The Philosophy Of Nikah | Mufti Abu Layth

seema s what is a nikka is the state religious leader required or can it be a contract between two individuals with their friends families as family as witnesses first of all shukran for the superchat much love um right what is a nikka so inikai is on different levels oh it is both of those things oh sorry did you say leader right is it state religious is the state required so obviously today or religious

leader required i'm not sure what that so okay is it a contract i would say a nikka is an understanding that is formalized by right of passage um and thereby holds some sanctity in the eyes of its upholders so the two people involved they

make a commitment of some of a nature to each other that is sanctified by the faith um you know and to that they are beholden so this is what a nica is in essence it's simply coming down to a commitment that is being made now the question is what kind of a commitment

and there may be you know there may be some variation of nuance so everybody agrees that the commitment is of some kind of um of rights and responsibilities towards one another now they may agree on many and disagree i mean they may agree on some disagree on some so they will agree that what what exactly does that mean and people just just left it to what society what the earth will deem as rights and responsibilities and people can

negotiate them as well to a great extent but really it is a commitment that is what a is see the problem with this contractual nikah is built upon what is called mukarama okay a sense of honor and a sense of um courtesy and not even courtesy doesn't quite describe it best but um like generosity it's that and what i mean by that is it's appealing to that nature of of humans

of generosity of care and providence of of support and shelter of that kind of side it's appealing to each other it's not of a mercantile nature and the problem is people keep treating nikah like it's a commercial thing because you see they use the word contract and and this is the problem because you see contracts in our day and age are often of a commercial nature and the thing about contracts is they are not appealing to generosity or to

care or to love or to affection or to courtesy they are appealing to utilitarianism like what what is what utility do you get out of this and what do you pay me and then the problem is that the the scholars have then used this language to decode uh and unpack nikah so they've treated it like they say well you know if you look in the fit books uh it is um you know it's like um uh they will say buddha where you are giving ownership of your private parts

in um in compensation for the mahar you know and where do you get this from where is that in the quran that it is you know these definitions that the fukaha use that the scholars use that it is declaring permissib or it is seeking the permissibility of a private organ um with the mahara and so on we where does the hadith teach this

where does the sunnah of the prophet salallahu teach this you are using incredibly legal language and i'm not against the fukaha having made this because in their day and age it worked you see the muslims the arabs came from a state of lawlessness with no rules and they their dream absolute ambition was to live in a world where there were rules an order and structure and so things came to them the sharia brought them structures

and order and ruled and when you're going from chaos to order that is overwhelmingly magnificent so you are all of a sudden finding structure in things so first it was just like oh you said this i said this but now oh there's a contract oh these rules oh we are beholden to this contract of nicaragua wow and it's adding to the all element but then what's happened is the world is caught up and the whole world has gone through modernity and then it's gone through post-modernity and now we've got rules upon rules upon rules upon rules and we've got in you know we've got laws and

by-laws and in-laws and sub-clauses and we've got we're up to our teeth in laws you've got rules for everything you've got terms and conditions and fine print and you know so using this language today it's it's having the adverse effect it's having a negative impact on nika today you have to free you have to kind of clip these strings and free nikah from this kind of commercial attire because then people treat it like that

and it creates offense because if you'll have people that will do a nikah and then they will say well you know my responsibility was to you know or after they've you know been intimate sexually they'll be like well oh here's 50 pounds you can buy yourself some i mean you've degraded a a kind of sacred intimacy to something that is akin to an insult and people will and i've heard these cases i've actually heard cases people

doing things like this they'll and and they'll be like yeah but isn't this what the scholars say it is just you know i'm now providing there you go i'm providing this is halal i'm providing so we need to understand that we need to go back that look this is not from the quran in the quran it was it it's it's open it's amorphous but it's an understanding of commitment and then things like whether it's witnesses or announcements these are for more uh dispute purposes so if people were to dispute it you have

witnesses and people know what's going on there's uh you know people ain't done unto so i hope that helps yeah somebody said sajad is no is is he an americas um okay sure okay does a

legal document need to be signed endorsed by the government hmm right okay this is um it's a tricky one because i feel that what islam has left uninhibited and free we should not be quick to kind of snap its wings or clip its wings so i would say it comes down to the individual involved they can have this discussion if they want to register

uh and have a civil marriage for example a registered marriage then they can do that if they don't want to they they're not bound to do that from an islamic perspective but it's up to them but they should just be transparency and they should be what they want to do obviously both have their own pros and cons and i i know some people say that every nikah should be registered i'm not necessarily a fan of that but just because i believe that what happens is when let's say a relationship doesn't work out and then you need to

go to court for two years to seek a separation and i feel that that should that's just unnecessary and it's it's you know i'm i'm sure it's you know um the grief that causes and then people would say but then they want to dispute rights and they want assets from each other and they want money from each other then in that case you know if that's what you want then that's what you do then register it you know if you if you want that or if you but i would say it's it's up to people so people can pursue their own but they should have transparency on what they're

doing you