Wisdom for Wives by Dr. Omar; Part I

“O woman, give charity, for I have surely seen that you form the majority of the inhabitants of hell … because you curse too much, and are ungrateful for good treatment (on the part of your husbands.”
(Fath al-Bari, 3/325)

“… because they are ungrateful for good and kind treatment. Even if you treated one of them well for an entire lifetime, then she saw one fault in you, she would say, ‘I have never seen anything good from you.”
(ibid, 1/83)

Adam’s Rib
Ingratitude towards husbands is equated with ingratitude towards Allah SWT. It reflects pride and a sense of entitlement that obscures a woman’s creaturehood and absolute dependence upon Allah and, hence, turns her mind away from the Hereafter to the dunja. Therefore beware dear ladies.

To nurture life by reflecting the wisdom of your precious nature is your purpose. Your task in the deen of marriage is to help your husband’s submission to Allah. By virtue of the hard ground of your own submission in marriage, it, like water, carves the path for the river of your husband’s purpose and completes his maturity. It is said that woman is created from his rib, so very close to his heart. Ribs protect the vital organs (heart and lungs) of respiration, a process that exchanges impure gas for what is pure and essential, and distributes it to the body (family). Thereby, our blood (metaphysically and materially) continually renews then recycles a kind of innocence and purity as a regenerative force that matures and maintains spiritual, emotional and bodily health. Women stand guard over this process. When she is ungrateful, however, she stands watch over the reversal of this process and gravitates towards hell bringing all the torment that accompanies such a journey.

As wife, you are your husband’s closest ally and protector of this divine process as his shield or Breast Plate, as it were. But this is not a militant or aggressive position. The ribs are passive components, pliable yet firm, expanding and contracting which each breath. Nevertheless, they are readily broken and when his heart is assaulted they are bruised, and each bruising reminds him of the assault that represents spiritual jihad. This war requires defensive work in three realms: the mental, the emotional, and the physical. This triad must be subdued and enslaved to Allah through submission to Islam’s deen in order to develop the virtues of moral imperatives that lead to success. Therefore, we must think, feel, and do what is correct according to God’s Plan. This discipline does not come solely by discourse, prayer, or study. It must be actualized via the discipline of taqua under rightly guided authority to the accomplishment of good deeds for our benefit here and Hereafter!

Ideally this authority is your husband and those to whom he is submitted, and your good deeds as a mature woman primarily begin and remain in service to him and not to your children or any external venue. Those who deny that marriage is required for spiritual maturity are in error, for there is no incarnation of the Kingdom Polity without marriage, and there is no rightly guided authority without a husband and father as its magistrate. Therefore, when you oppose your husband, you oppose the Divine Order or Kingdom of Allah, and cannot possibly be of consequent help to the Cause of Allah, for the grace of divine guidance resides with him as Imam of the deen and will be withdrawn from you if you rebel. This will cause you nothing but abject wantonness and futility. This is a spiritual law! Such women are like ribs without a heart to protect and cherish. There lies a hollow beneath their veneer of urbanity for which they seek all manner of substitutions in vain ‒ using children for the purpose or even pets; but never can peace be attained as spoken of by Iesa or the Prophet in Sura 89, vs. 27. There is no rest of God for the rebellious wife!

Furthermore, for a woman to think she is sufficient for an authentic Patriarchal husband or that she possesses either him or his heart is a romantic trap that will imprison her in a cage of emotions from which she cannot escape. It is rare that such a man finds one woman who can encompass and penetrate his heart in its entirety. Wise women have sense enough to be no more than a single rib, and even they often prove inadequate for the task as we may acknowledge from the life of the many Polygamous Prophets. Therefore, plural marriage and the superfluity of good women has a unique place in the Kingdom of God, in order to safeguard, comfort, and give joy to the hearts of those men who carry the burden of leadership in Allah’s Cause, so that the Kingdom may prosper and multiply in health of mind, spirit, and body for all concerned. This burden is often too heavy for one wife, and the strain will age her prematurely which often alienates her husband’s physical attentions. Therefore, wise wives will welcome the help and love of a companion wife, so that the burden is shared and the heart of her husband may expand and contract comfortably in the hands of such sisters.

These principles do not hold true for people with a romantic worldly view, as these mysteries are reserved for the humble and wise of heart who serve the Kingdom of God. If that is you, acknowledge it and move on towards higher levels of discernment and reward.

If you oppose your husband’s desires and vision, you cease to be a woman and enter the realm of manly competition. This will only demean your nature and deny or delay the cause of your destiny. Please read that again. A woman’s greatest shield of protection is her piety and submission. Feminists are veiled from this truth and cannot comprehend it. They are Liliths: goddesses of destruction! A wife’s opposition is a battle she may cleverly win, but it starts a war she is destined to lose if she maintains such an aggressive posture. Rightly guided men will simply ignore her and her bed. This is a spiritual law for the mature of heart who do not worship cupidity’s foolishness. Just as your charms bring forth the fire of your husband’s seed, your submission draws forth the grace of his greatest potential in the Kingdom of God. This is spiritual law and is truly your heart’s desire. There is no other way it may be achieved with the peace of God’s grace. Insha’Allah, the following essays will help you to orient yourself to the responsibility of being your husband’s rib; that is: his companion, the closest soul to his heart in the Cause of Allah — even when he doesn’t realize it.

Another Gender: The Rebellious Woman
Rebellious women and their submissive men-folk reject the normal natural order and together become worse than male tyrants because of the confusion they bring to their children. Even women prefer a male boss to such a lady. This is because her true nature as nurturer of new life is replaced by antithetical behaviors with characteristics that are alien to her true nature; and there is no ‘middle ground’ of compromise in the realm of metaphysical reality. If not a metaphysical woman, she becomes another gender, neither male nor female.

\If this is the case, she opposes al’Mussawwir’s word with her entire being, and self-engenders her own physical maladies which will eventually manifest. Metaphysically speaking, she becomes the goddess al’Lat or Shakti who constantly seek men to worship at the altered nature of her self-profaned temple. She is the lady who entices and never ceases plotting to oppose, overthrow or subvert male authority. She knows that the power manifest at the moment of the man’s orgasm is an abject surrender to her charms, but she mistakes this divinely ordained moment as her own triumph in order to wield its mystery as a weapon against both God and men. What a fool she is. But the greater fool is the man who loves her.

The righteous man will neither touch nor hear such a woman. And should his wife attempt to use sex as a weapon against his authority to enjoin good and forbid evil in her life or his domain, he will divorce her – immediately, if not sooner. This is because such an act as spitefully withholding sexual intercourse is itself a statement of divorce on her part, as also is any act of lewd or suggestive behavior directed towards another man. For this reason, chastity and modesty are commanded of Muslims, both men and women. The rebellious woman cares nothing for either, and willingly flaunts her charms. She is to be avoided at all costs and never taken seriously unless it is on the road to her repentance.

The Foolish Woman

• “The prophet was asked: ‘Which woman is the best?’ He said: ‘the one who pleases him when he looks at her, who obeys him when he tells her to do something, and who does not do something he dislikes with regards to herself and his wealth.” (Iman Ahmad al-Musnad, sahih isnaid)

Prophet Solomon taught that the foolish woman destroys her own house. This woman is the embodiment of ignorance dressed in robes of self-righteousness. Her mark is excess: she talks too much, gossips, eats too much, and offers too much to her children causing childhood obesity and greed (loves too much), and, she certainly minds the business of others too much. She is the expert ‘fault-finder’ who cannot leave others in peace as embodied by the mother-in-law who crosses all borders of Islamic etiquette and still thinks that heaven lay at her intrusive feet. This woman suffers from a spiritual poverty that starves her into desperate intervention in the affairs of others. Her illnesses have no end and no cure, and every one in her community knows it.

There is yet another type of foolish woman, and this one doubts her husband’s word even in light of evidence for his good husbandry. This lady loves her man but feigns submission and often retains undisclosed ulterior motives for the marriage. She actually listens to and secretly follows the counsel of others outside her own home. This is a fatal mistake and it is often made because she falls in love and marries a man from another culture. Generally speaking her health is maintained, however, she brings down the walls of her own marital mosque when she does not accept the foundations Allah has laid as a worldview in her husband’s heart. In other words, she does not truly accept or submit to his personal vision and destiny.

He will leave her when the day arrives leading to the fulfillment of his destiny, just as Prophet Lut left his wife. This is because his destiny is often beyond what she and her communities comprehend or accept according to their own conformity to traditional innovations divorced from Allah’s principles. Such people attempt to put al’Mussawwir’s word in a box they have designed from the comforts of fancy. They care not to draw closer to Allah than the comfortable orbit of their own traditions. Often, an entire community like this will fall ill due to infectious diseases or become subject to natural calamity, as they lack the enhanced immunity made available to the true slave of Allah and do not heed the warnings given by such a wife’s husband.

Descriptions of the Non-Ideal Muslimah: pray you are not one of these.

• ‘If you see a woman who is always laughing, fond of gaming and jesting, always ruling to her neighbors, meddling with matters that are no concern of hers, plaguing her husband with constant complaints, leaguing herself with other women against him, playing the grand lady, accepting gifts from everybody, know that that woman is a whore without shame.’
• And again to be despised is the woman of a somber, frowning nature, and one who is prolific in talk; the woman who is light−headed in her relations with men, or contentious, or fond of tittle−tattle and unable to keep her husband’s secrets, or who is malicious. The woman of a malicious nature talks only to tell lies; if she makes a promise she does so only to break it, and if anybody confides in her, she betrays him; she is debauched, thievish, a scold, coarse and violent; she cannot give good advice; she is always occupied with the affairs of other people, and with such as bring harm, and is always on the watch for frivolous news; she is fond of repose, but not of work; she uses unbecoming words in addressing a Mussulman, even to her husband; invectives are always at her tongue’s end; she exhales a bad odor which infects you, and sticks to you even after you have left her.
• And not less contemptible is she who talks to no purpose, who is a hypocrite and does no good act; she, who, when her husband asks her to fulfill the conjugal office, refuses to listen to his demand; the woman who does not assist her husband in his affairs; and finally, she who fatigues him with unceasing complaints and tears. A woman of that sort, seeing her husband irritated or in trouble does not share his affliction; on the contrary, she laughs and jests all the more, and does not try to drive away his ill−humor by endearments. She is more prodigal with her person to other men than to her husband; it is not for his sake that she adorns herself, and it is not to please him that she tries to look well. Far from that; with him she is very untidy, and does not mind letting him see things and habits about her person which must be repugnant to him. Lastly, she never uses either atsmed nor souak. No happiness can be hoped for a man with such a wife. God keep us from such a one!”

Taken from The Perfumed Garden by Shaykh Nefwazi,
Translated by Sir Richard Burton

NEXT: The Seven Basic Needs of A Husband