Microsoft Word Marriage Guide doc

Source: 
www.al-islamforall@org
 
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For a wife to feel dearly loved, much more is required than just being pleased 
that she has been able to submit successfully to her husband's will. He could have a 
horse or a dog that is well-trained, submissive and never argues back. But people need 
real companionship and helpmates to work and live with. What a husband needs is a 
wife who not only loves and respects him but becomes also a real helper and genuinely 
supports him in the decisions he makes. This, of course, is not difficult when those 
decisions are arrived at following mutual agreement, and are on the right road of 
Islam. 
Things are not quite so easy when you genuinely disagree. What then? Would 
your wife then do her best to make your decision work (provided it was not against the 
will of Allah), or would she hold back stubbornly, and hope to see you make a mess of it, 
and then enjoy the pleasures of 'I told you so'? 
A good Muslim wife will not try to usurp her husband's headship of the family. Many 
women do, of course, and many of them succeed, wearing down their men through constant 
nagging or a constant display of their brilliant efficiency as opposed to the faults and 
inadequacies of their husbands. 
It makes those women very difficult to live with, and it steadily erodes the woman's 
genuine respect for her man. Constant criticism generally produces an uncertain, indecisive 
husband. Don't you remember how those critical, humiliating teachers at school made their 
pupils feel? They didn't teach them much, but turned them into stupid kids who could never 
get anything right, who ended up either keeping their heads down or aggressively rebelling. 
Wives who can see nothing but their husbands' inadequacies need to remember how difficult 
it is for them to carry out their role as leader, and how easy it is to go wrong. 
Providing the couple have arrived at their decisions with proper consultation and 
thoughtfulness, the wife should 'cover the faults' and weaknesses and mistakes of her 
husband and do her best to boost his confidence, not knock him down. Her loyalty and 
trust in him will all serve to strengthen him and ensure that he improves in skills and 
moves towards success. After all, a good Muslim man should be her best friend, nor her 
enemy. When friends disagree with one another, the decision-maker who proved to be 
wrong will soon dump any friend who crowed and laughed at him, or who continually tried 
to bring him down or belittle him. 
This is another reason, of course, why a woman should be so careful when choosing a 
husband. She should take great care to marry the sort of man that she is going to respect 
and be able to obey without feeling dreadfully trapped or helpless or frustrated by knowing 
all the time that his leadership will not be up to scratch. 
It can be dangerous when wives start to act like the husband's mother! `Don't forget 
your briefcase!' 'You idot-you didn't forget so-and-so, did you?' Once the husband starts to 
feel patronised and henpecked by this, he may revert to the little boy's longing to escape 
through the door and get out to play. 
There is also the very real danger that he will really start to identify his wife with his 
mother, and since Mother probably spoilt him rotten, the wife may not come out of the 
comparison too well. Wives should remember the wise old saying-'A man can love a hundred 
women, but he only has one mother.' Turn a wife into a substitute mother, and a husband 
might soon start wishing he had not swapped her for the 'real' one. 
One regular flashpoint in marriage comes when the husband walks in to find a wife in 
tears, in a mood, angry, desperate with worry, or whatever, and he listens for a bit, decides 
it is trivial stuff, mutters something and then goes off to think about his own problems. 
Meanwhile, the wife explodes with the 'You don't love me!' and 'You don't listen to me!' What 
she has perhaps failed to realise is that his withdrawal has nothing to do with her, or anything 
she has said or done. He is still involved in his own fears, insecurities and pains, and perhaps 
even needs to 'lick his wounds.' He doesn't intend to worry her with his problems; so it seems 
doubly hard to be accused of not caring about hers. 
It is usually a highly noticeable feature of a good marriage that when husband and wife 
meet each other again after a day apart, they greet each other properly, and pay attention to 
The Muslim Marriage Guide: Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood

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