IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE IN OUR LIFE

Why marry?

Marriage makes an incomplete human being a complete one. It makes him/her a grown up and gives him/her responsibilities whether those responsibilities are to feed and clothe the wife or to assist the husband. Marriage is supposed to take a person out of the hectic lifestyle that one is in and place him or her in an organised environment giving them a path to follow in life and a shoulder to lean on. In short marriage arranges one’s life. In Islam a man cannot have relationships with those he can marry unless it is within marriage. In other words Islam gives the right to a woman to be a wife of a man independant of the marriage relationship the man may have with another woman. This is a key diffence because in the modern era a man is not guilty if he has relationships with a woman outside of marriage but the moment he contracts to treat this woman equally as his wife, he is criminalised for illegal behaviour. This is odd as the current common law does not criminalise the actual relationship of the man with another woman but punishes the solemn promise/affirmation in writing to continue. Any off-spring would be illegitamate as the courts would not recognize polgamy even though it exists and is accepted in behaviour but not in writing. In some senses the increase in divorce rates and re-marriages we see nowadays is in someways a serial version of polygamy!. There are many reasons that support polygamy but Islam limits the practice to four wives and is allowed only when one can be fair to all wives. Polygamy is only mentioned briefly here but as a subject could be read in further detail elsewhere. Please also note that the current Law of the land in this regard should be abided by.

Marriage helps to safeguard one’s imaan (faith) i.e. it stops one from committing such acts by which s/he could be considered immoral. Sins such as intermingling with people of the opposite sex or socialising as it is classed in everyday terms are not considered to be acceptable in Islam, (because it creates immorality and immodesty) even though an incredibly large amount of people will hastely class it as an 'essential' part of one’s day.