{"id":3608,"date":"2014-05-07T05:47:59","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T05:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wp3\/?p=3608"},"modified":"2014-05-07T05:47:59","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T05:47:59","slug":"muslims-dont-fall-in-love-before-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunnionline.us\/english\/2014\/05\/07\/3608\/","title":{"rendered":"Muslims Don\u2019t Fall in Love before Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/stories\/muslims\/love.jpg\" border=\"0\" style=\"float: right; margin: 5px;\" \/>\u201cMuslims don\u2019t fall in love before marriage,\u201d the woman said proudly. \u201cThat\u2019s something only non-Muslims do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>  <!--more-->  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">When I first heard this statement, I was confused. But maybe I was misunderstanding what the woman meant. Perhaps the woman was just saying that Muslims don\u2019t have sex before marriage (or at least that they\u2019re not supposed to).<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Muslims don\u2019t live together and \u201cplay house\u201d before deciding whether or not to take the \u201cbig step\u201d and get married. Perhaps in the mind of this woman, and that of Muslims who shared her sentiment, this was \u201cfalling in love\u201d and thus something Muslims simply did not do.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>\u201cI love a boy. Can you help me?\u201d<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I had just finished teaching a class at a Muslim weekend school when I was approached by a girl who appeared to be about thirteen years old. \u201cCan I talk to you?\u201d she said to me. \u201cI need some advice.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cSure,\u201d I told her, \u201cno problem.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cAt school, there\u2019s a boy I love,\u201d she said, \u201cand I don\u2019t know what to do about it.\u201d She glanced sideways to make sure none of her peers or elders could hear her talking to me. \u201cCan you help me?\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cHow did you meet him?\u201d I asked.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cHe goes to my school.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cBut how did you meet?\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cHe just goes to my school,\u201d she said again, slight confusion on her face.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cYes, I know,\u201d I said. \u201cBut how do you knowhim? Do you talk on the phone? Do you meet up at school?\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cI barely know him.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Now it was my turn to be confused. \u201cAre you trying to get to know him?\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cNo.\u201d She appeared taken aback by the question. \u201cI\u2019m Muslim.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cThen what\u2019s the problem?\u201d I said.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cI love him, and I know it\u2019s wrong,\u201d she said. \u201cI tried to stop it, but I can\u2019t.\u201d She looked desperate as she looked at me. \u201cWhat should I do?\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cListen,\u201d I told her. \u201cIt\u2019s not a sin to be attracted to boys.\u201d <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0 <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>What Love Means<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines love as \u201ca feeling of strong or constant affection for a person.\u201d It also defines love as \u201cattraction that includes sexual desire\u201d and \u201cthe strong affection felt by people who have a romantic relationship.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Based on the definition of love, loving a person or \u201cfalling in love\u201d can include an intimate relationship (and thus can involve sin if the man and woman are not married), but love itself is not contingent upon any conscious actions on a person\u2019s part. In fact, love can be confined to a person\u2019s heart without the other person ever knowing anything about it.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Therefore, love outside the bounds of marriage is not necessarily sinful, and it\u2019s certainly not sinful to \u201cfall in love\u201d before marriage.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>So I\u2019m Not in Sin?<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">After I told the girl that it isn\u2019t sinful to be attracted to boys, the girl\u2019s eyes widened. \u201cIt\u2019s not?\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s just the way Allah created us. We can\u2019t help it. Girls will be attracted to boys. Boys will be attracted to girls. And after lowering our gazes and staying away from what\u2019s wrong, there\u2019s nothing we can do about that.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cBut I thought\u2026\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cIt\u2019s what you say or do about this feeling that can make it sinful,\u201d I said. \u201cIf you just have this feeling in your heart and you don\u2019t do anything about it, that\u2019s not wrong. But you can pray to Allah to make the feeling go away,\u201d I suggested, \u201cespecially if it\u2019s distracting you from other things.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">She looked positively relieved. \u201cThanks,\u201d she said, smiling broadly as she walked away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Puppy Love<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">When I was growing up in America, I\u2019d often hear adults laugh whenever an adolescent or teenager was attracted to someone. Their tone was often playfully condescending when they waved their hands dismissively saying, \u201cOh, that\u2019s just puppy love. These kids have no idea what love means.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">And perhaps the adults were right. Maybe \u201ckids\u201d really don\u2019t have a clue what love means. Maybe what these youth are feeling is just \u201cpuppy love,\u201d a strong feeling of attraction that would pass with time and about which they would laugh about later.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">But even so, this doesn\u2019t invalidate the authenticity of the young person\u2019s feelings, which very well may fit into the definition of \u201clove,\u201d even the love is short-lived and won\u2019t amount to much more than an overwhelming sense of desire for someone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>When Young Love Is Real<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Often when we think of real stories of young love, we turn to the pages of ancient history or folklore. In the famous Shakespearean drama Romeo and Juliet, the character Juliet is reportedly only thirteen years old while Romeo isn\u2019t too much older. However, in the Shakespearean era, the concept of young lovers was not limited to fiction or drama.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In earlier times, particularly in European (or \u201cWestern\u201d) history, it was not uncommon for young men and women to fall in love and marry quite young. In fact, if a person was unmarried by the age of twenty, this was frowned upon and the person was feared to be \u201ctoo old\u201d for any hope for marriage. In Islamic history, the love of young Ayesha toward Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is often cited.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">However, it is not only in fictional tales and \u201cdays of old\u201d that young love has proven real. In the modern world, there are many true stories of young love, and they continue to happen each day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Famous Young Love<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">When I was in high school, one of my favorite songs was \u201cEverybody Plays the Fool\u201d by Aaron Neville, and I often think of this song when I think of young people falling in love. This is not only because the song itself alludes to the foolishness young people often fall into in the name of love, but because the singer himself experienced young love. Aaron Neville met his beloved while they were both around fifteen or sixteen years old, and they got married when they were only eighteen; and they were married for almost fifty years when his wife died from cancer in 2007.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The famous singer Celine Dion also experienced young love. She met her future husband Ren\u00e9 Ang\u00e9lil when she was only twelve years old and he was thirty-eight; and they began a relationship when she was nineteen years old. And they are still married today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Are You in Love?<\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This is a question that young people often ask themselves. Unfortunately, it\u2019s also a question they are often left alone to answer. Perhaps, what they\u2019re experiencing is just \u201cpuppy love\u201d that amounts to a passing \u201ccrush,\u201d or maybe what they\u2019re experiencing is genuine young love the like of whichfascinates us from fiction stories, ancient history, and modern day love stories.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">But perhaps what they\u2019re experiencing is something in between, a feeling that will one day pass but consumes them so much today that it drives them to act on it in the most reckless ways, especially if they are unable or unwilling to marry the person they love.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Such is the affair of many youth today, Muslims among them.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">And in this \u201cAre You in Love?\u201d series, we explore the wide range of issues that define \u201clove\u201d for many Muslim youth in today\u2019s world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>\u00a0By Umm Zakiyyah<\/em><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Freelance Writer- USA<\/em><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Source: <em><strong>OnIslam<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cMuslims don\u2019t fall in love before marriage,\u201d the woman said proudly. \u201cThat\u2019s something only non-Muslims do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c71-introduction-to-islam-muslims"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Muslims Don\u2019t Fall in Love before Marriage - SunniOnline<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sunnionline.us\/english\/2014\/05\/07\/3608\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Muslims Don\u2019t Fall in Love before Marriage - SunniOnline\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cMuslims don\u2019t fall in love before marriage,\u201d the woman said proudly. \u201cThat\u2019s something only non-Muslims do.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sunnionline.us\/english\/2014\/05\/07\/3608\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SunniOnline\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-05-07T05:47:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"majed\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"majed\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sunnionline.us\\\/english\\\/2014\\\/05\\\/07\\\/3608\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sunnionline.us\\\/english\\\/2014\\\/05\\\/07\\\/3608\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"majed\",\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/sunnionline.us\\\/english\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/26da0e970ff572e94f1b7d9009ab39be\"},\"headline\":\"Muslims Don\u2019t Fall in Love before Marriage\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-05-07T05:47:59+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/sunnionline.us\\\/english\\\/2014\\\/05\\\/07\\\/3608\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1266,\"commentCount\":0,\"articleSection\":[\"Introduction to Islam &amp; 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