Microsoft Word Marriage Guide doc

Source: 
www.al-islamforall@org
 
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case of a man who decided that all troubles were caused by marriage, and so instead of 
marrying he would pass his life in prayer. When this came to the attention of the 
Prophet (P.B.U.H), he said: 'By Allah, I keep nafl (optional) fasts, but I also discontinue 
them; I pray at night, but I also sleep; I also marry women-and this is my Sunnah. 
Whoever shuns my Sunnah is not of me.' (Bukhari.) 
'O young people! Whoever among you is capable of sexual intercourse should 
marry, for that is more modest for the gaze and safer for the private parts; and whoever 
cannot, should fast, for that is a form of castration.' (Muslim) 
A'ishah recorded that he said: 'Nikah (marriage) is my sunnah, and he who shuns 
my sunnah is not of me.' (Muslim) 
'Anyone who refuses to marry is shirking his farm-work, wasting the seed, and 
leaving idle the appropriate tools created by God; he sins against the purpose of 
creation and the wisdom visible in the evidence of natural structure. The man who 
refuses to marry has severed a chain of being, a previously unbroken chain linking his 
own existence to that of Adam.' (Al-Ghazali) 
A bachelor once asked Imam al-Ghazali: 'Which should I choose: marriage, or 
total devotion to God?' 'Both,' he replied. 
It is related that after his death, the pious bachelor Bishr Al-Hafi appeared to 
someone in a dream, and was asked: 'How has God treated you?' 'I have been given a high 
rank in the Garden of Paradise,' he said, `and was allowed to look upon the stations of the 
Prophets; yet I never attained to the ranks of the married.' When asked what had become of 
Abu Nasr Al-Tammar, he replied: 'He has been raised seventy degrees above me.' People 
were surprised, and asked how this could be, and he answered: 'He earned that by his 
patience with his little daughters and his family burdens.' 
Celibacy of the unmarried is to be solved by marrying someone suitable as soon as 
possible, in the light of one's financial circumstance, while widows and divorced people 
should try to remarry.