Custom of Marriage in Muslim Religion

Question: - What is the reason behind marrying boys to the daughters of their paternal uncles in Muslim religion?

In Hinduism, boys are not married to the daughters of their paternal uncles. So much so that marriage is not conducted in the same gotra (ancestral lineage). There are several villages of the same gotra. Marriage is not even conducted with girls of those villages. In Hindu religion, let alone marrying to the daughters of paternal uncles, marriage is not even done in the same gotra and neighbouring villages. Marriage is also prohibited in the gotras of the mother and the father. If someone commits such a mistake, then making it a matter of dishonour, people are murdered. In Muslims, marrying the daughter of one’s paternal uncle is a matter of pride, which in the eyes of the Hindus is a deplorable act.

Answer: - Circumstances make one act accordingly. Earlier in Hinduism, marriage was done outside four gotras. Four gotras i.e., the gotra of father, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother were excluded. Circumstances changed with time. The gotra of the great-grandmother became accepted. Only mother's gotra, one’s own and grandmother's gotra are excluded now. Some are not even excluding their grandmother's gotra. They are only excluding their own and the mother's gotra. In Muslim religion, only one’s real sister (biological sister) is excluded. It seems strange to marry the daughter of one’s paternal uncle who is also sister only.

Reason: - Kaaba (the mosque) in the Mecca city was built by Prophet Ibrahim and Hazrat Ismail (Alaihi.). One God was worshiped in it. After passage of time, 360 idols (statues of deities) were being worshiped in it. In the same Mecca city, on 20 April 571 C.E. Hazrat Muhammad ji was born in the famous Arab tribe, Quraysh. When he turned forty, he became a prophet. Whatever was ordered by Allah in the Quran, Hazrat Muhammad ji started preaching it for the welfare of the people. He started refuting the old traditional worship which was idol worship. He started advocating worship of one Allah as beneficial, which was fiercely opposed by the people of Muhammad ji's tribe i.e., the Quraysh only.

Those who obeyed the orders of the Quran were called obedient i.e., Muslims, and those who disobeyed were called kafir (disobedient).

The believers of Islam i.e., the Muslims and the opponents started fighting. The Muslims were few compared to the opponents. Hazrat Muhammad and his Muslim followers were persecuted in various ways. Frustrated, some Muslims left the city of Mecca. They went somewhere far away to Habsha country.

Hazrat Muhammad and his family were socially boycotted. For three years, the people of Hazrat Muhammad's family had to live a life of great trouble. The children used to cry with hunger and thirst. The elders were passing the time by eating leaves.

After three years, the boycott ended, but Muhammad's uncle Abu Talib and wife Khadija died due to this grief. To the north of Mecca was the city of Medina, formerly known as Yasrib. The people of Medina soon accepted Islam.

When at the age of 53, Hazrat Muhammad along with his companions and family prepared to leave Mecca and move to Medina, even at that time the opponents made plans to kill him. The opponents gathered in front of Muhammad's house that at night they would enter Muhammad's house and kill him. By the grace of Allah everyone fell asleep. Hazrat Muhammad silently escaped. Later, due to the fear of the enemies, he had to hide in a cave Ghar-e-Sawr with his friend Abu Bakr for three days. In Medina, the people of the city gave respect and cooperation to the Muslims and Hazrat Muhammad. Then they felt a bit relieved. But the affliction of the opponents did not diminish.

They even banned the marriages of the Muslim children that they would not allow their children to be married in their families. They had become implacable enemies of the Muslims. They were more in number. The Muslims were also ready to sacrifice their lives to follow their religion. They fought a lot. They won the battle, but the opposition persisted. The number of Muslims also increased, but only nominally.

Marriage of the children became a problem. After consultation, the Muslims had to get their children married in their own families. They started marrying their boys to the daughters of the paternal uncles which was a compulsion and a necessity, as they had to propagate their lineage as well as follow their religion. For some time, this process of marriage seemed strange, but due to circumstances and with passage of time, everything had to be forgotten. Now marrying one’s paternal uncle’s daughter has become a matter of pride and prestige. To marry any girl except the daughter of a paternal uncle is considered ignominious.

Earlier, whenever two Muslim women used to quarrel with each other and one of them was married to another house instead of her paternal uncle’s house, then the other woman used to taunt her that if you were respectable, you would have stayed in your paternal uncle’s house. At present, marriages have started taking place in other families and even in distant countries.

In this way, the tradition of marriage with the daughters of paternal uncles started among Muslims, which is currently quite a respectable act.

Other reasons: - It is written in the biography of Hazrat Adam that his wife Eve used to give birth to twins each time, in which one was a boy and the other was a girl. That boy and girl born together at a time were considered brother and sister. The boy and girl born the second time were considered brother and sister. They were married to each other's sister, that is, the girl born the first time was married to the boy born the second time, and the girl born the second time was married to the boy born the first time. This custom of marriage followed. Actually, it is a relationship of a brother and a sister. In Muslim religion, marriage of boys and girls born to one mother i.e., of a brother and sister is not conducted. Boys are married to the daughters of paternal uncles. At present, they are also marrying their children in distant relatives. But they also marry their children in paternal uncle’s family. It is governed by circumstances.

In Rajasthan state (India), in districts Pali and Jodhpur, there is a practice among people of a particular caste to marry girls of their maternal uncle and paternal aunt. They give their daughter to the one who marries their daughter to their son.

Reason: - A messenger of Kaal, a fake Kabir Panthi saint, started preaching about two hundred years ago. He asked those people to relinquish their previous way of worship. He inspired them to worship Vishnu ji. Those, who took initiation from that saint, became known as Vaishnav. The people of their own caste ostracized those Vaishnavs. They even prohibited marriages of their children in their community. So, a problem arose for the Vaishnavs. They had to marry the daughters of their paternal aunt and maternal uncle who are sisters in relationship. They started (aata-saata) exchanging. They marry their daughter to the son of the paternal aunt when the paternal aunt marries her daughter to their son, that is, to her brother’s son, or pledges to do so. The fake guru in the name of Kabir Ji preached incomplete way of worship i.e., that of Kaal to those people and on top of that led to their plight due to which they are facing hardships to date.

Such traditions are a result of helplessness. With the passage of time, there is no guilt because everyone is following the same tradition. Devotees give more importance to self-welfare than the code of conduct of the society, which has always been the cause of dispute with the people of the society.