Makkah

OUR marriages often occur during holidays often disturbing our programs. I am sure that a large segment of our society suffers from the increasing numbers of marriages that take place during school vacations, thus preventing them from traveling and enjoying vacation in one way or another.

While psychologists emphasize that holidays offer a good opportunity for entertainment, inducing happiness, energizing people and enhancing their enthusiasm, it also gives them an opportunity to invest time in useful things, which they may not get during working and school days.

However, there has been a noticeable trend that during vacations after semester and final exams, people receive lots of letters from relatives and friends inviting them to marriage ceremonies. As a result of these marriage invitations people are unable to plan their vacations properly.

It is regrettable that the time for vacation has turned into a period for marriages, which have become an expensive affair as a result of inviting a large number of people and providing various types of food, thus becoming an example for extravaganza and an occasion for showing off. Many youth express their reluctance to marry thinking about the unbearable expenditures.

The most surprising thing is that despite the availability of a large number of wedding halls and hotels their prices are not decreasing. Contrary to the demand and supply theory charges of wedding halls are going up year after year, defying the rule.

It’s strange that many people, who are unable even to rent a room, hold marriage functions of their sons and daughters in big wedding halls, after taking bank loans, to impress people and make them tell that his marriage ceremony was held in the most expensive wedding hall in the city.

It’s unfortunate that people have forgotten the religious instructions regarding weddings and hold them in accordance with existing customs and traditions, thus limiting unnecessary expenditures. I would say there is big negligence on the part of religious scholars and mosque leaders in enlightening the public on the need to reduce wedding expenditures by organizing them in a simple way.

Our scholars have failed to convince the public about marriage objectives set by the Shariah and how to announce them properly without extravagance, inspired by the saying of the Prophet (peace be upon him) “Hold a wedding party even by (slaughtering) a sheep.”

Marriage ceremonies are supposed to be simple functions attended by a limited number of people without incurring heavy expenditures that would break the back of a youth. We have noticed that some people invite thousands of friends and relatives to weddings, who find it difficult to find space for parking their cars and even to enter the hall due to the huge crowd of guests.

It is a painful sight that half of the food goes waste at weddings as people do not eat them. I would not be exaggerating when I say that the food supplied at these functions can be served to the double the number of invitees. This represents sheer waste of money, which would not make Allah happy. Moreover, our Prophet has warned against such extravagances.

We hope our community’s extravagant weddings change such that it adheres to customs and traditions inspired by the spirit of Islam. We have to create a scenario that people hold their weddings in any day of the year without the need to wait for long school and university holidays. They need not even wait for the weekend to hold such ceremonies because such timings would raise the fees of wedding halls.

An intelligent person invited me to a wedding ceremony, which was held in the courtyard of his house. It was a joyous night attended by about 150 invitees. It realized the objective of the maker of Shariah and at the same time helped him announce the marriage of his son without fanfare.

I wish the community would rise up to the occasion, discarding wrong customs and traditions and promoting constructive initiatives. This will discourage people from holding marriage ceremonies with pomp and pageantry, thus wasting the Ummah’s wealth.

The question is whether our communities would be ready to rise up to the occasion by discarding such pompous and expensive marriage ceremonies and whether our vacations would be free from weddings in order for people to use them for entertainment and other purposes including tourism.