Marriage Is A Blessing but It Isn't Everything?
In a society obsessing with marriage and filled with few who understand its virtue and value, is marriage really everything? By Romanna Bint Abubaker I don’t need to tell you about the flurry of articles everywhere about marriage this year. We are almost certainly affected by the celebrity culture and the current baby and marriage boom. Articles are appearing in their droves on why women can’t get married or why we ought to want to get married. Let me clarify that I’m no feminist, and far from it, as many who know me will tell you. I’m a simple traditionalist who takes my role and status from that which my faith, Islam, prescribes for me. This may be shocking to some, but that status is that my husband is the closest I should ever get to bowing in respect (something which Muslims do daily in their prayer to their Lord). For a Muslim woman, the status of her husband in her life is so high that it was said IF there were anyone other than God who a woman would have been obliged to show such a level of respect to – it would have been her husband. Many of you may suddenly think, ‘oh how typically oppressive’, and ‘unsurprisingly backwards’. Let me elaborate. I emphasise the if because the key tenet of Islam is that there is no one other than God to whom such respect is due, not even the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). A man does, however, have a great burden of responsibility to his wife and because of human psychology it is only natural that if someone willingly does everything for you, we naturally want to offer great respect and love to this individual. Isn’t that what love is?
