The Ahulbayt in Quran [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Temporary Marriage in Islam (Part VII)

Marriage is God's legislation to direct
this very strong force which might otherwise destroy the human
being's prosperity and salvation.

Permanent marriage is the most
recommended form of marriage, however, there are situations in
which for different reasons permanent marriage, where the intention
is to construct a family, is NOT possible.

Then what should be
done in these cases? Can we accept that God has left us on our
own in this important issue, or should we expect some legislation
in this case as well? If we do not accept temporary marriage,
there are two options left:
1)
Sexual promiscuity and licentiousness, with all it's results.

This is what happens (and is promoted by media, Hollywood, etc.

)
openly in the West, and not very openly in other cultures.

2)
Suppressing all sexual feelings and instincts until a permanent
marriage is possible.

There are, however, a few problems with
this choice:
A)
It is not possible to enforce it in any large scale form, as
a general rule for society.

B)
Even if we assume that it can be enforced, it may cause
psychological
disorders, and many other complexities.

Suppressing natural needs
and instincts (sexual or otherwise) is not a healthy practice
and Islam does not approve of it either.

It is evident that permitting temporary marriage (until a permanent
marriage becomes possible) is the best solution.

Mut'a is just
a sanctification of the boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.

Two
people may also live together all their lives without marrying.

But a marriage ceremony sanctifies the relationship.

The couple
acknowledge their actions as fulfillment of God's will and not
merely their personal desires.

They are under an obligation to
God to fulfill their commitment.

In a similar way, Mut'a sanctifies
what would otherwise be just a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.

One person mentioned that the Imam Ali's (AS) narration: "If
it were not for Umar's prohibition of temporary marriage no one
would commit adultery except a wretched" is not acceptable
because it draws a distorted picture of men's sexuality! Well,
I must say that it is not just men who commit adultery, and Imam
Ali (AS) is referring to both men and women.

Temporary marriage,
as well as permanent marriage, has two sides, and BOTH sides are
supposed to benefit from it.

Consequently, depriving them for
these benefits may cause both men and women to go wrong.

It seems that some people have no problem with what is promoted
in the West, with a culture of nudity and nakedness, with using
women as adverting objects, with reducing the sexual values and
ethics to the garbage and obscenity we see everyday on TV, media,
etc.

There is nothing humiliating and unethical about using a
young, pretty, half-naked girl (the ideal woman!) as a sex object
to sell bear.

A woman selling her beauty to a magazine or show
is considered to have a "respectable" career and is
called a "model"! What a meaningful terminology! On
the contrary, playing the role of a "mother" in a family
is considered to be unimportant, if not humiliating.

Being boyfriend-girlfriends
is accepted as a sign of freedom, culture, and growth.

However,
if we talk about temporary marriage suddenly these people start
to cry!
Some also believe that the spread of pre-marital relationships
in the West is not completely a result of moral breakdown, rather
it is also due to changed socio-economic conditions.

In older
times, marriage was simpler and the average age of marriage was
much lower.

In today's complex society, it is no longer possible
to be economically self-sufficient enough to get married until
one is nearly thirty years old.

This means that the only option
to avoid pre-marital relationships is to extend the period of
pre-marital celibacy to as much as 15 years.

Education is another
obvious example.

The man and woman usually can not find a job
if they are unskilled or uneducated, and therefore financial independence
is not feasible in the early stages of their life.

Such prolonged
celibacy is unnatural and cannot be sustained in any society for
long.

This is one reason why the traditional marriage customs
broke down in the west during the last 30 years.

Today, most Muslim countries are also rapidly modernizing.

It
is inevitable that they will also face many of the pressures that
most Western countries are facing.

They have a choice to make.

They can either try to mount a futile struggle against inevitable
change and face a chaotic breakdown of their traditional customs.

Or they can courageously take the initiative and revive the Islamic
values such as Mut'a to respond to changing needs of the society
in the true spirit of Islam.

Choosing the second option will be
a satisfying answer to the problem of prolonged pre-marital celibacy.

Allowing an open and honest relationship committed to in the name
of God with best of intentions, will discourage secret or promiscuous
sexual behavior which is much more harmful to the moral fabric
of a society.

Below I have summarized few reasons, out of many, for the necessity
of Temporary Marriage, and the advantages associated with it:
1)
As I mentioned, temporary marriage is not necessarily a sexual
relation, and it could be for many other reasons.

One purpose
could be: getting to know each other closely.

In the Shia communities
it is even widely applied for a virgin girl to enter into such
temporary marriage WITH the condition that the marriage is NOT
to be consummated.

This is actually for done a boy and girl want
to permanently marry, but they don't know much about each other,
and to familiarize themselves to each other, they will enter to
such contract few months before the official permanent marriage.

This period is what is known as "engagement".

The engagement
for the Shia Muslims means that they have contracted Mut'a marriage.

(There is no other way for engagement in Islam!) In this period
the boy regularly visits the girl in the house of the girl's parents
and he is considered as a part of their family.

They are "Mahram"
to each other (i.

e.

, boy can see the girl and her mother without
head-cover, as a result of temporary marriage contract).

They
talk, study, have fun, go to picnic along with their parents,
and so on.

The boy and girl are husband and wife, but the only
thing that they can't do, is to sleep together.

This gives an
opportunity to the boy and the girl in order to know each other
more closely and to see if they can live together for the rest
of their life and if their personal feelings are sort of compatible.

Usually if something is found to be wrong, they will break up
before the time when they want to permanently marry.

This helps
to decrease the rate of divorce in permanent marriage (when the
permanent marriage may have been consummated and they may even
have children) which is the worst thing in the family life.

2)
Another justification about temporary marriage is that, in
Islam, the right of divorce has been given to the husband and
not the wife.

Also according to the Islamic teaching, a girl and
a boy can not be with each other before marriage.

So if the only
way in Islam was to permanently marry, then this would be unjust
towards a woman who does not know his husband before marriage.

What if the woman later finds out that she does not have a very
happy life with her husband because they are not morally compatible?
Is she is bound to live with the husband that she didn't know
and she does not like him to the extent that she desires? The
answer for permanent marriage is Yes.

She can not get divorced
unless her husband wants to divorce her.

(Under some circumstances,
a Muslim scholar/Judge can divorce her if she can prove that she
is being harassed and is deprived of her rights or her man is
sexually impotent, etc.

But this is not likely to happen if she
just does not like her husband too much or if she finds that she
does not have too much compatibility and interest with her husband.

Moreover, such procedure is risky, since the verdict of judge
may be different than the wish of woman).

The option of temporary
marriage removes this unjust look of authority.

In Temporary marriage
a girl and a boy have opportunity to live together for sometime
to find if they will see a good future for their permanent marriage.

As I said, the couple entered in temporary marriage contract may
put the condition at the time of contract that the marriage is
not to be sexually consummated.

The guardian of the girl can also
enforce such condition and the couple can just visit each other
during the day to talk, study, and take part in any other non-sexual
activities.

3)
Temporary marriage is a conditional marriage.

The purpose
of such contract can be even only for talking to each other.

Although
necessary talks between two sexes in order to get along with daily
life, without evil intention and without possible evil consequences,
is not forbidden in Islam, but a man and woman who are presently
unmarried and who are in close contact with each other due to
the job, study or whatever, are encouraged to enter to such contract.

This removes any possibility of sin.

4)
In another case, a boy and a girl may NOT have reached to
a point to manage a family life with all financial and legal responsibilities.

Or they might be able to manage it financially but they are in
a temporary situation where they can't plan for permanent marriage,
like bachelor students who come to other countries to study where
they may not be able to find a good match for the permanent life
in the foreign country as a result of cultural differences.

If
they feel they can't stand emotionally, they may enter to such
contract for the few years that they are away from home.

In
any situation, if one can not control himself/herself, it is necessary
to either temporarily or permanently marry.

Obviously, temporary
marriage is more practical in such situations.

5)
In each community, there are some women who have lost their
husbands either by death or divorce, and no body had offered them
a permanent marriage proposal after their first husband.

She will
have to do one of the three things:
First to imprison the calls
of nature in her body and bury her feelings, and then become like
a nun.

Sometimes this happens when the society tries to keep her
as a prisoner of injustice, cultural traditions, and priesthood
which Islam has made illegal.

Second, she also could fight
back and run towards indecency and immorality which is what happened
in the western societies.

Third, she could also become poor, weak,
and homeless if she could not find a job to support herself.

Islam
should have a solution for such problems and emotional needs,
and that is temporary marriage which she could benefit to the
time she finds a qualified permanent husband.

Of course, she can
refuse to marry either way, and agree to a life of piety and loneliness
away from any marriage, then that's no problem! The problem occurs
when the matter becomes one of the two: whether she would fall
into indecency as what happened in the western societies, or whether
she would preserve her chastity from sin through temporary marriage,
based on the rule of Almighty God and His Messenger (PBUH&HF).

6)
According to the Islamic teaching, although the permanent
marriage of a Muslim man with a woman from the People of the Book
is not forbidden, but it is discouraged (Makrooh).

Because permanent
marriage is a plan for the whole lifetime while there is no guarantee
that such woman will change her belief in future.

Islam is not
a custom but is a complete way of life.

Such marriage could not
be a successful marriage if the opposition in beliefs and practices
wants to continue for the whole lifetime.

In contrary, temporary
marriage is a plan which expires after its period, and by that
time, it would be apparent if the non-Muslim woman is really interested
in the teaching of Islam, and whether she is a suitable match
for the whole lifetime.

7)
A nice aspect of temporary marriage is that the couple can
extend the period of their contract or even can convert the temporary
marriage into a permanent marriage if they find that they both
wish to live with each other permanently.

They can do this only
after the expiration of the first contract, or else the man can
wave the rest of time period to his wife, so as to finish the
temporary marriage earlier, and he should give her the dower (if
it has not been paid yet), and then start a new contract with
her with another specified period with a new dower.

When the woman
remarries the same man, she has no waiting period.

This latter method of renewing the contract is established by
a tradition related from Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (AS).

He was asked
about a man who married a woman for a period of one month, but
then found that a love for her was developing in his heart.

Before
the period expires, could he renew the contract and increase the
time period and dowry? The Imam answered that such a course of
action was not permissible so long as the first contract remained
in effect.

Therefore: "He must return to her the remainder
of the days [of the contract] and then set up a new contract.

"
(Wasa'il al-Shia, v14, p478).

This way guarantees that woman has
free choice without any pressure or temptation to decide if she
would like to renew the marriage after she has fully received
the dower of the previous marriage contract and after the previous
marriage has ended.

In any way, it is necessary that the contract
be repeated all over again, with specifying dowry (Mahr; Sidaq),
new permission of the father of virgin girl (if the case), and
also the marriage sentences ('Aqd) need to be spoken literally
again.

The acceptance in heart is not enough, and some specific
words should be uttered.

One of the requirements of any kind of
marriage is verbal offer and equal acceptance by the other party
or their authorized representatives.

8)
Temporary marriage is not like polygamy which should be rare.

It can be widely applied in an ideal Islamic society.

Temporary
marriage will result in less divorce rate, less rate of the youth
committing unlawful sex, less eye-contact sins and so on.

There are many more advantages for this Sunnah of the Prophet
(PBUH&HF), but here we are limited by space.

Tawfiq al-Fukaiki
in his book "The Mut'a and its effect/benefit on society",
in Arabic, discusses some of the would-be benefits.

However, we emphasize that the allowance of temporary marriage
should not cause the importance of the institution of permanent
marriage and family to be overlooked.

All efforts should be made
to promote permanent marriage, to eliminate the barriers and problems
in its way.

Therefore, temporary marriage, in general, should
be looked upon as a secondary measure to protect both society
and the individuals from the effects which otherwise would rise.

It is not very difficult to see these problems both in the West
and in the "Islamic" countries.