Halal, haram, rights, duties… and after? What is not said about marriage in Islam

Early divorces, couples in crisis, overwhelmed imams: what if our discourse on marriage in Islam had forgotten the essential?

Barely married, they divorce. The number of divorces has exploded among Muslim couples in France. In mosques, imams are increasingly called upon to resolve marital conflicts for which they are not trained. Instead of helping to ease tensions and strengthen the couple’s bonds, they can sometimes, despite themselves, aggravate them, by holding a very technical discourse, almost exclusively focused on the licit and the illicit. This reflects a still insufficient knowledge of the ethical, human and spiritual dimensions of marriage in Islam.

As if knowing the rules of marriage was enough to know how to live as a couple.

A very large part of Muslim literature devoted to marriage focuses on rights and duties. There are many rules, obligations, prohibitions… but surprisingly little about love, tenderness, complicity, inner peace, mercy, listening and marital harmony.

However, when the Quran speaks of marriage, its vocabulary is profoundly spiritual and human: “Among His signs, He has created for you, from yourselves, wives with whom you find tranquility, and He has established affection and mercy between you. » (Quran, 30:21)

Sakina (appeasement), mawadda (affection) and rahma (mercy): these are the notions that should be at the heart of our thinking about marriage.

A speech too focused on the contract

What do we too often convey to young Muslims as they prepare for marriage? A long list of rights and duties, as if marriage was above all a legal contract to be managed, rather than a human and spiritual relationship to be built.

I have long thought that this approach mainly concerned traditional Muslim societies, particularly in Arab countries. I note today, with a certain sadness, that it is also very present in Europe, and more particularly in France.

The most worrying thing in all this is that Muslim institutions, and more particularly imams, also fall, sometimes on the front line, into this trap.

By tirelessly reproducing a discourse centered almost exclusively on rights and duties, they risk locking young people into a vision of marriage reduced to a legal and normative logic, and distracting them from its dimension. human, emotional and spiritual.

The right is not enough to make a home

It is obviously not a question of opposing the right to love, nor of denying the importance of rights and duties. But a marriage is not built only with legal rules.

You can know perfectly the rights of your spouse and be unable to give them tenderness.
You can know all your duties and never know how to listen.

One can know what is halal and haram and still make one’s spouse deeply unhappy.

The question is therefore not only: “What are my rights and what are your duties?” »

The question should also be:

Am I a source of tranquility for you?

Do you feel loved around me?

Am I a refuge for you, as you can be for me?

Is our home a place of mercy?

Because marriage is not just a legal status. It is a relationship that is built every day, through words, gestures, listening, forgiveness, kindness and the ability to take care of others.

Train imams capable of supporting couples

Perhaps it is time to fundamentally rebalance our discourse on marriage. Marriage in Islam is not just a matter of halal and haram. It is also a matter of sakinaof mawadda and of rahma : of tranquility, affection and mercy, as the Koran so rightly reminds us.

Parents must be aware of how they transmit these values ​​to their children. As for imams, it is urgent that their training fully integrates these dimensions of marriage, as well as elements of psychology, marital therapy and couple life. Because an imam can perfectly master the rules of marriage and be helpless when faced with a couple who no longer communicate, a wife who no longer feels loved, a husband who no longer knows how to communicate with his wife, or two people who have lost all trust in each other.

It is not a question of transforming the imam into a psychologist or therapist. It is about giving them the necessary tools to listen, understand their limits, support with discernment and direct, when necessary, towards competent professionals.

Our children will not ask us if we know by heart the rights and duties of marriage. They will ask us if, at home, they saw tenderness, heard sweet words, and felt that our home was a place of peace, affection and mercy.