If you didn't care about keeping the peace, what would you tell your family (inlaws included)?

It's been a long while since I bothered to check out Y/A, much less visit the Ramadan Section, but I just googled up something and this questions showed up. Really interesting. I think I'll try to answer this one.

Just hold on... EDIT: I take it; the only part of the hadith which disturbs you is the one which refers to a man being allowed to lie to his wife. Correct me if I am wrong. First of all, did the Sheikh mention that “you can also lie to promote and protect the religion of Islam and even to convert non-believers”?

If he did, then ditch him. Find some other scholar. You’ve studied Islam for 2 years.

Have you found evidence of the Prophet (SAAW), the greatest preacher of Islam, giving false information to non Muslims and making them convert on the basis of that? Second---let’s draw limits around the permission to lie to one’s wife before we try to justify this permission itself. A man may lie to his wife to keep peace, but he may not deceive her.

And there is a difference between the two. When a man tells his wife that he doesn’t have another wife, and it’s not the truth, it’s called deception. I believe that the Sheikh messed this one up a bit and drew the limits too wide.

---You wouldn’t want your husband to lie to you and tell you that he loves you. He really doesn’t love you. Let’s analyze this.

Now, what exactly does ‘love’ mean? I’m sure that you’re not talking about temporary feelings of lust. A woman wants to feel loved by her husband all the time.

She asks him “do you love me?” and he says “yes”, then it means that he really does love her. I mean, why would a man bother to try and please his wife by telling her that he does love her? He would care to please her if he did love her.

If he had no compassion for her feelings, he’d just say plainly “no, I don’t”. He says “yes” only if he does wish to please her, and he’s pleasing her because he cares for her. What else is love supposed to mean?

If he didn’t love his wife, he’d probably try to get a separation from her, wouldn’t he? A marriage usually doesn’t take place unless the two people are sincere about one another. And if the woman has solid reason to believe that her husband doesn’t really love her, she’d better base her suspicions on solid evidence and try to sort it out with him.

In case things get worse, and she finds that he really doesn’t care about her, of course she can separate. Perhaps he’s just trying to please her for some other reason. Perhaps she’s richer than him, and he’s benefitting from her money.

Perhaps he’s doing it because he’s afraid of her for some reason. What you need to remember is this: Islamic rules are meant for the majority of situations. Most of them aren’t meant for exceptional cases.

For e.g., Muslims have been ordered to obey and respect their parents. That rule is a general one. Now, we often get to read about moms or dads who even kill their kids.

Would a person be still required to obey and respect his parent if the latter had tried to kill him? No, because this case is an exception. And that’s what I just mean.

The majority of women do not exercise the power of money or family ties over their husbands. If a husband says that he loves his wife, he won’t say that unless he’s trying to please her. Since he’s trying to please her, he loves her, and this is the general rule.

Not the rule for exceptional cases. ---A woman puts on a too much makeup and asks her husband “How do I look?”. And he replies “awesome”, when he’s actually sickened by the sight of her terrible make up.

Again, he says that only because he loves her and doesn’t wish to make her feel bad. If he doesn’t want her to wear that kind of makeup, there are more diplomatic ways of doing it than saying it straight to her face. I’m sure that if he indirectly conveys to her at a later time that he prefers some other kind of makeup than blurting out something negative at the spot, it will keep the relationship from being spoiled.

Little, insignificant hurts like these can pile up to cause a huge breach in the relationship. ---Your husband has gone to work. You bake a cake for him and the kids.

You start in the morning and take your time decorating it and fussing over it. You get those little cake decorations from the market and put them on top. You do everything to make it look really attractive, because you want your family to be happy.

You husband and kids get home. You cut the cake for them and put large, delicious slices in their plates. Your husband bites a large chunk of the cake, and suddenly spots a long strand of hair in his slice of cake.

He doesn’t want to eat it anymore. He just sits there, saying nothing. Noticing that he doesn’t seem to be touching his cake, you ask “why aren’t you eating?

Don’t you like my cake? He’s got two options. “Yeah honey, but there’s a strand of hair in it.

Or “It’s delicious, but I already had lunch at office. I’m not really hungry. Islam permits any man who really loves his wife to use the latter excuse, just to save her the embarrassment.

She’s done 99% of the stuff right. Why even mention the 1% that has gone wrong, when it’s really not of much consequence, anyway? Isn’t it true that the relationship between spouses really needs to have the ‘emotional juice’ in it rather than just bare facts?

The family unit is the smallest unit of organization in the Islamic society. The basic building block. It’s not supposed to be broken up over petty things like the taste of your wife’s cooking, the smell of her favorite perfume, your opinion of her parents, etc. Because unfortunately, most of the couples which break up, actually do so over little matters of opinion and arguments which have collected up over the months or years to create prolonged feelings of resentment.

And recognizing this human weakness, Islam has loosened the prohibition on lies one teeny little bit. By the way, I do think that this permission to lie to your wife can be reversed too. A wife may tell such lies to her husband.

To keep the family from breaking apart. But I’m not really sure. You need to check this out with someone more knowledgeable, and ask for a good, logical reason as well.

Of course, diplomacy helps, whether you’re a husband or a wife. It’s a relationship for life, and a lifetime of little, insignificant hurts can get wedged in between a couple and their relationship. It shouldn’t.

They aren’t the only ones who are going to be affected by it.

My mum was in a horrible state before she gave birth to my bro. It used to make her feel happy when he told her she was beautiful. Now that kind of lying should be allowed.

If the food you made isn't worth eating and the husband says it's delicious,(instead of making a face and saying it's uneatable) then that will add to his good deeds and bring peace in the home. If she makes him something or gives him a gift he does not like, it's okay to say he loved it. That cheating your wife and lying to her is haraam, of course!

Women are sensitive creatures, that's why it's allowed to lie to them. They crave for compliments and attention and I don't think there's anything wrong in making them happy by lying in such a fashion.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.