Amazing article haroon!! One for my kids to read when they’re old enough.
Funny story, when I was on umrah I met a dad and his wife who was telling my in-laws and me the story of how he proposed when he was 16 years old (in high school) to a Muslim girl (also 16 years old), and how he just knew he was going to marry her from when he was 5. They grew up in the same community. We marveled at the gall it takes to be that confident as a young man and to convince the girls dad (Pakistani dad) “yea I can be a man” at 16.
I asked him, would you take that kind of risk for your daughter?
He said, yes, but I need to know him from the community.
The frameworks is not something people think about enough.
Parents use profession as a proxy for character but that is really flawed. But I’ve seen therapist do the same thing.
Lawyer = ocd tendencies
Writer/artist = unstable and poor with money
But how you are raised and how you want to raise your kids will make a lot of things easy or difficult.
I think I share the story of a young couple married in high school because it goes against my own preconceived ideas.
We spend a lot of time raising children for careers (even as the relevance of those careers is entirely uncertain.) But shouldn't we raise for character and maturity and autonomy? It's better, I'd think, to marry someone thoughtful, hard-working, decent and ambitious than someone who just has a lot of money. Because if they lose the money, and they may well, what's to say they'll be able to recover and keep going?
But nobody has these conversations with their kids and I'm sometimes asked to step in when the child is fully an adult, well on their way in life, and hardly has a shared language through which to make sense of what their parents are even saying.
I experience at least part of the result: I sit down with lots of twenty-somethings whose choice of spouse upsets their parents... but unsurprisingly, their parents spent almost no time preparing them for marriage (and spent all the time and money on making sure they think about only one career and one track in life). In the end, of course, this is each person's choice. But they should be able to make informed choices.
I told my high school students this: You'll be in your twenties, God willing, before you know it. Have you really thought about what that'll mean? What you'll want out of your life? What you're willing to give up and what you absolutely must have?
These conversations aren't actually *that* hard. They just require to treat teenagers as future adults, to give them a sense of perspective on their lives, and give them experience making their own decisions, debating outcomes--and learning how to seek (and receive) advice.
This is why I want to write YA fiction. Everyone starts to believe a myth of love conquers all but the realists know,love does not pay the bills. And divorced people can stay in love but the lack of life frameworks will really make being together impossible
I agree with you completely!! I heard an interview once on the Templeton Foundation podcast about this very topic. That we need to spend more time helping kids find the right spouse and less time on math tutoring bc of AI disruption
I do believe the community building aspect of raising teens is critical and much of that development and character building happens outside of the masjid .. on trips, social events, schools, in peoples homes.. my kids are little but I talk to them about spouses and their life choices around that decision all the time!
You should be introduced to the young person early so that you could be a trustworthy voice throughout his life not just as damage control
It doesn't help, in my experience (am 23 yrs old), that parents aren't willing to consider that you (me or any young adult/late teen) may find the "love of their life" before they are reasonably well prepared to marry.
Couple that with the inability to handle conflict and awkward convos with your kids and the outcome is the child won't share much of their love life with you. As a future parent iA, I hope to cultivate the trust and openness where my son or daughter would be talking with me as they begin to develop crushes and take my (and others') councel along the way on how they will proceed—from "stalking" their socials to finding "organic" ways to interact and get their foot in the door and the whole slew of love life stuff. You know what I mean.
It sucks to deal with heartbreak and have to hide it from your parents too.
I love what you said about focusing less on raising kids for careers and focusing more on raising them for character.
That's a wild story. Imagine being 5 and knowing who you gonna marry! And having that kinda self effiacy at 16 is just mind blowing. Allahumma baarik lahum.
That's some great advice you've given! Although even if you do all the right and responsible things pre-marriage, that's not a guarantee that your marriage won't be tested to its very core. But all marriages are, as I am sure you know.
I think I may need to do some travel after Ramadan. Uzbekistan seems like a great place to visit. I'd love to visit Iran, too, but I don't think that can happen anytime soon, and of course, Jerusalem :(
You're entirely right. Not all marriages work out and that's okay. Even the best marriages go through tests and trials. But I feel like a fair number of young men and young women set themselves up for a greater likelihood of stress, difficulty and alienation by not preparing themselves with considerations that, well, at my age feel pretty obvious
I don't know if it's our culture, or our lack of conversations, but we don't realize how important families, social circles, upbringing, expectations, even shared values can be. One of the reasons why I like watching shows like Muslim Matchmaker with our kids is that we get to have these exchanges and think them through. The decisions will be their own.
But I still feel like we can empower those decisions!
On the second note, you should join us in Uzbekistan... if you're interested, let me know, and I'll share more information. It's a great group and an incredible place, mashallah. There's more information here:
That's the thing with hindsight and aging, right? I'm glad you are able to guide young people to help them make wiser decisions. I wish I had that, but I suppose it's incumbent upon on us to make sure that we are there for younger Muslims who need mentors in their lives.
Yes, I'm certainly interested in learning more about the trip! Thanks for sharing this link, too.
Very intriguing post. I admire how you conversed with him and gave him councel, in a way where you were simply trying to equip him with questions and insights for him to work with, rather than telling him things that would go in and out his ears.
You are in favor of DEI? Did you see the lesbian Los Angeles Assistant Fire Chief tell men that "they "got themselves in the wrong place" if a female firefighter is unable to rescue them?
Well, I'm not sure why the identity of a person explains away what they said. There's plenty of people who are hired without any identitarian considerations and end up failing. But thank you for reading and writing in
Identarianism and identity politics motivate the hate for other segments of the population that they deem unworthy. And, there is the fact that the lesbian assistant fire chief was quite open in her support for the inabilities of women fire firefighters, and her blame of men for the fact that female firefighters were unable to rescue them. Let's hope someone sues her into bankruptcy.
Identitarianism can motivate hate, sure. But racism is identitarianism, and DEI was conceived of as a solution to identitarianism. The absence of DEI does not by that fact alone erase other forms of identitarianism or hate. I'm not arguing for specific forms of DEI, but I find it curious that we object to certain forms of identitarianism while embracing others, even as the latter tend to produce worse moral outcomes. So how do we remain balanced?
Amazing article haroon!! One for my kids to read when they’re old enough.
Funny story, when I was on umrah I met a dad and his wife who was telling my in-laws and me the story of how he proposed when he was 16 years old (in high school) to a Muslim girl (also 16 years old), and how he just knew he was going to marry her from when he was 5. They grew up in the same community. We marveled at the gall it takes to be that confident as a young man and to convince the girls dad (Pakistani dad) “yea I can be a man” at 16.
I asked him, would you take that kind of risk for your daughter?
He said, yes, but I need to know him from the community.
The frameworks is not something people think about enough.
Parents use profession as a proxy for character but that is really flawed. But I’ve seen therapist do the same thing.
Lawyer = ocd tendencies
Writer/artist = unstable and poor with money
But how you are raised and how you want to raise your kids will make a lot of things easy or difficult.
I think I share the story of a young couple married in high school because it goes against my own preconceived ideas.
We spend a lot of time raising children for careers (even as the relevance of those careers is entirely uncertain.) But shouldn't we raise for character and maturity and autonomy? It's better, I'd think, to marry someone thoughtful, hard-working, decent and ambitious than someone who just has a lot of money. Because if they lose the money, and they may well, what's to say they'll be able to recover and keep going?
But nobody has these conversations with their kids and I'm sometimes asked to step in when the child is fully an adult, well on their way in life, and hardly has a shared language through which to make sense of what their parents are even saying.
I experience at least part of the result: I sit down with lots of twenty-somethings whose choice of spouse upsets their parents... but unsurprisingly, their parents spent almost no time preparing them for marriage (and spent all the time and money on making sure they think about only one career and one track in life). In the end, of course, this is each person's choice. But they should be able to make informed choices.
I told my high school students this: You'll be in your twenties, God willing, before you know it. Have you really thought about what that'll mean? What you'll want out of your life? What you're willing to give up and what you absolutely must have?
These conversations aren't actually *that* hard. They just require to treat teenagers as future adults, to give them a sense of perspective on their lives, and give them experience making their own decisions, debating outcomes--and learning how to seek (and receive) advice.
This is why I want to write YA fiction. Everyone starts to believe a myth of love conquers all but the realists know,love does not pay the bills. And divorced people can stay in love but the lack of life frameworks will really make being together impossible
I agree with you completely!! I heard an interview once on the Templeton Foundation podcast about this very topic. That we need to spend more time helping kids find the right spouse and less time on math tutoring bc of AI disruption
I do believe the community building aspect of raising teens is critical and much of that development and character building happens outside of the masjid .. on trips, social events, schools, in peoples homes.. my kids are little but I talk to them about spouses and their life choices around that decision all the time!
You should be introduced to the young person early so that you could be a trustworthy voice throughout his life not just as damage control
It doesn't help, in my experience (am 23 yrs old), that parents aren't willing to consider that you (me or any young adult/late teen) may find the "love of their life" before they are reasonably well prepared to marry.
Couple that with the inability to handle conflict and awkward convos with your kids and the outcome is the child won't share much of their love life with you. As a future parent iA, I hope to cultivate the trust and openness where my son or daughter would be talking with me as they begin to develop crushes and take my (and others') councel along the way on how they will proceed—from "stalking" their socials to finding "organic" ways to interact and get their foot in the door and the whole slew of love life stuff. You know what I mean.
It sucks to deal with heartbreak and have to hide it from your parents too.
I love what you said about focusing less on raising kids for careers and focusing more on raising them for character.
That's a wild story. Imagine being 5 and knowing who you gonna marry! And having that kinda self effiacy at 16 is just mind blowing. Allahumma baarik lahum.
That's some great advice you've given! Although even if you do all the right and responsible things pre-marriage, that's not a guarantee that your marriage won't be tested to its very core. But all marriages are, as I am sure you know.
I think I may need to do some travel after Ramadan. Uzbekistan seems like a great place to visit. I'd love to visit Iran, too, but I don't think that can happen anytime soon, and of course, Jerusalem :(
You're entirely right. Not all marriages work out and that's okay. Even the best marriages go through tests and trials. But I feel like a fair number of young men and young women set themselves up for a greater likelihood of stress, difficulty and alienation by not preparing themselves with considerations that, well, at my age feel pretty obvious
I don't know if it's our culture, or our lack of conversations, but we don't realize how important families, social circles, upbringing, expectations, even shared values can be. One of the reasons why I like watching shows like Muslim Matchmaker with our kids is that we get to have these exchanges and think them through. The decisions will be their own.
But I still feel like we can empower those decisions!
On the second note, you should join us in Uzbekistan... if you're interested, let me know, and I'll share more information. It's a great group and an incredible place, mashallah. There's more information here:
https://queencitydiwan.com/upcoming-trips/
That's the thing with hindsight and aging, right? I'm glad you are able to guide young people to help them make wiser decisions. I wish I had that, but I suppose it's incumbent upon on us to make sure that we are there for younger Muslims who need mentors in their lives.
Yes, I'm certainly interested in learning more about the trip! Thanks for sharing this link, too.
Very intriguing post. I admire how you conversed with him and gave him councel, in a way where you were simply trying to equip him with questions and insights for him to work with, rather than telling him things that would go in and out his ears.
Btw this essay could be 4 different essays haroon! Congrats on your latest book!
Thank you so much. There's definitely something there!
You are in favor of DEI? Did you see the lesbian Los Angeles Assistant Fire Chief tell men that "they "got themselves in the wrong place" if a female firefighter is unable to rescue them?
Well, I'm not sure why the identity of a person explains away what they said. There's plenty of people who are hired without any identitarian considerations and end up failing. But thank you for reading and writing in
Identarianism and identity politics motivate the hate for other segments of the population that they deem unworthy. And, there is the fact that the lesbian assistant fire chief was quite open in her support for the inabilities of women fire firefighters, and her blame of men for the fact that female firefighters were unable to rescue them. Let's hope someone sues her into bankruptcy.
Identitarianism can motivate hate, sure. But racism is identitarianism, and DEI was conceived of as a solution to identitarianism. The absence of DEI does not by that fact alone erase other forms of identitarianism or hate. I'm not arguing for specific forms of DEI, but I find it curious that we object to certain forms of identitarianism while embracing others, even as the latter tend to produce worse moral outcomes. So how do we remain balanced?
Not to Taylor Swift or any other feminist!