Where are all the good Muslim men? (From Asian Image)

Where are all the good Muslim men?

4:04pm Monday 8th June 2009 in

By Misbah »

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This bank holiday was a rare sight. Hot and sunny. Rare. Thirty hijabed women traipsing through a forest. Very rare. A few good men….extinct.

We spent the day laughing and ‘dawah smiling’ our way through the Forest. Some of the smartest, funniest, successful and pious 30-something and soon to be 30-something Muslim women I know. Most of them still single. Most of them still looking. Some of them given up.

As I look at these fabulous women…I can’t help but wander….where have all the good men gone?

Ok yes…tongue is firmly in cheek…But there is a serious question to be considered here…why are so many Muslim women single….or…shock horror…divorced?? Is it something about Muslim women? Are we just too fussy? Do we want too much? Give too little? Or…are there just no good men left?

So, as we hop, skip and giggle our way through the 2.7 mile nature walk …I fire questions at the ladies….hoping to find some answers… You have of course your clichéd answers – brothers marrying abroad, sisters wanting careers, mother in laws wanting maids….heard’em before…..Bored. Bored. Bored.

The problems lie much much deeper. The fact is we may have tried to maintain who we are – but frankly – we held onto all the wrong things – what clothes should be worn, what language should be spoken, how clean the house has to be so the guests don’t look down their noses.

Marriage criteria is so often based on education, looks, wealth…or even whether the handi had the right amount of nimak when we went round… and let me be clear – these criteria come from the brothers just as much as the sisters – sometimes even more so.

And then there is the killer when the same person is too religious for the non-religious type and too western for the religious type…coming from those who practice a faith that is all about balance this understand is hard to let fly.

How many of us really understand the importance of character? How to engage in a relationship?

The value that should be given to others over and above oneself?

What should be compromised for the purposes of a marriage and what compromises will cause you to lose yourself so much that there’s nothing left? We (brothers & sisters) are so busy trying to find the right person…we forget how to be right ourselves.

I don’t want to sound preachy, but preach I must –and I’m in need of being preached to more than most. No matter which way I look at the process of finding a marriage partner and then, keeping him (or her) I end up, as a Muslim woman, turning to Islam as the answer.

Islam that provides the ultimate accountability, where the reason you don’t date or ‘get to know someone for six months’ is so you base your decision of a life partner on the big things; safe in the knowledge that the life of a Muslim should be spent in bettering the character anyway.

Islam has the answers. My worry is we simply don’t have enough faith to implement them.

Comments(18)

Abu dabi says...
11:39pm Mon 8 Jun 09

What utter nonsense woman!!! You talk of Islam yet display a semi-naked woman in your article. Traising through forests wearing your burkha in search of good men. Where is your mind whilst galavanting on a DSS paid jolly. Take out the DSS system of housing single women, get em off their backsides to work and get them to do half of what have to do and you'll start appreciating the good men that are doing that. Paying the bills, carving out an honest living instead of day dreaming out of some Bollywood movie. Get real!