Marital Relationships in the Major Religions
Allah says in the Qur'an in prohibition of adultery: Verily it is a vulgarity and a vileness and an evil path to follow'. 20
The use of the expression vulgarity, together with the particular past tense verb in Arabic (Kaana) gives the command an eternal and static quality with reference to God's abstraction from time and the singularity of his law in creation, a notion which is not confined solely to Islam but is present in the remainder of the religions, because religion is one in the realm of God, just as the inherent nature of creation is one.
So when we examine the sayings of many religions, we do so with the premise that they support that, which preceded and succeeded them in the field of rational knowledge and traditions and inherent nature and not with the premise that they are a proof and an original source. 21
Jewish texts affirm the impropriety of bachelorhood considering it a sin and making marriage necessary after the age of twenty. Abortion and infanticide and methods of contraception are also considered a crime and acts of unbelief.
Any woman or wife perpetrating adultery would warrant stoning and the rapist of any married woman would be killed. The rapist of a virgin girl would have to pay a monetary fine and take her as a wife for life for his ill act towards her and those caught in the act of adultery would be killed together.
Anyone slandering a married person without proof would be subject to a fine and punishment.
In this matter, the Christian religion does not differ from the Jewish religion because Christ came confirming what was in the Torah. 22 Hence Christianity prohibited abortion and placed it on a level with premeditated murder. In the same way, homosexuality was prohibited in the strongest possible terms.
The revolution of morals, which Jesus instigated, was in reality a war against the distortion (of religious texts), dissolution, and degeneracy among the people of Israel.
In the Gospels it says: 'You have heard it said: do not commit adultery. But I say whosoever looks to a woman he desires has committed adultery in his heart, and when your right eye calls you to sin, then pluck it out and throw it from you. For it is better for you to destroy one of your organs than for all of your body to go to Hell' 23. 'It is said that whosoever divorces a woman; let him give her a document of divorce. But I say that whosoever divorces a woman other than in the case of fornication has exposed her to the possibility of adultery'. 24
3. In the Religion of Zoroaster
This religion encouraged marriage and building a family and bearing children. In one of its texts it says that 'the married man is greatly preferable to the bachelor and he who supports a family is much more favoured than he who has no family, and he who has children is even more favourable than that.' 25
Elsewhere it says that 'every time the number of children of a man increases, his closeness to his Lord increases.' 26
Parents used to organise the marital affairs of those of their children who had reached the age of adolescence, it not being acceptable for a man to remain unmarried. Also any occupation or work which would distance the individual from the family was unacceptable. Among them, divorce was not approved of except in the case of barrenness, or adultery, or infidelity to the state of married life. Amongst their laws was the prohibition of masturbation, which could be punished by flogging. The consequences for one who committed adultery, or homosexuality, or lesbianism, was death. Likewise, the punishment for abortion among them was execution.
In Buddhism, the punishment for an adulteress was to be publicly thrown as prey to the dogs. As for her partner in the crime, he would be roasted alive on a red-hot bed of steel. Looking at a woman with desire decreased ones vows and the lustful glance stripped one of one's intellect.
The ancient Chinese considered the holding back of a man from marriage to be a character deficit and a crime against the ancestors and the state which could not be excused, even for religious men.
They used to delegate a special official whose work was to make sure that every man of age thirty was married and that every woman was married before the age of twenty.
One of the sayings of Confucius says 'if a house stands on a firm foundation then the world is safe and sound'.
After that brief summary of the family system among various civilisations and religions, it is clear that all of humanity agrees upon the call for marriage and procreation as an extension of the human species, and upon the impropriety of the unmarried state and the unlawfulness of fornication and infidelity etc. This concord from the peoples of humanity shows its truthfulness and intrinsic naturalness. Islam, obviously, does not accept a great number of the rules and punishments of these ways of life and civilisations, but our concern is the whole picture and the points of concord only.
Marriage in Materialistic Societies
Despite the obvious harmony of human nature regarding the establishment of the family and married life, and that there is no structure to the human species without this establishment and the fortification of its elements, one can observe certain voices calling for that which goes against the current of intrinsic human nature, and denies this law of the existence, and so just as disrespect towards and neglect of the law of the atom has occurred, so mockery is made of the existence of the family. Whilst the system of the universe has its own direct and natural reaction through radioactivity, the family and society despite its not having a direct and instantaneous natural reaction 27, has a greater and more severe effect after the passage and elapse of time.
Among the most important of the slogans, which have gone outside the law of nature, are those said by Marx, Freud, and Durkheim. Freud made the sexual impulse the basic factor in the development of mankind, while Marx considered it to be Economics, and Durkheim went for the social factor. The proof of the invalidity of these philosophies is first and foremost that they are mutually contradicting in addition to the fact that the pressures which surrounded society helped to create them. The severe pressure which society faced from those who called themselves religion, and the grave contradiction that appeared between the words and deeds of the religious authorities is but one example. Another example is the imposition of legal codes which go against human nature like the church's prohibition of divorce, and the inquisition and extreme quelling of any opposition together with the social gulf between the elite and nobility and the poor and miserable. All these matters have fuelled these philosophies. 28
Section Two
The Call of Nature 29
Marriage as a Necessity
Marriage is a vital necessity. The survival of the species depends upon it and the survival of any organism is an intellectual necessity. Hence the world's intelligentsia try to prevent the extinction of a particular organism. So what of humanity? The Qur'an states: 'But when he turns his back, his aim everywhere is to spread mischief in the land and to destroy crops and progeny, but Allah loves not mischief'. 30
In the matter of destroying progeny there is no difference between active destruction and passive destruction. Qur'anic verses and prophetic traditions stress marriage as being mandatory for the common good and recommended for the individual good.
This is from one angle. From another, were it not for marriage, humanity would suffer from some extremely harmful diseases, as medical science has proven, and the avoidance of any possible harm is mandatory both from a religious and an intellectual point of view. From another angle again, a person to deny himself, in moderation, of the good things in life is also intellectually and religiously wrong as the story of Ala shows in 'Nahj al-Balagha'. 31 In a well-known case, the Prophet himself stopped a man who had vowed to abstain (from all the good things in life including marriage) by the saying There is to be no monasticism in Islam'. 32
It may be argued that the Qur'anic verse: 'The monasticism which they innovated was not prescribed by Us for them, (We commanded them) only to seek the good pleasure of Allah' 33, contradicts this. However it should be pointed out that the rule was temporary in the face of an overflow of Jews in the world, and therefore Islam abrogated the rule. As for bringing together they innovated it' and we did not make it incumbent upon them', it is clear that they innovated it firstly, and then Allah ratified it.
The custom of early marriage is upheld by the intellect and the religion. It was the norm amongst Muslims from the dawn of Islam up to and before the cultural, economic, and military assault by the laws of the West and East upon their lands. If this (early marriage) had not been the case, then it would have led either to depravity, the least form of which is masturbation, or to illness as physicians have shown.
It was the custom of Muslims to marry off girls from the age of ten to fifteen or thereabouts, and boys from attaining maturity up to age eighteen. Early marriage was a vital necessity for them because of its simplicity. There was no condition of completing studies or military service. Marriage was like food and drink and clothing to them. A certain man would need a certain woman and vice versa, and nothing would prevent them from coming together in lawful matrimony.
The West, in placing obstacles and hurdles in the way of marriage, has laid itself open to public and private licentiousness as well as various other perversions. Its own figures show that most youngsters are sexually active from age ten for girls and from reaching physical maturity for boys, with all the dangerous consequences of that such as abortion and the profusion of illegitimate children found on the streets and in the slums, as well as various sexually transmitted diseases, and adulterous acts together with marital and family infidelity and incest and suicide, the appearance of homosexuality, and the trade in buying and selling children and so on.
Knowing that Islam is the religion of human nature, it is clear that sexual purity and cleanliness necessitates that we return to the teachings of Islam in this important area of life.
It should not be argued however: Why did the Messenger of God not marry until the age of twenty-five and for that matter Ali, because it can be said that one reason may be that the Prophet was poor, his family suffering great hardship as is seen in the story of the dividing up of the sons of Abu Talib. As for Ali, he was at the most serious stage in facilitating mankind's transition from darkness to light. It is clear that in this state, a man sacrifices everything for the sake of his goal. 37
This is common sense more than tradition, for it is the needs of the young men and women which lead them towards marriage and the dowry is no more than symbolic. There should be nothing to prevent two souls from coming together in a legal way no matter whether their conditions are poor or rich, especially as we see now certain nations making the dowry incumbent upon the man and others making it upon the woman and others still leaving it out altogether.
Islam sanctions the dowry out of honour and respect for the wife but it is not to be over done, rather it stresses the simplicity of the dowry so that it is enough for the husband to teach the wife a chapter from the Qur'an or a simple craft, or even give her a plain iron ring.
Then on, it is clear that after the marriage, the two will be motivated towards working and earning, because the person who knows that he has a responsibility will run towards life as opposed to one who does not feel any responsibility.
Simplicity of dowry made for the best women of the nation according to the Prophet because it makes this vital element of life easier and quicker. God wants for you ease and he does not want difficulty.' 38 It is related that the Prophet said: Make things easy upon yourselves and do not make things difficult.' 39 Ease in anything promotes the absence of stress on the person physically and mentally.
As for the 'most radiant of face', perhaps this stems from good moral behaviour which promotes the radiance of the face and skin. 40
In this way, it was the custom amongst Muslims, before the age of Western materialism, for the dowry to be small and simple, except in a very few cases, for the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs diverged from the traditions of Islam to the traditions of the Persian kings and the Caesars in every domain and especially in the matter of dowries. Because of this, the impeccable Imams used to emphasise and insist upon the dowry of the sunna - that practised by the Prophet.
