acceptance of Islam as a means to achieve happiness and achieve marriage. The importance of focus and clarity in communication is emphasized, along with the shaping of deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen deen de
AI: Summary ©
There are huge problems now with divorce.
We're getting very, very high divorce rates in
Muslim communities.
I was in Birmingham, for example, the second
largest city in the UK, back in the
summer, and I was at actually one of
the biggest masjids in the city, and I
spoke to one of the brothers in charge
there, and he said that they're dealing with
several divorce cases every week, getting to the
point where he's actually had to deal with
a case where a couple's getting married on
Monday and the divorce is being done on
Friday.
We're going into stuff without knowledge, that's really
what it is, without contemplation.
Yeah, so yesterday we started this course at
British Muslim College last night.
It's an online course, I've been running it
for eight weeks, covering this book by Sheikh
Abdul Khalid Al-Kharsa, who's a great Hanafi
marja from Damascus.
And so what I laid out in my
introduction, I built it up and I said,
well, number one, your most important relationship is
with Allah.
That's number one.
This is the foundation of every other relationship
you're going to have.
The first relationship is your relationship with Allah.
Your relationship with Allah has to be sound.
And by that, obviously, I do not mean
perfect, I mean it's sound in the case,
in the sense that when you do slip,
you turn back to Allah and you seek
to repent and you seek to rectify yourself.
And then when that is in place, and
when you accept that you have the relationship
with Allah, and furthermore, I talked about how
you are Allah's slave, right?
Now, obviously, I know people have this aversion
to the word slave, but yes, to be
a slave to another human being is humiliating.
To be a slave to another human being
is degrading.
But to be a slave to Allah is
an honor.
To be a slave to Allah is it's
sharaf.
It's an honor.
And this is one of the things that
Al-Qadr Iyad said, right, the great Maliki
scholar, when he said, what increases me in
sharaf, right, so much so that I feel
like I'm walking on the Pleiades, like I'm
walking on Thuraya, is that Allah, you've included
me in your statement, Ya Ibadi.
I'm part of that.
When you say, Ya Ibadi, O my slaves,
I'm part of that.
And then he said after that, and then
you've made Ahmed my prophet.
So to be a slave to Allah is
a sharaf.
It's an immense thing, the fact that with
Allah, you can call Allah at any time,
you can talk to Allah at any time,
which is completely different when you're dealing with
human beings and earthly rulers and so forth,
where you have to book an appointment well
ahead of time.
And then when they finally agree to see
you, it's going to be for a short,
maybe 15 minutes.
And when you're with this person who's going
to be distracted, and they have other phone
calls coming in, people coming out of the
room, so forth.
No, but with Allah, it's prestigious.
It's what Imam al-Shahrabi called it, it's
prestigious.
Slavehood with Allah.
So, but my point is, when you accept
that, then you accept that Allah knows you
best.
Allah created you, and Allah knows you best.
Allah knows what you need, Allah knows what
you need to do to be happy.
Allah knows what you need to function on
this earth.
And therefore, you're going to accept what the
Meshuvah of Allah ﷺ has told you, what
Allah has told you, what the Meshuvah of
Allah ﷺ has told you about how to
be a husband, how to be a wife,
what your rights are, what your responsibilities are.
Because if you think that your happiness in
general and your happiness in a marriage is
going to lie outside of that, then you're
deluded.
You're just mistaken.
You have to accept what Allah has laid
out and what the Meshuvah of Allah ﷺ
has laid out for you.
So, when we've established that, then we're ready
to accept that, again, this is what you
said before, this is the big problem, people
are getting into marriages, and they have no
idea what their rights and responsibilities are.
Like, so, I was, I was, like, just
last week, for example, with the Shafi'i
fiqh class, the essentials class, we're doing Risalat
al-Jamia, and we came across this hadith,
seeking knowledge and obligation from every Muslim.
Okay, so what does that mean?
Okay, well, obviously, yes, every Muslim prays, every
Muslim does, right, every Muslim prays, therefore, every
Muslim has to know, you have to know
the fiqh of wudu, you have to know
what is water, what is muscle, because whatever
the wajib needs to be completed is also
wajib.
And then, and then I went through the
list, and I said, okay, well, okay, do
you fast?
Okay, well, if you're able to fast, you
have the sita'at, the fast, do you
have to know the fiqh of fasting?
Do you, do you have money?
Do you pay zakat?
Do you have money saved up?
Do you have zakat al-firm?
Do you, are you involved in business?
Do you have trade goods?
Do you have a farm?
Do you have livestock?
Well, then you need to know the zakat
that can do these things.
Are you going to go for hajj or
umrah?
Well, then you need to know the fiqh
of that.
You can't just, don't do what a lot
of people do, just get on a plane
and land in Mecca and hope that someone
will take you by the hand.
No, obviously, when it comes to marriage, you
need to know the aqiyah of marriage.
So what, why are people diving into marriage
with, I don't know what kind of expectations,
and, but not knowing anything about, okay, what
are my husband's rights over me?
What are my wife's rights over me?
What am I expected to do?
Who comes, who, who takes priority?
Like, like the very, very first hadith we
covered yesterday, the very, very first hadith, this
is the first hadith that the Shaykh starts
with, is a hadith where the Meshuvah law,
salallahu alayhi wa sallam, says that the person
who has the most right over a woman
is her husband, and the person who has
the most right over a man is his
parents, right, or his mother, as well.
The Meshuvah law, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, says
his mother, and then the Shaykh says, by
extension, you know, the father is implied in
this.
But, for example, once you, once you have
that laid out, okay, now it's a simple
system.
So, so if you're, you're a woman and
you're getting caught between, okay, well, my dad's
saying this, and my brother's saying this, and
my mom is saying this, okay, what is
your husband telling you to do?
Yeah, society, humans need order.
Exactly, exactly.
We need, we need oneness and focus.
In anything, oneness of focus actually beautifies it,
whereas, and distraction, even in storytelling, and filmmaking,
and novel writing, they always look at the
unicity of the attention of the reader, or
of the viewer, and same thing with paintings,
same thing with companies.
In, in building a company, this is like
something totally unrelated, but it also connects with
human psychology.
What are you communicating to the, to the
customer?
How many different things are you communicating?
You're distracting him.
When, whenever human beings are focused, our minds
are stable, our hearts are stable, and we're
able to, to build upon that, but without
that, certain things, how do we know how
to focus it?
Like, without revelation, how would we know, like,
who do I owe number one priority to,
right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, and this, so this
is why that the Shaykh, Abdul Haidil Kharis,
like, he says, the introduction, he said, he
says, how many are the people who, you
know, they get married, and then they're just
absolutely miserable, and it leads to divorce, and
he said, these people, he said, you can
count them amongst the living, but they're really
among the dead, like, they're just living such
horrible, miserable lives, and because, and they don't
know why, and they, and one of the,
one of the things I, I said, I
said last night is, is like, people have
to have, like, a realistic grasp of marriage.
Some people have very idealistic ideas of marriage.
They watch, like, Bollywood movies, or Hollywood movies,
or everything that they sort of think, like,
you're gonna ride off in the sunset, and
it's gonna be all hunky-dory, like a
fairy tale, and then, and then when the
first issue comes up, they go, my marriage
is a failure, I gotta end it now.
It's like, no, no, no, this, this is,
this is human life.
Welcome to planet Earth.
This is, this is how, you know, you're
gonna have trials and tribulations.
Like, I remember, I remember, I was, I
was talking to a brother about this recently,
because he had a marriage issue, but I
remember when I first got married, when I
was first considering getting married to my wife.
Now, my wife, mashallah, like, she, she's known
for her, she's a tajweed teacher, like, she's
known for her tajweed, mashallah, and, and I
remember I was talking to a sheikh, I
know in, in Leeds, sheikh Muhammad Fahd, he's,
he's been a, he's a Libyan sheikh, he's
been in Leeds for a long, long time,
and I used to translate his khutbahs way
back in the day, like 20 years ago,
and, and I was seeking his advice, his
counsel, and he was very, very blunt with
me, and he said, okay, so why do
you want to marry her?
And I said, oh, well, you know, mashallah,
she's, you know, she's got excellent tajweed and
everything, and he's like, okay, so you think
marriage is a giant tajweed lesson?
Is that what, is that, is that your
understanding?
You're just gonna sit down, and she's gonna,
like, recite Qur'an to you for the
next 75 years, so is that, you know,
but so, again, I'm not saying that's not,
it's a good thing, obviously, yeah, but, but
people don't, people don't see the reality of
it.
Again, like, I was talking to a brother
about this as well, you know, people, like,
because, you know, we have the ahadith, when
you're choosing a partner, the Meshuvah law says,
like, a woman is married for four things,
you know, she's married for her beauty, and
her lineage, and her, and her wealth, but,
you know, like, go for the deen.
But what we were just, what we discussed,
we said that when people think of deen,
they tend to restrict it to ibadah, right?
We tend to have, like, a very narrow
understanding of what deen is.
Okay, so, like, okay, I'm gonna marry this
woman because, okay, good, she prays five times
a day, she recites Qur'an, she fasts
Ramadan, she pays her zakat, she's done for,
she's done hajj, okay, but what about her
character?
What, like, or his character?
Both of them, what about his or her
character?
Like, are these people, this person they're marrying,
is he or she affectionate?
Are they compassionate?
Like, do they do, because, again, we had,
we had this expression, like, it's in the
Qur'an, وَيَمْ نَعُونَ الْمَاءُمْ وَيَمْ نَعُونَ الْمَاءُمْ
like, which, which, we translate it as small
kindness, and we call them small, but they
have such a huge effect in a marriage,
like, it's so significant to have, to have
a partner who just says nice words to
you, gives you a hug, gives you a
kiss, these are such crucial things, a pat
on the back, a shoulder rub, these are
things that people sort of overlook, and I'm,
I, you know, when I've done talks in
this book, and, and so forth, I've had,
like, we, I find weird to me, like,
questions come up, people say, like, okay, I've
been married to so-and-so, but my
husband never talks to me, or never talks,
or never acknowledges me, or never says anything,
it's like, okay, well, like, what's, what's, what's
going on?
Are you, are some people assuming that, are
some husbands assuming that their, their role in
the marriage is merely, like, financial?
Is that it?
Like, you're just, you're just there to put
a roof over the head, and pay the
bills, and, yeah, so, and, and in Hanafi
fiqh, for example, in Hanafi fiqh, like, this,
I think it's mentioned in this book, it's
also mentioned by Muhammad Zuhayli in his mawlid,
his encyclopedia, that, that can be grounds for
a divorce, like, a woman can complain to
a qadi about that, and say, like, my
husband is not showing me affection, he doesn't
acknowledge me, he doesn't say anything nice to
me, he doesn't, so we, we have, we
have to, you know, expand our understanding of,
like, deen, like, like, deen is not just,
you know, the ritual worship, because, because all
that, all that, all that ritual worship, the
prayer, the fast, and, of course, all of
that is meant to refine your character.
We seem, we seem, we seem to, like,
overlook that.
It doesn't have an impact.
Yeah, yeah, because in a salat, your prayer
would preclude all those things, would prevent all
those things, so we need to be in
a situation where people are embracing the, the,
the character, taking, taking on the good character
of husband and wife, and when, and when
you embrace that good character of husband and
wife, which is rooted in slavehood to Allah,
rooted in love of Allah, rooted in love
of the Messenger of Allah, salallahu alayhi wa
sallam, then your marriage, it's not going to
be a case where the two of you
are viewing it, like, merely contractually, and you're
walking around clipboards, like, ticking the boxes, and
saying, yes, I got my right today.
No, you actually, you actually love each other,
and you're, and you're doing these things out
of the goodness of your heart, uh, and,
and, uh, moving forward, moving forward, and just
basking in Allah's glory as you do it,
but this, these seem to be lost, and
people seem to have these ideas of that
marriage is going to be some wonderful thing.
I'm not gonna have any trial and tribulations.
I've met, you know, Mr. Perfect, or Mr.
Right, or Mrs., Mrs. Wonderful, whatever it is,
and then people get sorely disappointed, and then
they just want to yeah, head for the
nearest exit.