When a Quranist Husband Suffers from his Non-Quranist Wife!
Published in March 4, 2017
Translated by Ahmed Fathy
Introduction:
1- We have received this question from one of our beloved fellow Quranists: (... May God bless you and reward you, dear Dr. Mansour, for your enlightened thought and wisdom that all of us need ... May God grant you long life ... I'd like you to guide me in one question, if you please; about the case of a Quranist husband whose wife is a non-Quranist and adamantly refuse to accept the Quran alone, how life of such a couple would look like? ... Does the verse 60:10 apply to that case in your opinion? ... Thank you ...).
2- With our imploring the Lord God to come to the aid and support of the sender of this question, let us assert the following points.
Firstly: general types of marriages:
1- There are no happy marriages whose happiness last for a lifetime, except in dreams; within platonic love, a male youth may imagine his beloved female as an angel with unearthly qualities and that their marriage would be legendary and happy for many years until death makes them apart. Such dreamy male youths cannot imagine the endless troubles and financial costs of marriage and the interference of the potential in-laws in the couple's life, and the engagements sometimes get cancelled before marriages may ever take place. Some troubles continue after drawing the marriage contract and after the consummation of the marriage when the couple might have problems due to different preferences, priorities, habits, and character traits and the marriage might end soon enough without much trouble in cases when no children are involved. Such failed marriages end miserably and the children of the divorced couple pay the heavy price of separation. In other cases, a couple may go on in the marriage in an ordinary manner: the spouses would have happy days and sometimes have troubles and crises that they are able to solve and surmount and reach a certain level agreement to go on living together as a couple within wedlock. Indeed, within a shared will of the spouses, they minimize troubles and frustrations and maximize happiness, and such willingness to achieve happiness as much as the spouses can entails years of active mutual support and understanding until their happiness becomes habitual with the passage of time, as the spouses would get used to each other and get bonded with sentiments stronger than physical or romantic love, to the extent that they cannot do without each other. Typically, the first years of a marriage determine the nature of the next years; both the husband and the wife must share responsibilities and leadership wisely and realistically while being keen on preserving their marriage.
2- When a marriage becomes a failure, the husband is to blame sometimes, and the wife is to blame some other times, and in many cases, both are to blame. God in the Quran tackles certain solutions regarding settling disputes of a married couple (see 4:34-35 and 4:128), and we have tackled details of divorce in Islam in our article titled "Contradictions in Divorce Legislations between The Quran and The Sunnite Jurisprudence", found in English on this link:
http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_article.php?main_id=15977
Secondly: stinginess (or selfishness) as the main cause of the failure of marriages:
1- The cause of failure in marriages (and indeed in all human relations) lies in stinginess/selfishness, as each party would be so self-centered that they aim to take and receive and never desire to give anything in return, and this is of course a type of injustice and lack of fairness. Such selfishness kills any human relations (with one's friendships, work colleagues, business partners, neighbors, relatives, etc.). hence, such self-centered persons live eventually in isolation because people find them unbearable; life entails mutual giving and taking and not taking everything without offering nothing in return.
2- Selfishness exacerbates problems if it is the basis in dealing with one's spouse, and this is why the Quran describes this bad trait as stinginess: "If a wife fears maltreatment or desertion from her husband, there is no fault in them if they reconcile their differences, for reconciliation is best. Souls are prone to stinginess; yet if you do what is good, and practice piety-God is Cognizant of what you do." (4:128). Hence, the real pious persons are those who discard their avarice and stinginess for the sake of saving their marriage and to reconcile with one's spouse (and likewise with one's neighbor, friend, etc.), as the Quran refers twice to this stinginess as an ailment of hearts avoided and controlled by the pious ones who will be among the winners in the Hereafter: "...Whoever is protected from his natural stinginess-it is they who are the successful." (59:9); "...He who is protected from his stinginess-these are the prosperous."(64:16).
3- The danger of stinginess is manifested mostly in marriages for two reasons: marriage is a long-lasting relation that should be free from avarice and self-centeredness in the couple, because if one spouse is selfish and the other spouse is not, life between them would be a veritable hell and a war of having power and control over the other. It is a dominant bad idea that marriage is about power, subjugation, and domination, especially when both spouses are selfish and seek to 'own' and 'possess' each other; problems aggravate when wives (perceived in Middle Eastern societies as the weaker gender) make their family members (mothers, parents, relatives, etc.) interfere and intimidate the husband, while he would bring his own family members and struggles or wars to dominate and impose things would go one until the marriage is ruined and end by divorce. It is better to remember 4:128 in piety and in the fear of God; the spouses must seek to reconcile their disputes and differences while seeking to preserve the marriage and to remember their love and discard the avarice/stinginess and selfishness in order to make each other happier.
Thirdly: two types of failed marriages:
1- A temporary one: we mean here the one that ends in divorce and separation quickly as irreconcilable disputes arise so soon and both parties agree to leave earlier with the least amount of losses especially before begetting kids that exacerbate problems. When both spouses are smart enough, they break off the marriage as soon as possible when irreconcilability cannot be changed before they have children. Some marriages end because of infidelity and some sexual indiscretions and either party cannot forgive. Some divorcées in the Middle East are still regarded as 'easy catch' for men seeking second wives or extramarital relations, and they suffer the injustice of a frowned looks of the bourgeois class as if they were the cause of a failed marriage for being unable to maintain and keep a husband. People tend to think that divorcées should be restrained from going out much as people perceive their behavior as suspicious or as a way to go husband-hunting among married men! The patriarchal societies never make divorced men feel ashamed of themselves and condone their being involved in extramarital sexual relations and their re-marriages and divorces that may be repeated several times during their lifetime. This is masculine stinginess and patriarchal selfishness loathsome in real Islam (the Quran alone). this is why in many cases, oppressed wives withstand oppression and injustices of a failed marriage to escape the 'lower' social status of being divorced, and being stigmatized or ostracized for it for the rest of their lives.
2- A permanent one: we mean here the one in which both the husband and the wife go on with their life in utter misery and endless quarrels and disputes because both are, or one of them is, stingy, selfish, or self-centered. In that case, both spouses get ill mentally and/or physically because of such a lifelong of misery, and they go on in such a life because of the children who need both parents. Bearing up with conjugal quarrels and disputes in that case becomes habitual.
Fourthly: Quranists and marriage:
1- Quranists are never to marry male and female aggressive polytheists/disbelievers as per their overt violent demeanor. We mean here terrorists of our modern era: those who commit, support, and call for terrorist actions, as we infer such prohibited type of marriage from the following verse: "Do not marry female polytheists, unless they have believed. A believing maid is better than a polytheistic one, even if you like her. And do not marry male polytheists, unless they have believed. A believing servant is better than a polytheistic one, even if you like him. These call to the Hell-Fire, but God calls to the Paradise and to forgiveness, by His leave. He makes clear His communications to the people, that they may be mindful." (2:221). Hence, it is prohibited in the first place to draw a marriage contact between a female peaceful person and a male terrorist and between a male peaceful person and a female terrorist. Terrorists of both genders are not confined to those who commit the heinous terrorist crimes (like MB, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS members) but also include preachers of terror like Wahabi clergymen in the KSA and Wahabis like Al-Qaradawy and Abou Bakr Al-Baghdadi, because they issue fatwas to massacre the innocent ones who are non-Wahabis. Those terrorists and terrorism preachers are disbelievers and polytheists in terms of behavior and it is prohibited to get married to them. All peaceful non-Quranist people of any given denominations (even atheists) can be married to Quranists. The worst type of disbelievers in terms of faith are the hypocrites whom God will punish in Hell in the Hereafter if they do not repent: "The hypocrites will be in the lowest level of the Fire, and you will find no helper for them." (4:145); yet, with many verses about hypocrites and how to deal with them, no Quranic verse ever talks about not to get married to hypocrites or to get divorced from them, because they were peaceful in terms of non-violent demeanor despite their lack of true faith. In general, applying Quranic sharia is linked to overt behavior that can be judged by mortals, while mortals are not to judge faith inside hearts and minds of people, which increases or decreases inside them, as it is judged only by God on the Day of Judgment. As for the temporal, transient life, we deal with one another as human beings as per overt behavior and Islam/peace in terms of behavior (i.e., peaceful demeanor and non-violence). Hence, all peaceful people worldwide are Muslims (i.e., submitters to peace as a higher value), who adhere to higher values of peace, justice, non-violence, and lack of aggression and compulsion in religion. All people are peaceful brethren if they avoid violence of any type. Let us ponder on the following verses: "Towards a believer they respect neither kinship nor treaty. These are the transgressors. But if they repent, and perform the prayers, and give the obligatory charity, then they are your brethren in faith. We detail the revelations for a people who know." (9:10-11); we see here that even aggressors are pardoned by God if they repent and adhere to peace. It is of paramount importance in Islam that all people live in peace; peaceful brethren can intermarry of course, regardless of their different denominations and religious affiliations; the forbidden marriage contracts are the ones drawn with aggressive people and enemies of reigning overt peace, as they are the ones who violate the religion of peace (Islam). The worst type of aggressive disbelievers and polytheists are the ones using the name of God/Allah and Islam to commit indiscriminate massacres and heinous terrorist crimes while shouting Allahu Akbar/God is the Greatest. Such terrorists must not marry peaceful people at all. As far as the Quran is concerned, difference in faiths is NEVER a cause to stop drawing a marriage contract between peaceful people. Hence, each spouse should respect the religion of the other spouse; thus, it is OK if a Quranist husband/wife has a spouse that deifies Muhammad, Jesus, Ali, Al-Hussein, the Lady (Mary, Zeinab, Isis, Nafisa,...), etc. or even Satan as long as both spouses respect one another and never interfere in each other's faith and religious freedom and performance of rituals of any type. One is responsible for one's faith ONLY before the Almighty God in the Hereafter and not before any mortals.
2- Marriages turn into veritable hell if a spouse would impose his/her faith on the other spouse by force. Most Middle-Eastern husbands do this and wives yield to avoid trouble or to protect children. In few cases, a wife would show her husband hell if he declares he has a faith that differs from hers, as she tries to dominate her husband and relentlessly expresses animosity to his faith in an attempt to make him adhere to hers (again).
3- If a Quranist husband suffers the case mentioned in the above point, it is easy to remember that reaching the Quranist guidance takes time; most of Quranists were previously Muhammadans who adhered to 'holy' notions and hadiths/narratives inherited from centuries-old traditions of the forefathers (Sunnites, Shiites, Sufis, Wahabis, etc.) and used to deify mortals (prophets + 'saints') until we knew that the Quran is the only discourse in Islam: "...And who speaks more truly than God?" (4:87); "...Which message, besides this, will they believe in?" (7:185); "Woe on that Day to the rejecters. In what message, beyond this, will they believe?" (77:49-50); "These are God's Verses which We recite to you in truth. In which message, after God and His revelations, will they believe?" (45:6). Quranists have reached Quranist guidance after years of striving and intellectual research that led them to deify, sanctify, and glorify only God and not mortals and they seek more guidance from God via His Book, the Quran: "As for those who strive for Us-We will guide them in Our ways. God is with the doers of good." (29:69).
4- Hence, it often happens that a husband or a wife may convert to Quranism while the other spouse may do the same or may not. Thus, a Quranist husband might find his wife rejecting Quranism when he talks about it, while she cares only for her family, children, and faith, without interfering in her husband's faith; this is OK. Problems arise only when such a wife is selfish and fanatic and would like to impose her Wahabi Sunnite faith (or Shiite or any other faith) on her husband, and when she fails to do so, she turns his life into veritable hell on a daily basis. Such unjust spouses commit the sin of compulsion in religions because they adhere and apply false hadiths/narratives and fabrications that encourage compulsion in religion and religious persecution; this Quranic verse applies to such people: "And who does greater wrong than he who fabricates lies and attributes them to God, or calls the truth a lie when it has come to him? Is there not in Hell a dwelling for the blasphemers?" (29:68). Yet, in most Middle-Eastern environments, husband typically commit the crime of compulsion in religion and religious persecution with their wives under protection of patriarchal societies. Such crime is against Islam (Quranism) the religion of peace and absolute religious freedom. It is unusual that wives would commit compulsion in religion and religious persecution with their husbands by ruining their married life with endless disputes and trying to corrupt her children.
5- Of course, the case of such fanatic disbelieving wives occurred during the lifetime of Muhammad and the early believers in Arabia, when some husbands in Mecca believed in the new faith and their wives adhered to the polytheistic creed of Qorayish. Likewise, at the time, some wives converted to the new faith while their husbands remained in the old one. The test to those early believers was the command to immigrate to Yathreb; some 'neutral' wives followed their husbands in their journey to Yathreb to maintain their married life and not for the sake of Islam, and there are believing wives who immigrated with their husbands or alone. There were also disbelieving wives who were adamant and refused to follow their husbands to Yathreb and remained in Mecca. Later on, Mecca and Yathreb at the time became two warring camps and Qorayish attacked Yathreb militarily many times. Hence, separated spouses in both cities faced the impossibility of reconciliation and got divorced; see 60:10, as those adhered to the old faith committed aggression against those who converted to the different, new faith. The Quran here has solved a social problem so that each divorced spouse would begin a new life with another spouse in Mecca or in Yathreb.
6- As for the main question if the Quranic verse 60:10 apply or not to the case of a Wahabi Salafist fanatic wife who turns the life of her Quranist husband into veritable hell, we refer readers to our article (in English) titled ""…And do not hold on to ties with fanatic unbelieving women…" (Quran 60:10)" found on this link:
http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_article.php?main_id=14091
but we assert here briefly that we ourselves cannot issue a general judgment or fatwa about that case; we know nothing of the particular details of each individual case of Quranist husband who suffers from his non-Quranist wife, and to what extent he is being harmed and in what sense. Each case has its unique details and conditions. Does a Salafist wife cause veritable, tangible harm to her Quranist husband to the extent of making people persecute him? we have not encountered any case like that indeed, until now. We recapitulate what we have asserted above in this article: failed marriages are of two types: temporary ones and permanent ones. The main cause of failure in marriages is stinginess/selfishness. In the question we received via email, selfishness is exemplified in a Wahabi wife interfering in the religious freedom of her husband who in his turn never imposed his religion on her; she has no right to impose her religion on him as well. Such a wife should have been neutral and never meddle in the religious life of her husband so as not to spoil ruin their marriage. A Quranist husband in that case must think and reconsider the matter carefully in order to try and solve the problem, especially when there are kids, while imploring the Almighty God for help; this Quranist husband must remember the Quranic example of the wives of Noah and Lot, as bad wives (who treacherously stab their husband from behind) are a test that repeat itself in all eras.