Riyadh al-Saliheen and Women’s Q&A #14

Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala Soffel MBO Homoserine. The BNF what was in the Mahabharata here for Salah was listening along Marlon them behind Pharaoh and found that Lima Island and I was in that element a little bit on me.

We're on to a new Hadith today. And limitation breeds creativity, because I'm giving the classes now at home, as opposed to in the MSG. I didn't have the book with me, I left it in the office. And so I looked for what I should have done a long time ago, which was an English translation. So that I could share screen and you could read along because not everybody has a copy of

real solid green line around. So our Hadith today is Hadith number 11. We said that this chapter, this first chapter on sincerity is 12 Hadith. We're very, very close to finishing it.

We are the second to last Hadith. We'll probably just do that today. And then we'll talk about mostly issues of dowry, because there's a lot of juicy issues when it comes to dowry through the second half of the class inshallah.

So our 11 Hadith as you can see, it is narrated by Abdullah Ellen on bass. And Abdullah bass is one of the most famous companions. He's a legend. He is the son of Abbas, who is one of the uncles of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam,

and his mother is boom AlphaGo which is kind of like an honorific name, or Quenya.

It's a nickname, let's say, whereas her real name was Lou Baba.

Lu Baba was the second woman to convert to Islam. After Khadija Ile de la Han Solo Baba is a serious, serious heavyweight when we're talking about important companions. Regretfully, you probably haven't heard a lot about Luba. This may be the first time you're hearing about her or her nickname, homophobic.

She is the one if you want to know how boss

homophobia was she is responsible for killing Ebola.

So Ebola was another one of the uncles of a prophet. So Hola, hola, Sana. And Abdullah have was one of the fiercest opponents of Islam. And the prophets have always

sought a method. One of the surest soldiers in the Quran is a response to

something that Abu Lahab said, and it is completely about Ebola.

The story is one you've probably heard before, but it's a central story in Islam, it teaches us so many things about

reaching out to our family, and people who trust us first, it teaches us the importance of being a trustworthy person in the first place.

And it teaches us many other things. But the long and short of the story is that when the prophets of Allah holidays, Saddam was first, given the prophet hood, his mission was secret, right? He was only sharing Islam with people that he was pretty sure we're going to accept it, that included his household, and that included his closest friends, including Abu Bakar.

And so a couple years after that, Allah subhanho wa Taala gave the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam, the commandments to start to expand the scope of the message, not just to preach it to people that you are confident will accept it, but to start to preach it in a in a in a scenario where you might be rejected. Right. So this is his extended family, his larger tribe, and so the Prophet Muhammad I said, um, he does something brilliant. He gathers on Mount Safa, which is in Mecca. He gathers all this tribe together.

And they don't know what the reason is.

So it's everybody's kind of whispering, talking like, What is he doing? What's happened? What Why did he bring us here? And then he asked him a question. He says, What if I were to tell you that behind this mountain behind me, there's an enemy army that's come to attack you?

Everybody responds. We've known you since you were a baby. You're the most trustworthy

person we have, if you say we believe.

And so he got him, he basically got them to incriminate themselves with the news that he was going to deliver them. So he told them he said, Well,

I'm here or I gathered you here to tell you that Allah has made me a Prophet to you, and that you are to stop worshipping your idols and you're only to worship Allah.

They couldn't call Him a liar. They just said he was the most trustworthy among them. So they threw up their hands. They made these excuses and said he's a magician. He's crazy. What is this? This is insulting. And Abu Lahab his uncle of all the people president had the most

harshest response, let's say he said 10, Betsy Adak, Yama, Hanuman, which was a phrase in Arabic, that literally means May your hands be destroyed. But when they say that they mean like, you know, screw you, you know, it's like made me you'd be destroyed. Pardon my French but you know, if we're looking for an equivalent culturally, right, it wasn't, it wasn't a pleasant thing to say to somebody. Right? So that's what I'm trying to get across there.

And so Allah sent sort of a message as a response to Ebola hubs rejection and his the vile thing that he said to the prophets of Allah, Allah. And Allah responds, using all this wordplay and puns it's almost like a diss track

for Abdullah and his wife, both of whom were were harsh, and recalcitrant, and obstinance in their opposition to Islam and the Prophet Mohammed sites.

I was telling the children we happen to have studied this tonight. Abu Lahab was a nickname. It wasn't his real name. And it basically meant he was a good looking guy, right? Lahab is like a flame. And so even in English, I made the kids laugh because I said, you know, we say someone is hot, right? In English, if someone's attractive, they did a similar thing. They said Abu Lahab he's like he's attractive. He's like a flame, right? There's many cultural, linguistic sort of connections between fire and you know, romance and stuff like that. And so that's what his nickname was. So Allah uses his nickname and turns it around and gives it a different meaning. He says, Say

Oslo now on that.

Basically saying, the only flame you're gonna see is the flame of the Hellfire. Right? So it's kind of like this burn,

literally and figuratively, you know, Allah is playing with the Arabic language in order to respond to and shut up Abdullah. So what would happen eventually to Abu Lahab was that he stayed behind during the Battle of better he did not fight on the side of the Quran during the Battle of betta rather he stayed behind. I think he was ill. And this woman, Liu, Baba, Oman, Favell took a 10 pole, which is no small thing. And literally beat the dude over the head with it, causing him to die. So

this woman was no joke, you know, she was

very, very zealous for the cause. And she was willing to put herself on the line, and she took care of her business.

So back to this is all related to our narrator. Even our best Abdullah is an advocate. So that's his mother. Okay. And his father is on bass who would accept Islam a little bit before Abu Sufian did towards the end of the towards the end part of the Met the mission of the Prophet Mohammed sites that

he's also our narrator Abdullah in an ibis is the nephew of Maimunah, who was a wife of the Prophet sallallahu. They said, right? So he's got all these connections where he's connected to the prophesy son and his family. And so I believe in our best had a really unique insight. He was able to see a lot of the inner workings of the household because he was family.

There's many you know, the Hadith we have about how the prophets night prayers were so long that he was salam comes from Abdullah Lebanon best. He basically said I was crashing over my my my auntie's house. Maimunah. One night when the province lady said on was also sleeping there. And he's like, I want to wake up and try to pray with the Prophet salallahu Salam at night, but do it in secret, so he doesn't realize I'm doing it. And so I believe and I bass is telling how the prayer of the prophesy son on was, you know, and this is completely, you know, no, but like, he doesn't even know that he's being watched. And he said, He's recited Surah Taliban

Got off all of it in the first struck off and after he finishes sort of Nakara I'm thinking he's gonna stop and he keeps going to Alan run and then he finishes LM run and I think he's going to stop and he keeps going to and the SAT and so I'm gonna let him not pass actually has to bow out and has to be like that's too much for me I can't I can't pray like that much. But so we know all these sorts of interesting things in the life of the prophesy son and because of I'm delighted and I best

and the province always salaam loved Abdullah in our best he may do for Abdullah if not best that he would get an understanding of the Koran specifically. And as we know, the DUA the prophesy centum there's no sort of hesitation. This is a dua that was accepted an answer

because Abdullah and Ibis was young. Okay, so he was 13 when the prophesy said I'm died. Okay, so he was a young boy, right, throughout the mission of the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam.

What these young boys would do like him, and Ennis, Malik and Ali, they would kind of run and fetch water for Google, and they would kind of be the errand boys. Right. So it's interesting, what we see from a perspective of a parent, kind of this meaningful work, or Abdullah bass, along with the other young boys, he's given responsibility, he has to go do these things. But the responsibilities he's given are also kind of age appropriate, and they're tied to serving their elders.

So when the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam died, Abdullah Abdullah bass wasn't going to sit back and relax, he became one of the most studious

people of his time, he would seek out the other companions and would actually sit in front of their door and wait for them to come out so that he could ask them questions.

His house became the first university in the sense that once he spent years like this studying and studying and studying that his breadth of knowledge of the of Islam was so vast that people started thronging around his house and waiting for him.

And so what he would do is he would tell people who were to come in who are interested in a certain subject, so whoever's interested in Arabic grammar, like send them in and then Okay, now we're done that whoever is interested in Tafseer of the Quran come in, and whoever is interested in fifth Okay, now it's your turn. And so in this way, although that eminent bass is house became the first true University, he operated out of it, just teaching, teaching, teaching the people and this is what he busy his time with.

He was so knowledgeable that the older companions took him very seriously despite his age. So when I'm up Radi Allahu Anhu became the second Khalifa became the second leader of the Muslims Amata would regularly ask Abdullah see me Abdullah and Ibis his opinion on things, even though he was green. You know, he was a young man, he was a late teenager early 20s. You know, I think about what I was doing in my early 20s Like mashallah, I'm the bass was precocious, right? He was way ahead of his time. A famous example of this happened when there was a there was some murmuring, right, some of the companions didn't think it was appropriate. But who is this kid? This guy, he's too young. He

shouldn't be here with the old men like making the big decisions. And so I'm gonna put them to the test. He asked everybody present. Tell me what is the meaning of sorts of muscle you guys know sort of muscle. It's one of the last soldiers of the Koran. It's very short.

And everybody they say their piece and they say it means when you get victory, that you have to be thankful and stuff like that.

And then he turns to Abdullah bass, and he says, Tell me what this sort of means.

And I told my boss, he says, it means the prophesy Saddam was about to die.

Because the particular victory that Allah was talking about was the conquest of Mecca, which was happening at the end of his life.

And so everyone was amazed because he saw something in the Surah. And he had information that nobody else nobody else had.

During the times of the fitna, the Muslim civil war with Ali and or Alia

Abdullah and our bass was on the side of Ali.

And he was one of the people that was trying to bring people back to normative orthodox Islam.

There's a really, really significant interaction with him and this group of resin rebels that were called the high wattage right so we have the first Muslim civil war there was on the MOI

We aside, well, there was a third side that was really radical that were basically like, we think all y'all are disbelievers. And we're just gonna fight against everybody. We're the only ones who are right. Everybody else, you're not even Muslim anymore. And so I believe that even at best, he had the courage, he went among them. And he's like, listen, let me try to talk to him.

And so we went to them. And he's like, What are your What are your complaints? Like? What are your arguments? And they told him, they said that, well, Allah says this in the Quran, and we see that these guys are doing something different, or at least doing something different or always doing something different. And I've done that even the best explain to them and use logic and understanding and of the Koran, to demonstrate how they were interpreting the Koran all wrong.

And they were interpreting the Koran in a very extreme way.

And so we have an undiluted non bass kind of a framework or a story that proves how people should attempt to reason with people and talk to people and bring them back to the truth. And how also to warn that anybody can misinterpret anything. Just because the Quran is 100% preserved, doesn't mean that it's safeguarded from people misinterpreting it, absolutely not. Anybody can take anything and make it mean, what they want to mean. And there were people doing that even back then. So if there were people doing that back then then of course, people are going to do it now.

After that civil war, after Adi was assassinated, Abdullah ibn Abbas stayed out of everything else. He stayed out of politics, he stayed out of what was happening, and his descendants eventually became the founders of the ambassador dynasty. The ambassador dynasty is named after that line of people. Anyway, let's get to the Hadith. It is a Hadith Coetzee said that the prophesy Salam said in what he reported from his Lord, the mighty and majestic, quote, Allah wrote good actions and bad actions and then made them clear.

Whoever intends to do a good action, and then does not do it a law, the blessing and Exalted will writes a good action for him. What do we mean by writing? What we really mean is by recording like the angels recording your good deeds,

if He intends to do it, and then does it, Allah will write 10 to 700, good deeds, good actions, multiplied many times over.

If he intends an evil action, and then does not do it, Allah will write a full good action for him a good deed.

And finally, if He intends, its meaning, a bad deed, and then does it, Allah will write one bad action for him or one bad deed. So we see, first of all, we have in here a proof for the recording of deeds. We believe in Islam, that we have angels on our shoulders, two of them, one of them recording good deeds, one of them recording bad deeds, this record is not etched in stone. So all of the minor sins that you commit, minor sins are sins that do not require a specific act of repentance.

They are erased from that record, with certain acts of worship, from one prayer to the next, from one Joomla to the next, from one terminal to the next, from one Ramadan to the next. These sorts of things automatically erase

the minor sins that you've committed. Whereas major sins, they require a specific act of repentance. You're wondering, What on earth is the difference between a major and minor sin? How do I know which sin is a major sin and a minor sin? Well, sufficient as an introduction is that most major sins have to do with harming another person.

Because it's not just something that you get to sit back and say, you know, oh, Allah is Most forgiving, he's going to wipe it away. No, you have to specifically ask repentance for it. You have to commit to changing your ways. And if it's the sort of thing that can be undone or fixed, then you have to fix it. You have to make it right.

You can't break somebody's window. By accident, even. You've caused the loss for this person. And then just say, Well, you know, next time I pray, Allah is going to wipe it away. No, you have to go and own up to it and try to fix it. You owe that person. The same. If you backbite somebody or something you said causes somebody harm. You've got to try to you got to try to make it up and set it right and I

Ask Allah specifically to forgive that specific action.

But the overall lesson of this hadith is the merciful calculus of Allah. Right? In Islam, we don't have this kind of

maybe capitalistic

numeral system, where every second is worth every second, they're fungible, right, that's the term in economics, every one is just the same as every, every other one is interchangeable. Or every dollar is worth every dollar, every action is worth every action. No, Allah has a whole different set of calculations and formula

to determine what's going to happen in the afterlife, your good deeds and your bad deeds. And if we look at this calculus right here, we find that Allah's Mercy is beyond what we could even anticipate or expect or hope for, there's four possibilities. Either you want to do a good deed, or you don't.

And within each of those two possibilities, you get to do it, or something prevents you from doing it. So we learn here that if you intend to do a good deed, even if something prevents you from doing it, Allah is still going to have recorded, your angel is going to record a good deed. Why, because of the whole theme of the chapter, your intention is the most important thing actions are by their intention.

If you intend to do a good deed, and then you actually get to accomplish it,

you get to fulfill it and perform it, then it's going to be multiplied many, many times over. It's as if you did 700 deeds, or at least something that's much more than one, depending on how sincere you were, depending on how, you know how much you excelled in that action.

If you intend to do a bad deed, and you turn back, you decide, You know what I shouldn't do that.

Allah is going to write that as a good deed and reward you for it.

And the only time a law is going to write a bad deed in the first place, is if you intend to do something bad, and then you follow through and you do it.

Not if it's an accident, it's premeditated, you plan it, you do it. In that case, Allah is going to have the angel recorded as one bad deed. And even then, if it's a minor sin, Allah will wipe it away between your regular ritual worship,

can we ask for a better deal than that? If we were in negotiation, right, like Allah was kind of like our employer, and we're sitting down, we're making a contract for what are the terms? What are the rules going to be?

For? How are our actions going to be weighed and judged and evaluated, we would never come up with something even this merciful, we will be shy to ask, it's almost like you can't lose. All you have to do is mean well,

whether you do it or don't do it, you fail or succeed, if you mean well, then Allah is going to take care of and Allah is going to take care of you, as well.

Very good. So that is the heavy for the day.

Now on to

marriage issues. So we had said before bird's eye view, that in Islamic law, there are three essential things that have to be present in a marriage contract, in order for it to be valid. And we said that each and every one of these things was placed there to protect

the woman.

Because the regretful

reality

of this dunya of this world is that

who's more likely to take advantage of the other of the opposite gender, the opposite sex men are more likely to take advantage or try to take advantage of women than women are of men. Not to say that it doesn't happen in reverse. It does. But exceptions don't prove the rule. The majority of the time, men are trying to take advantage of women. And so Allah has placed three central things in Islamic law in marriage law, to stop that from happening. Those three things are

the Wali which is the Guardian,

the

witnesses

and

the dowry. Okay, so the guardianship is to prevent an inexperienced woman, a woman with no experience with men from being deceived from being sweet, tucked right

Right, and from eventually being taken advantage of, and we talked about the mechanisms that Allah has placed within that institution of guardianship to prevent oppression. Neither can a guardian be so strict that it turns into oppression in the sense that he's preventing his daughter from getting married unreasonably. Now he can lose his guardianship if he tries to do that. But neither does he have the right to just marry her off to anybody that walks in off the street. Right? We talked about the woman's right to refuse, and,

and so on and so forth. So that was all in earlier classes. That is an essential part to protecting a woman's rights in a marriage contract. The second part was the witnesses. A marriage contract to be valid has to have two witnesses. Those witnesses have to be Muslim. They have to be just okay. And if they don't, the most, the let's say that the best situation is that you have

how I'll rephrase that, excuse me, that the more just untrustworthy the witnesses are, the more V objective of a Cydia is being met. The sacred law is doing its job because the people who are witnesses if they're trustworthy, they will report if something fishy goes down. Okay. And we said that the stressed sunnah of marriage is to not just have witnesses, but to announce it. The Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam, he said in one Hadith to announce it with a an imperative verb of command.

Scholars differed whether this was strictly like an obligation or something that was recommended, the majority say it's recommended, but either way you can see the logic. The logic is to prevent secret marriages. Right? Secret marriages are not permissible in Islam. in Haifa, any Joomla 10.

It should be something that is known. There are witnesses, the whole community is aware that what that way everybody's reputation and everybody's rights are protected.

Okay. The third institution that we're going to now delve into in more detail is talking about dowry. Okay, the dowry is a sum of money that is paid from the man to the woman during the marriage process.

Why does it exist? It exists so he has skin in the game. So he stands to lose financially, if he divorces so that he just can't divorce her flippantly.

And then try to take back his,

his dowry and make off with everything like nothing ever happened. Why? Because who stands to lose the most in a marriage? Who stands to lose the most? If one of the two is just playing around the woman, the woman stands to lose the most, she might lose her youth, she might waste years of her life, her biological clock is ticking.

There might be men in the community that are reluctant to marry somebody who's been divorced,

which shouldn't happen, but we find out and culturally it does. So the person who stands to lose the most is the female.

Therefore, the man pays the woman a certain sum upfront in the beginning,

for the marriage, so that if he decides to so that let's say before he if he does divorce or he thinks about divorce, he will be forced to think twice.

It is an investment that he has made, and he will be forced to think twice before breaking things off in a hasty manner.

And hopefully, it will bring him into a attitude of responsibility and accountability, and one of attempting to fulfill the rights of his spouse. So there's many other subsidiary nitty gritty issues that come along with the dowry. For example, when is the dowry paid? How much should the dowry be?

Is it able to be paid in installments?

Is the the parents like the father the Guardian able to ask for part of the dowry? Right? What happens upon divorce? What happens to the dowry? What if the divorce is from the part of the woman?

What if the divorce is like mutual What if it is, fest, what if it is a an annulment? Right? We have all these different situations. The question is what's going to happen

With the dowry, so, a few things that all of the scholars agreed to first of all, they agreed that a dowry is an essential prerequisite to a marriage contract.

If a man comes to you, or anybody you know, and tries to get you married without a dowry, runaway red flag, not marriage material.

The second

point of consensus is that

the scholars agreed that there is no upper limit to the dowry.

Yes, if you want to ask for $50,000, you can, you're free to do it. If you want to ask for $100,000 for a million dollars, that's your choice.

The guardian or the parents should not do that.

In an effort

to prevent the woman from getting married, that could be grounds for having his guardianship revoked. However, if the woman thinks that she is worth that, and especially a woman with sexual experience that doesn't require a guardian, and she knows her value, she should not be guilted into accepting less than she thinks she is worth.

So if you're a woman, and someone's approaching you for marriage,

you have no obligation to feel guilted into accepting little for a dowry.

Oh, but sister at the time of the Prophet they got married with an iron ring. Oh, but sister at the time back then this is not you know how the Sunnah of marriage or this not in the other. Regretfully,

a lot of men use this type of talk to take advantage of of women.

Do not be afraid to ask for

a meaningful song. And that's what I as an Imam, I tried to suggest that people the dowry should be meaningful. Okay, if you're, if you want to know how much it should be exactly, then obviously, the standard of living income is going to differ from place to place from time to time, ask around what everybody else is doing. I myself, I'm new here. I've been here for just a handful of months, I did one knee calf where the dowry was $45,000.

I did another Nika where it was a core end.

And I did that for a specific reason. Normally, I would say I would recommend against that. But this was an exceptional circumstance where these two had been, they had been girlfriend and boyfriend for a lot for a while. So I needed to make it holla. Right.

But if two people coming together for the first time,

it should be meaningful. We're talking at least at least 234 $1,000 my opinion.

Exceptional. There are exceptional circumstances, of course, but women you have to know your worth. Don't let men

guilt you into a situation where you're going to be taken advantage of.

The scholars have consensus that unacceptable dowry is something that transfers ownership completely. Okay, and something that is specific,

both in the amount, the type of thing that you're getting, and

what exactly it is.

Right. So we're going to that should hints that we're going to get into the issue. What if it's not specified? Can somebody say, I'll marry you for whatever's in my pocket, right? Or a nice gift, I'll get you later. Or even Okay, something a little bit more reasonable, like a car, a new car, okay? If he shows up with like a Toyota casita from the 70s. Right. Does this Oh, Hannah, good question. That's our first issue of difference of opinion, what is the minimum amount of dowry so we'll try to get to that today. So it's a difference of opinion and we'll get into it later. Whether you're allowed to leave it unspecified, a new car, a house and apartment, these sorts of things. We'll get

into that later, but if it is something tangible specific known, the amount and the type and whatever, then that is consensus acceptable.

The scholars agree they have consensus that all of the dowry is payable

Will upon consummation

of the marriage. Okay, is payable in full upon consummation of the marriage or if the groom dies

the scholars have consensus that if the groom divorces the wife before the marriage is consummated, and he has specified a specific amount for the dowry, that he gets half back. So, okay, understand if they've set a dowry,

they haven't consummated the marriage yet, even if they've done the act.

And then he decides to divorce

from his side,

she keeps half the dowry, he is entitled to half of it back.

If consummation did not happen,

if consummation happened, she gets all of it. Because that's what we're looking that's the purpose of the dowry, right?

Okay, all the others are not kind of, okay. There is consensus.

We'll get there. So these are the point of consensus. So they should tell you that the what if this is different is a point of difference of opinion. But it's important when you're doing a side effect here. When you're doing issues of law, a lot of people make the mistake in that they start with a difference of opinion. They don't start with the edge map. If you understand the edge map, you understand the positions where there is

consensus, then no one has any room to argue at all, right? Because the problem is a lawyer who said I'm sad that my OMA would not agree upon an error. And so for example, if we have an agreement,

there is each map, there's consensus, that there's no upper limit to the dowry, and some guy comes calling. And he's like, Whoa, this is too much. This is not halal. And he said, Listen, this is not even a discussion. We have consensus on this point. Right? Or if somebody tries to come in, and he tries to say, okay, he's divorced, someone before consummation. And he wants all of it back. So no, this is each map, there is consensus that she has to get half. Right? So we start with each map, we start with consensus to know, what are the boundaries, okay? What are the things that are non negotiable. And when we get into the field, if we get into issues of difference of opinion, then we

look at the time and place that we live in and we can see, okay, there is a difference of opinion on this issue. However, for our time and place, this opinion is more fulfills the goals of the sacred law more it protects the women's rights more it does this more. Right. So that's why all the questions of what if this would have this, those are going to come later when it comes to differences of opinion? What if she asked for divorce before the consummation, we'll get there and show them.

So there is consensus that it is permissible to pay the

to, let's say, not pay all of the dowry upfront.

You can split it into two parts into multiple parts and pay some upfront and then pay the rest later. Okay, this is partly to make marriage easy.

But we also talked that upon consummation, it's payable in full.

Good, and that covers the most relevance issues of consensus when we get into issues of difference of opinion. The first one is the one that sister Hannah asked, what is the minimum amount of adultery?

Well, the difference of opinion is whether there's a minimum amounts or not. Okay? And if you look at here's the other thing, too. The reason why we go into this, the reason why we go into the differences of opinion, is that we can see that the scholars are thinking what is the most advantageous thing. They're not looking to take advantage of women, they're not looking to oppress men, they are looking for out for everybody's best interests, even if they disagree with what that looks like. They are genuinely trying to come to something that's going to be the most advantageous to everybody. So in their difference of opinion, is there a minimum amount for the dowry? They

disagreed? So a chef Arey and Atmel Rahim Allah, they said that there is no minimum.

There is no minimum

and their reasoning, besides the textual evidence that they used, their reasoning was that we need to make marriage easy enough. So that if there's a time of crisis, if there's a time of economic famine or whatever, that people can still get married.

Right. And they have evidence from the city as well from

especially the sun, specifically, the Hadith where someone married with an iron ring, right?

I will Hanifa and Medic, on the other hand, they said no.

If we open that door, then women are going to get taken advantage of. And so there has to be a minimum amount for the dowry,

that you can't go below.

And they differed as to exactly how much that is. It's all given an old currencies like the DRAM, so it doesn't necessarily I mean, we could, I could run a conversion for you and try to figure it out. But usually, usually scholars tied it to

the threshold of money. That has to be where a case of theft becomes burglary, right. So whatever is a meaningful enough amount of money, again, they're kind of thinking along the lines of what's a meaningful amount of money. So we see that there's a difference of opinion here. Both sides are looking towards what's most advantageous to everybody, and especially women. And they disagreed as to what that would look like a Shafi, right, and Akhmed, they said that the most advantageous thing is that there's no minimum. And I will Hanifa. And Malik said that no, there should be a minimum so that people don't get in the habit of going below that.

You know, I'll just mention this one issue briefly, because sometimes we find things in fifth books where we're like, well, what's the relevance of that today? For example, anything to do with slavery? We have an issue here. Is it permissible for someone to make someone's freedom, their dowry? Like if someone's going to pay to set somebody free from slavery? I said, Well, we don't have slavery. Now, what's the point? Well, we could imagine somebody who's locked up, and they have to post bail, or something like this, and this issue, this issue might come up.

In either case, the vast majority of scholars said, No, it's not correct, to make someone's Price of Freedom, their dowry, because obviously, there's some sort of conflict of interest here. There's some sort of power dynamic that's going on. Everybody wants to be free. But that doesn't mean I want to marry you. Right? So we need to separate those two things. So someone's not trying to dangle that in front of somebody else. And like, Okay, I'll marry you, but only if, you know, or I'll set you free, but only if I get to marry you afterwards. Right. You see how that's, that's a little bit messed up.

And the last issue we'll talk about for tonight, because we've already run over time, is is it permissible to leave the dowry unspecified. And now that could mean a lot of different things. So it could mean like unspecified a little bit, like you say, I'm going to get you a new car, or I'm going to get you a house in this neighborhood. Or I'm going to rent this apartment

in this neighborhood and apartment, okay? Or it could look something like something more than that. And it's like, I'm going to get you something nice or something expensive or something. That's something you like, what level of Well, the first question is, Is this allowed at all? Second is what level of ambiguity Are we able to tolerate when we're specifying what is the dowry going to be?

So a Shafi and Achmed they're together again,

Rahim Allah, they say that it is permissible

to make the dowry unspecified.

So you can say to somebody, a new car, a house, something like this, and this is a valid dowry, and it doesn't affect anything the

the contract the marriage is, is valid, and it's all payable upon consummation. Anyway, so you'll find out soon enough, whereas Abu Hanifa and Malik say no, this is not true. You have to

excuse me, I'm sorry, I

I flipped the sides. So Abu Hanifa and Malik are the ones that say that it is not permissible.

It is not permissible

to stop Allah. Sorry, I need to mark that because there's a misprint here.

I will Hanifa and Malik say it's permissible to leave it to leave it on specified a house a car that's permissible to Abu Hanifa and Malik and Shafi and Akhmed said, No, it's not permissible, you have to specify exactly what it is. I'm going to get you a 2010 Hyundai Elantra. Wow, 2010. Seems like it was so so.

So recently, it's not anymore, it's 10 years ago, okay, 2020

Hyundai Elantra or something like this, if you're going to make that your dowry, it has to be specific. If you can't do that, then you should just give cash and say I'm going to make it $10,000 $15,000 $20,000 Whatever it's going to be. Okay. Um, there's a lot of other issues related to dowry, but it's getting late. We've gone over time already. So we'll save it for next time. Does anybody have any questions about anything that came up in this class? Do you have other than the questions that you've already asked? Which from what I see, all of those will inshallah be addressed next class? Are there any other kinds of questions for what came up that you want me to try to

address next time?

In some communities, they also want to add an additional amount in the dowry contract in case of future divorce.

Like an insurance clause.

Allahu Akbar. It's the first time I've heard anything. So.

So let me get this straight. So the man, let's say, is making a dowry of 5000.

And who's, who's,

who's stipulating the addition from the side of the man or the side of the woman?

I see.

My immediate reaction is that what's the difference at the end of the day,

as long as it's known ahead of time that as part of the dowry,

you know, it becomes the whole dowry. If somebody proposes I want my dowry to be 5000 and say, No, in case we get divorced, that's not enough. Add 2000 to it. Now, your dowry is 7000. Okay, if he divorces before consummating the marriage, then that's 3500. Right. So she gets 3500 as opposed to 2500.

As long as it's all known, upfront ahead of time, there's no difference in it really, whether they call it whether in their minds, they're splitting it up as like a 5000 base salary, and then a 2000 Extra, that's just semantics. If it's all known ahead of time, then it's the same thing. It's it's one dowry. Right. So as long as that's the way that it's happening, I don't see any I don't see any problem with that

kind of loan as best

any other loose ends

Okay, thank you very much, everybody. And I will see you next time. Insha Allah.

Salam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh