Abdul Hakim Murad: Qualities in prospective spouse

Sh Abdul Hakim Murad in his CD set "Remembrance of the Hereafter and the Afterlife" was asked about what qualities one should seek in a prospective spouse:

"I think to some extent that depends on the individual. Different people need different kinds of spouses. In terms of generalization, one should look for someone who expects to be judged on the basis of what they mean, rather then what they do. That is to say somebody for whom the outward practices are present and adhered to punctiliously. But for whom religion is really a matter of becoming better.

For many of us now these days, we are so much occupied with being right that we don't have time for God any longer, thats typical of the kind of decadent inversion that I have been describing. If religion in internalized and becomes a matter of the heart, we are going to possessed of those virtues that are going to make a successful marriage and will turn someone into a delightful partner because in marriage you need sabar, you need rida, you need Ithaar ( that is to say putting some body else before yourself)-you need all of the quranic virtues. And those only come naturally (and hence will be present at times of crisis and difficulty rathar than at times of ease and convenience), if one has made substantial progress in the process if tazkiya.

So one should be looking for a spiritual person as well as the more obvious things---somebody who is attractive. if its a husband, somebody who has good prospects-somebody who ideally shares one's native language because nowadays there are so many pressures on relationships that the added complication of subtle misunderstandings due to not having the same native language is something one has to be very wary of. The parents should ideally be keen on the match as well. Its a very regrettable sort of marriage that can only take place when one implictly burdens oneself with the sin of disobeying one's parents."