The Struggle To Get To The Beginning: Marriage.

Now that I am getting older, I feel as though I do not see any role models when it comes to marriage especially in the Muslim community. I mean you rarely hear people going about finding a spouse in a halal way.

I know some brown people are going to come to this post and snap there finger in z formation and hip rotation and say " UH excuse me, us brown people do it right, we get our aunty to find a spouse for us."

Well, truth is for other sisters this is not common practice in their culture, like mine. They go off on their own trying to find someone. Our parents just expect that we will just find a person and bring that person to meet them. So the responsibility is on us. Majority of the time these sisters just end up "dating" forgetting the entire purpose is for marriage. This doesn't only apply to Muslims who aren't even practicing. Practicing Muslims who pray 5 times a day, don't eat pork, read the Quran seem to think that dating is okay if you are looking for a husband. Even in my MSA (Muslim Student Association) people are dating. I didn't believe it at first but it does exist in the Muslim community. By the way just to tell you, there is no such thing as "Halal Dating."

What makes this all the more worse is that hijab itself has now become stylish. Not that wearing a nice coloured hijab is a bad thing. Thats not what I mean.

Lets use an example to clarify what I mean.

You are a Muslim brother.

You see two girls.

First girl: Plain black hijab. Black Abaya. Baggy sweater (if its cold). Backpack. Sneakers. Her face ain't sayin a lot either. No make-up. Probably looks tired from staying up late for no apparent reason.

Second girl: Make up done. Bracelets decorate her wrists. Beautiful pashmina hijab. Hijab worn in a stylish manner -clearly looks like she has a hijab tutorial channel, or watches one- Long top, covering half of her bell bottom/skinny jeans. Or maybe she's wearing one of those maxi skirts. Basically she looks like she's made for a runway.

Now lets be honest. Who would you notice?

Don't lie bros. Heck, even us girls notice the second hijabi. Our shaytaan makes us feel envious at how beautiful she looks.

But then a part of us knows, that if a man can find us attractive in a plain abaya and hijab. He can find us attractive in anything.

Too bad many of these brothers don't exist. I mean its hard enough, being plain in a world where fashion is a must. Otherwise your categorized as a plain Jane.

Yet if people actually took the time to get to know us plain girls. They'd see all sorts of colours.

But nobody really does.

Imagine. xxcomplicationsxx, maskedwoman, and I don't want to date. And we don't want to be blatantly noticed for our looks. Yet we want to get married.

This is gonna be mad hard. We're all so confused. We don't even know the process of how this is gonna work. How do we attract a someone with just being ourselves?

But then again we realize: Hey. That's the whole point! 

We want to be loved for ourselves. We hope someone we'll just see the beauty in us for just being us.

I know some of you may be thinking: "Well how am I going to get know someone.. without dating him?"

How do you even approach someone you think you could be a good match with?

So many questions. In some way we are lost ourselves.

But that being said, we know what we want. We know what to do to get there.

Inshallah, with Allah's help, and by staying true to His rules; Allah will bless us.

Well, I hope from this blog you will see that it is possible to keep things halal when it comes to love. Hopefully from our struggles and inshallah our accomplishments, you and I will see that anything is possible.

                                                                                                            -Bitter.Sweet