Shakiel Humayun – Dating is Unscientific 50th Sermon
AI: Summary ©
The unworked and tainted marriage process is the result of the dating process, which is un promiseful and is a result of the dating process. premarital activities, dating, and co sexual activities are not beneficial for marriage, and the vetting process is based on core values and protection of women. The process is difficult to predict and is unattractive, and strong and powerful communities can build strong communities.
AI: Summary ©
O mankind,
we have created you from a male
and female
and made you
into societies
and tribes
so that you may know one another.
From this male and female,
societies throughout the world have evolved
such that the world is a beautiful
mosaic
of diversity.
And this beautiful mosaic
stems from its basic unit
which is the male and female.
The coming together,
the bonding,
the marriage
of this male and female.
And so
there are
different processes
that exist on the face of this earth
today
where people use to get married.
And one process
that people use to get married
is dating.
And people date for different reasons.
And the major reason
why a person dates
is to get to know
the other person,
to get to know
the other person for marriage.
And today,
we're going to talk about this specific reason
for dating.
There's a couple
who dated,
and as they dated years went by.
As many years passed by, they reached 10
years
of
dating. And that 10 years of dating
led them
to get married.
Obviously,
after 10 years
of having
a happy relationship,
marriage
was the next thing.
And so, they got married.
And then, after marriage, within
less than a year,
they got divorced.
What happened?
10 years
of a happy relationship,
but as soon as they got married,
it fell apart
within less than a year.
The problem
is that
the problem is using the dating process
to get to know one another
for marriage.
It's a problem because the dating process itself
is unscientific.
And today,
I'll give three reasons why
the dating process to get to know one
another
for marriage is unscientific.
Number 1,
in the dating process,
partners
are dating to assess one another.
But the problem is
they're assessing one another for roles
they don't have. You
have a girlfriend boyfriend role during the dating
process.
You have a fiance role during the dating
process.
And then you have the husband and wife
roles
during marriage.
And in each stage
of these roles,
and in each stage these roles are different.
And so
while in the girlfriend and boyfriend
relationship,
trying to assess one another
for a husband wife stage,
it's unscientific because the assessment is off.
The other thing is that getting to know
one another, what does that mean?
You can ask any married couple, someone who
is married for 10 years, 15 years, 20
years,
and they will tell you,
we're still learning about each other.
Getting to know one another is a lifelong
mission
because
people grow,
people develop,
people change. So you're constantly learning about the
other person, you're constantly growing together.
So the idea that we can know someone
in detail and know every single thing before
marriage in itself
is incorrect.
That's the first reason.
The second reason
is that dating before marriage,
living together before marriage,
cohabiting before marriage
makes many people slide into marriage without making
the decision
that they want to get married.
Without deciding
actively
that they are a
good fit for one another.
So, this happens in 2 ways.
1,
when a couple is dating or they're living
together for years,
they'll say,
these things just happened, we were dating and
cohabitation
just happened, and then we just happened to
live together.
And so the convenient thing after the years
of these practices,
the convenient thing is then to just get
married. And it may not necessarily be because
they've made an active decision to get married,
but after so many years it's just the
next thing in line to do because we
are already so far
in this journey that, you know what,
the next thing is just to get married,
we might as well get married.
The other reason why people just
slide into marriage,
the first one was because it's convenient. The
second is that it's inconvenient
to break up. That after years of dating,
years of living together, now we're intertwined, our
finances are intertwined, our families are intertwined,
we're we're we're together for all this time,
and I may feel like this person is
not the right person for me to get
married, but you know what?
It's just so inconvenient
for me to break up right now because,
again, we're just so far in the process,
so people just slide
into marriage.
This isn't arranged marriage.
The conditions
arranged their marriage
because they didn't decide to get married, they
slid into marriage.
The third reason why it's unscientific
is that the vetting process, this dating is
to be a vetting process to see if
they are fit for one another.
The vetting process is tainted
because both parties are emotionally
engaged,
and when a person is emotionally engaged, the
intellectual process
is compromised.
So a woman, for example, she may be
conscious about this or she may not be
conscious about it,
that when she's in a dating relationship, she's
auditioning herself
for a proposal.
And she may see things that are red
flags in a man, but she's not going
to bring them up because
she wants that proposal.
And so she's going to take those red
flags
and put it onto
the back burner and not talk about it
because she wants that proposal.
And then after marriage,
those red flags continue to come up. Now,
she's gotten the proposal and she's married.
Now she's like, this is the time to
speak my mind and tell him I don't
like x, y, and z. And the guy
now all of a sudden is like, wait
a minute, we've been dating for 3 years,
5 years, 2 years, 7 years, 10 years,
and this is the first time I'm ever
hearing about this.
And so,
the marriage falls apart
because the vetting process
was tainted.
A study of a 1,050
married men and women
found
that those who cohabited
found that cohabitation
before engagement
was associated with
lesser satisfaction
in marriage,
greater negative communication,
and higher chances
for divorce.
It's like these premarital activities, dating, living together,
cohabiting,
all these premarital activities
steal
happiness
from a potential marriage
because it's advanced
during the dating stage, and then when the
marriage comes,
those moments have been sucked out or stolen
beforehand.
So dating,
living together,
cohabiting before marriage
is not beneficial for marriage,
which is the basic function and unit of
a society
that builds the mosaic of this world.
And so there has to be
another way.
Islam makes it clear that premarital relations,
dating,
living together,
cohabiting,
is forbidden.
It's forbidden because it's harmful and not beneficial.
And so when Allah subhanahu wa'anhu speaks to
the men about getting married, he puts steps
and and conditions in place. That if you
want to marry, chase women,
the first thing is you have to
give them their dowry,
which signifies that you are
a man that's financially
capable of taking responsibility.
It's a signal that, here's this cash,
and there's more where this this came from.
I can pay bills. I can take care
of a family.
Being chased.
To be chased.
And not being Musa'feh.
Musa'feh is someone who has
who fornicates, but with multiple partners at the
same time.
Like today, we may hear people say, oh,
I have an open relationship,
right, where the person individually can have multiple
partners,
or both partners have multiple partners.
We have an open relationship,
open fornication.
And then Allah says something else, he doesn't
stop there, because fornication is prohibited, but Allah
classifies it as the types of fornication.
Then he says,
They're not supposed to be
have this open relationship,
multiple partners, and at the same time, they're
not supposed to fornicate while being monogamous,
that they have only one lover,
where Allah here prohibits it. But it's interesting
that Allah is speaking to the men not
to have girlfriends.
In either way, open, multiple partners, or single,
being dedicated, committed to 1,
is forbidding men to have girlfriends. Because
in this kind of relationship
the woman is in danger.
The woman is harmed.
There's a Pew Research survey
which found that women,
in these kinds of dating relationships, women are
more likely
to see physical and emotional risk while dating.
65%
of them said
that they were harassed by men while dating
them.
So Allah subhanahu has forbade this.
One of the reasons is the protection
for women in these relationships because they are
more in danger
with these
kinds of relationships.
What is the other way?
What is the
other way which is beneficial?
1st and foremost, Islam
has
the vetting done before anything else.
The vetting is done before
there's an emotional lock
in, before living together, before cohabiting, before anything
else.
The vetting is done.
And that is because
the vetting so the vetting can be objective.
Because when emotions are involved, it starts to
become subjective.
We tend to bypass
things that are red flags.
So this helps
the vetting to be objective.
And then Islam then places measures in place
to protect
the woman.
Allah subhanahu has established
a concierge
for the women
known as the or the father,
or if the father is not alive, then
the brother or the uncle are next in
line.
The job of this concierge
is to sift through candidates
while she doesn't have to confront and face
every single person.
And to sift through these candidates and bring
candidates
that meets her meets that meet her standards.
And then allow her then to pick and
choose to take it to another level.
And then there can be an arrangement of
a meeting with this concierge, the present.
Where there could be a meeting between the
male and the female to discuss if they're
compatible or not.
And like we said earlier,
that it's impossible to know someone because it's
a lifelong process. So what is this discussion
of compatibility in Islam?
Is the discussion going to be like, are
you an Android person or are you an
Apple person? Are you okay with pineapple and
pizza?
2 qualities that pleases you, that you approve
of. Number 1, their deen, and number 2,
their character.
Which means what is this person's
relationship with Allah subhanahu, his faith and his
deen?
And then his character, what is this person's
relationship with people?
How does he deal with people? Is he
responsible? Is he kind? Is he honest? Is
he genuine? Does he pay his bills? Is
he able to fulfill responsibility? Is he a
man of his word?
Or he's just looking
for a for a marriage
just to have some companionship?
And so
what is looked at in this vetting process
is the high level core values
which matter and sustain a marriage.
And if a person that can't be passes
that, then there's the next phase.
The next phase is they get engaged,
and the engage allows them to get
allows them to get to know each other
more with the presence of this concierge,
with the presence of the where
there's a certain period of time where they
get to know each other more.
And the idea that someone has to sleep
with someone to get to know them is
incorrect. The idea that a woman has to
submit herself
and live with someone else,
and go through these processes over and over
and over again
is incorrect.
There's a lady that we know who's in
her forties,
who's been dating since who knows when,
and she yet still cannot find the right
husband.
The last one she thought was going to
be the husband, so after several years of
dating, she first mentioned marriage, and she said,
Oh, I was never thinking about, like, marrying
you. Done. Now she has to move on.
Islam saves a woman from going through all
that.
And
if in this process of getting to know
one another, she's not comfortable,
she doesn't have to tell the person. The
concierge
speaks to this man. So, well, he has
a man to man discussion. Hey.
Doesn't seem like we're moving forward.
There's
no compatibility here. Wish you the best.
Move on. She doesn't have to worry about
the danger of sliding into marriage because we've
been engaged this long. I have to now
marry him. I'm gonna be forced to marry
him.
She doesn't
have to worry about emotional guilt or feeling
pressure. She's protected
from making a subjective and wrong decision
by having this concierge in place.
And if
the person is good, then the marriage date
is set.
And then
the dating,
the living together,
the *,
the enjoyment,
the pleasure,
All of that happens
in marriage.
So that it enhances the experience of marriage,
and it strengthens the bonds of marriage
such that it can last longer.
Nothing is stolen
from marriage
and used beforehand.
So this process
is the get to know process in Islam
where the woman is protected.
The Quran forbids fornication clearly,
as well as all the other previous scriptures
openly, clearly forbid fornication.
And sometimes,
we may not know the full impact.
Studies and surveys are now coming out of
how dating is
is harmful for marriage.
But there's so much more.
What is the impact
of dating cohabiting before marriage
on social
genealogy?
What's the impact on the DNA?
What's the impact
on the psychology of a person?
What are the long term effects?
These are things that are still
need to and are being studied.
And so,
if we say that Allah created the male
and female to create societies, that Allah is
the one who knows best, how we should
know one another
and get married
to form
those societies.
As Allah subhanahu says,
Where Allah says, are you going to teach
Allah your way of life? How your way
of life should be? Are you going to
teach Allah?
While Allah knows whatever is in the heavens
and the earth, he knows what
So when someone says to you, hey, how
come you don't date?
Hey, how come Muslims don't date? The answer
is simple.
It's unscientific
to date.
Why don't you date? Because it's harmful for
marriage.
Why don't you date? Because
we like to protect women.
I ask Allah to
make us
enable us to build powerful and strong communities
and societies built on
the teaching of the Quran and the son
of the prophet Muhammad.