The Challenges Of Getting Married for The Muslimah

 'Annikah Sunnatee wa mon roghiba 'ansunnatee falaisa minne'

The Above statement was credited to the Prophet in one of his ahadith. The literal meaning is that every Muslim (male or female) should be married. Even those without sexual pleasures to be satisfied are still encouraged to get married to their likes...at least for social security. It has, however, become a daunting task for a very good number of Muslimah (the female Muslims) to get hooked.
This is largely due to an alleged imbalance in the ratio of men to women. I have read another report that had contested the fact that such imbalance truly exists and if it truly exists, it must be due to the weak immunity of the male child during their early days in life. Whichever the reason might be, it is a matter of fact that our female folks are getting it harder by the day to secure a husband.
I had decided to discuss this issue because a sister complained bitterly about the problem especially for the widows who are still sexually active. Though the discussion wasn't for long as the MAIN cause of the problem was found out in matter of a very few minutes!
Yes, the Prophet had prophesied about a time in the Future when the number of men to women shall be the ratio of 1:50 and most women would only desire to be known and recognized as a wife. It would be such a troubled time that the woman would voluntarily relief a man of his matrimonial responsibility of providing for her needs as a husband just to pave the way for marriage. We already have begun experiencing such, yet, the time the Prophet was referring to is yet to come. This means that the Marriage challenge of our Muslimahs is something we can still manage...all we have to do is to agree on certain facts and adopt certain principles we have intentionally jettisoned! As I try to point out some of the reasons behind the challenge below, we need to keep in mind that women are like flowers that have extremely short period within which issues of marriage needed to be considered decided and done away with... because as time pass by, her chances of getting married starts to shrink and there's a certain age at which getting married becomes a matter of a miracle!
 
 When a Woman is too 'Choosy'
 There's nothing wrong in having a good taste of the kind of man you want to spend the rest of your  life with, what is wrong is getting too choosy about your choice of man. According to the Prophet, be you be a man or a woman, your ultimate criteria for choosing a life partner should be Islam...he should be a Muslim. As a matter of fact, it is compulsory for the female folks to choose among the Muslims. It has also becoming a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED criteria even for the male folks to find a suitable woman from within the Islamic fold.
Riches, family bonds and physical appearances are stuffs no one can do anything about. God was the One that made that choice for us. In order to secure a loving husband real quick, ladies shouldn't be too choosy about them. It has been discovered that a good number of those finding it difficult to get hooked are guilty of this act. 'He must be financially buoyant', 'He must be tall and handsome','He must not have a pot-belly', 'He must be educated, at least, to the University level', 'He must love more than any other thing else in his life'...blah,blah,blah!
A lot of women have lost out on top quality men simply because their expectations were too high to be met. Another adverse effect of being too choosy is that the guy starts to think that it would be extremely difficult to satisfy you and of course, you would be difficult to control...you might even take control altogether! Guys don't joke with control and command...you pose a treat to that when you are too choosy so he walks away!

When She Proves Too Hard to Get
No doubt, everyone is an Invaluable being, but, you become irrelevant and dispensable the moment you are too hard to get. People don't like competition, they love living within their comfort zone. It , therefore, makes perfect sense when you price yourself a little more than average while in search of that special one. Overdoing it is what is wrong.
I have a friend who had two relationships in the past with girls that were playing too hard to get. The first one was in the University and he courted her for a very long while during which the girl was very demanding and her brother too made a couple demands of his own. She was never ready to introduce my friend to her parents. I had to ask him to let go. This was very difficult for my friend, but, he eventually did.
In the second relationship, it wasn't the girl but her family members that were proving too difficult. On one occasion, they told my friend to wait till the girl (who was still an undergraduate) was done with her Master's degree, can you imagine?! Despite the readiness of the girl, I had to tell my friend, again to let go! Thank God, today, my friend is happily married to a superb Muslimah wife!

Feminism
This, in my opinion, is the greatest reason for the marriage challenge of not just the Muslimahs but most unmarried or divorced women of the World. I honestly don't know for sure where the idea came from, but, I greatly suspect the Beijing Conference of the early 90's . It was a gathering of women that challenged the status quo. In there opinion, the men folks are holding firmly to power which according to them should be shared equally between men and women. Most countries were signatory to the agreements made during the conference. Feminism, I belief is a major offshoot of that rather unfortunate conference.
This, if you ask me had made women bolder and they demand for more participation in every helm of affairs and sometimes question why they had to be the only ones doing the house chores and taking care of the Children. Well, as you should know, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. The number of marriages started dropping drastically from that time on and is still dropping...this should be expected. No sane person would get into a contract that would be more trouble than benefits. As stated earlier, men love being in charge, the moment you challenge his authority as the man of the house, you have ceased to enjoy him and while you are at it, he's busy reconsidering the terms of the union and why he should continue with the marriage? This is how we ended up with all the 'Baby Mamas' and 'Single Parents' of the world. The LGBT wahala too, in my opinion, draws its strength from the out fall of the Beijing conference!
As a Muslimah, you should know that the Man is in charge and you should never challenge his authority. If you have an observation or complaint to make, you are to make it in a very humble manner so that you may have his ear! When such matters come for discussion during your courtship period, watch your response and when it comes up after marriage, learn to be subtle about it!

Every Woman Wants to Be The Only One!
Coming back to the population imbalance that was earlier discussed, polygamous mode of marriage should be adopted if we are truly serious about ending the menace! This was the solution we suggested that brought the discussion I had with my female colleague at work a very quick end.
She was polite enough to agree that most women hate polygamy and does whatever they can to prevent it. What they don't know is that just as they block the chance of a distance sister from getting married, so is the chances of some family relative or sister being blocked by another sister else where.
Should the Women folks encourage their men to take up a second, third and fourth wife, as far as our time is concerned getting married would be a no issue or at least very insignificant.
Apart from my mum and a sister or two that agreed with polygamy, others are totally against it. I have met a girl who told me point blank that he would kill her husband should he dare marry a second wife!
This is a treat that have been carried out a lot of times and have continued to be issued by ladies of diverse culture and background INCLUDING our sisters in Islam! This has left a very few BRAVE, BOLD AND DARING guys like me with the idea of engaging in polygamy. What they (the women) don't know, however, is that polygamy can be a very beautiful thing! I shall try discuss that in next week's post, insha Allah!
Salaam!!!