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Muslim Youth and Falling in Love
Sunday, January 15, 2006 |
By Latiefa Achmat-

If you notice, all baby creatures are cute, and most of them require love and care. Even baby wolves and baby rats are somewhat lovable. Human beings have been created with a need to be loved and are both cute and lovable to help the process along.
Most often the baby’s need for love and attention is satisfied by the mother and then by the wider family circle extending to friends, teachers, and classmates. As we go through life we keep searching for love and acceptance, and this doesn’t change when we grow up.

There are also different kinds of love, and people might love us for different reasons because they appreciate different qualities about us. A mother and father’s love is entrenched; they just love us anyway! But when people grow up, their parents’ love is not enough and they seek someone who will love them, care for them, and appreciate them on a different level—a complete love.

In modern terms this is called “falling in love” and I’m sure we all know about it—perhaps from the time we were young and read stories about the princess and the prince and how they lived happily ever after. We read such stories and perhaps our notion of what it means to fall in love and have a partner for life grew out of those ideas. However, at the same time we live in a period in human history when the family is being torn apart and when many marriages end up in divorce. This leaves young people feeling disillusioned: How does the “happily ever after” idea fit into the real-life context of marriage and divorce in the world today?

We have to acknowledge that the need to love and be loved is inherent in every human being. Along with this is the desire to have a family and achieve one’s potential in life. People need to feel secure, and lasting changes usually come slowly. Love has a lot to do with this.

The feeling of love is a gift from the Almighty. After speaking to many Muslim couples, I discovered that the feeling of love they share after being married for some time has grown. I found that when young people meet in the Islamic way—I mean being introduced to each other and speaking together and getting to know each other while understanding the background of the other person including family, friends, interests, education, work, and so on—the couple will form an idea about whether or not they are suited to each other and they will either have or not have the desire to know more about the other person.

At this point in the process of marriage, it’s important that both parties are honest with each other and mention clearly what they expect from a marriage partner and what they can give to the marriage:hopes and fears and so on. Both parties much seek Allah’s guidance through praying Istikharah (prayer for guidance in making a decision) to ensure Allah’s blessings.

When the couple marry, they are at the point of knowing some basic things about each other, and marriage is the first step to discover each other and learn how to share their lives. If the couple follow Allah’s guidance and are merciful, kind, helpful, generous, cooperative, forgiving, and patient with each other, love will grow from this seed because these behaviors nurture this feeling and allow it to grow. Everyone likes to be treated well and this is the basis of marriage in Islam.

The divorce that occurs so often in the world is very often the result of people basing their marriage only on emotional feelings, infatuation for example, and calling it “falling in love.” In any approach to marriage, the basis of communication should be honesty, sincerity, and straightforwardness. It’s easy for someone to act in a certain way to catch a marriage partner. But then when reality sets in, it’s like buying something you thought was a good value then taking the sticker off and finding it says “made in ——.” It’s better to get to know someone, including his or her background, interests, hopes, and goals, before the feelings begin to grow. In this way, if you find out something you don’t like about that person, it’s easy to just call things off.

Too often people present themselves in a certain way before marriage only later to reveal their hidden selves, which may or may not be what the other person expects or wants. So don’t get caught up in the world of emotional feeling that is really infatuation or desire instead of basing your relationship on behavior that nurtures the human soul and the feeling we all seek—love.
posted by Mohksin Rashid @ 8:23 pm