The Ideal Muslim Husband part 9

There are of course numerous other facets of his personality and behavior, which contributed to making him an ideal husband.

He was of course clean and pure both in his thoughts and person, and very generous in accordance with his own saying:

"Verily Allah is pure and loves the pure, is clean and loves the clean, is beneficent and loves the beneficent, is generous and loves the generous." [Tirmidhi]

Another very important characteristic was his love of children. Love of her own children is almost automatic to a mother and with that love goes a care and concern for their children in any matter with the same degree of love, and consider the children to be "women’s affair". In our own society today this is a common phenomenon where it is the mother who often plays the major role in ensuring that the children are clothed and cared for, that their school fees are paid, that they learn good behavior and so on. While it is good that the mother shows this love and concern, it is not approved for father to abandon his own moral and financial responsibilities and ignore the proper education and upbringing of his own children.

We have mentioned the Prophet’s (saws) own role in the upbringing of his own daughters (it was only the daughters that survived to maturity) and on his emphasis on education for both sexes. There are also numerous Hadith indicating his love for children and his practice of showing his love for them.

For example in a Hadith from Abu Hurairah (raa) it is related as follows:

"The Prophet of Allah kissed his grandson Hassan the son of Ali in the presence of Agra’ B. Habis, whereupon Agra’ said: "Verily, I have children and yet I have not kissed any of them." The Prophet looked towards him and said: ‘ What can I do for you if Allah has taken away mercy from your heart. He that shows no mercy shall have no mercy shown to him." [Bukhari and Muslim]

The Muslim family is therefore ideally a very united family. Mutual understanding between husband and wife lies at the root of it. The Islamic upbringing of children is one of its most important functions. For it to succeed as the basic unit of the Muslim Ummah, both husband and wife need to know their duties and to practice self-control in trying to abide by the Islamic code of conduct within the family.

The Ideal Muslim Husband part 3

It should also be realised the husband is required to be faithful in marriage as the wife must. The punishment for adultery of a married person, male or female, under the Shari’ah is death. The fact that the punishment may not be applied in this world, does not make the sin any less in the sight of Allah. A sin that is not expiated in this world is after all going to follow a person to the grave.



Therefore the husband should not fail to follow Allah’s command in the Qur’an:

"Tell the believing men to lower their gaze and to be mindful of their chastity: verily this will be most conductive to their purity (and) verily Allah is aware of all that they do."
[Qur’an 24:30]

Those married men who cruise around in their cars looking for school girls to pick up are surely disgracing themselves, and forfeiting all right to require chastity of their wives.

If for some reason, the husband cannot manage with his first wife but does not want to divorce her, he is not prohibited from contracting another marriage, provided it is done in a legal and honorable way.

The permission to marry more then one wife at a time is however conditional:

".......if you fear you cannot do justice between them, then marry only one." [Qur’an 4:3]

This condition is often taken very lightly in some countries, where polygamy has long been a social custom. No words in the Qur’an, however, are without meaning, this verse should not be taken lightly. A weak husband will not be respected and will not act fairly between his wives, whereby, his marrying more then one is likely to lead to injustice, constant disharmony and the break up of his family. This is not in his interests or theirs or in the interests of the Muslim Ummah.

If having married more then one, however, a husband finds his heart inclining to one at the expense of the other, he is warned that this inclination should not reach the stage of neglect of the needs of the other wife:

"And you will not be able to treat your wives with equal justice however much you desire it.
But do not incline towards one to the exclusion of the other, leaving her as it were in suspense."
[Qur’an 4:29]

This warning against injustice is strongly reinforced by the Hadith in which Abu Hurairah (raa) reported the Prophet (saws) as saying:

"Whoever has two wives and does not treat them equally, shall come on the day of resurrection with half his body hanging down." [Abu Da’ud, Nasa’i, and Ibn Majah]

We have so far examined the legal framework of marriage and divorce as outlined mainly in the Qur’an. This now needs to be filled in with illustration and elaboration drawn from the Sunnah, since the Qur’an tells us :

"You have in the apostle of Allah a beautiful pattern of conduct for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the last day."
[Qur’an 33:21]