Lessons from the īlāʾ: marriage, culture, and the simple life

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

This one episode carries more benefits than a single lecture can hold, the shaykh says it could fill a class of its own, but he draws out the main ones.

❧Gender roles differ from society to society

The women of Makkah interacted with men very differently from the women of Medina, and Islam pronounced neither the standard. It did not come saying the Makkan custom prevails, nor the Medinan; it allowed both. So long as the clear commands of the Sharīʿah are met, culture may set the manner of interaction, which is why every Muslim land differs to this day, the women of one more reserved, of another more bold, and the Law forcing neither. For Western Muslims this is directly relevant: our gender norms differ greatly from much of the Muslim world, and there are two extremes, those who take the Muslim world's way as the untouchable ideal, and those dismissive of it, while the truth is that the Sharīʿah allows a spectrum, and within that spectrum a thing is ḥalāl. Modern Western society is, in the shaykh's careful phrasing, a very recent phenomenon, a post-feminist, "third-wave" moment that did not exist a century ago, and of it there are elements a Muslim may take and elements that fall outside Islam, where the line must be drawn.

❧The humanity of the Prophet ﷺ and his wives

Had Allāh willed it, He could have given His Messenger a fairy-tale marriage that we would never have heard a word about. Instead we are shown real disputes, a wife answering back, going silent for a day, because he was the best of humans yet a human, not divine, and his wives the best of women yet women. Why would Allāh give this to His Prophet ﷺ rather than a flawless marriage? Because how else would we learn to cope with our own? Their troubles were resolved in the best of ways, and so from them we learn how to resolve ours.

❧He never once raised his hand to a woman

In a society where beating women was simply the norm, where even ʿUmar is reported in some narrations to have struck his wife when she answered him back, ʿĀʾishah swore by Allāh that never did the Prophet's ﷺ hand rise against any woman or any servant. In a world where everyone struck their women and their slaves, he never did, not once; this is the perfect model of how women are to be treated. And when discipline was truly needed, his example was to withdraw: وَاهْجُرُوهُنَّ فِي الْمَضَاجِعِ, "and leave them in the beds." Note it well, it is the man who leaves, never the woman. His own wives went nowhere; he moved to the loft. You never turn a woman out of her home; however bitter the quarrel, it is the man who sleeps on the sofa or elsewhere, not she, unless a divorce has occurred, which is a separate matter.

❧A marital problem is not a taboo

The whole of Medina knew the Prophet ﷺ and his wives were in dispute, and Allāh even revealed Qurʾān about it, and he felt no shame that people knew. Cultures that make marital trouble unspeakable do real harm, for a problem shared with family and friends is a problem that can be solved. As always, Islam sits in the middle: not airing every trivial argument to the world, but not treating serious trouble as taboo either. This afflicts men especially, the marriage classes fill on the sisters' side and draw a handful of brothers, as if seeking help were a disgrace. It is not. Every marriage has problems; the good marriage is not the one without them but the one whose troubles are small beside its good, and in his entire life this reached the breaking point but once. And a proven way to solve a dispute is precisely his: separate for a while and let both sides cool and reflect, each realising where they went too far, for us a day or two, for that one grave occasion a whole month, which they needed to think the matter through.

❧In-laws, and the fiqh of *ikhtiyār*

The in-laws may and should step in when the need arises, as ʿUmar did, telling his daughter what to do, offering to provide for her himself, a benefit when done wisely and a harm when done foolishly. And there is a legal ruling embedded here: a husband may delegate the divorce to his wife as a choice, ikhtiyār (اخْتِيَار), which is exactly what the Prophet ﷺ did. He does not himself pronounce divorce; he grants her the option. So a husband, at an impasse he will not yield on but understanding his wife's position, may say, "it is up to you, you have until tomorrow night; if you wish to leave, choose." If within that term she says ikhtartu nafsī (اخْتَرْتُ نَفْسِي), "I choose myself," a ṭalāq takes effect at her word, not his, the one and only case where this is so, and by the majority of scholars it counts as a single divorce.

❧The simplicity of his life is itself a sign

The heart of the whole episode is the austerity of the Prophet's ﷺ life. Why would a man choose to live so simply, and lead those he loved most to live so too, unless he were truly a Prophet? To sacrifice for oneself is one thing; but to hold your wives and children to that standard is to set a standard for a whole society. Allāh ʿazza wa-jall did not will His Messenger to live as a king. Every wife was offered the way out, take the wealth and part gracefully, and not one of them took it. And in that refusal lies the true rank of the Mothers of the Believers, the Ummahāt al-Muʾminīn (أُمَّهَاتُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ).