Question: What Qualities should we look for when choosing a spouse?

Maulana Baig: If a husband wishes to have a wife for her looks, all he will get is her looks. If a husband wishes to have a wife for her wealth, that’s all he will get.  Allah says that if a man marries a woman for either her wealth or her looks, those are the things which become forbidden for him in her.  Knowing which kind of husband or which kind of wife is going to be good for us.  We don’t know. Maybe a good and obedient wife won’t be good for me.  Maybe because she is so nice, I will get spoiled by that. Maybe what makes me a good person is to have a wife who is going to challenge me and will make me more religious and mindful of Allah.  This is why we ask Allah to make istikhara.  Not the kind with the tasbee but that we say to Allah that this is the person that I am marrying and to please make this person the one to make me closer to You.  It might happen in an adverse way.  The husband might be bad, but because of this, I am becoming more religious or stronger.  The fact is that we don’t know what will help us or improve ourselves.  What is going to help make ourselves stronger.  When we are looking for wife and husband we are given broad attributes to look for.

Question: They say to look for taqwa in our spouse and there are so many degrees of taqwa so what should we be looking for?

Maulana Baig: The spouse’s taqwa should be the same level as you.  If you maintain hijab and carry out your obligations, you want to make sure that person who you are marrying is equal to you in eman and faith and taqwa, or higher than you.  But you don’t want someone who is lower than you are.  For example if you pray and the other person only prays sometimes.  Someone who does their obligations and knows what is right and won’t do wrong is the least amount of taqwa they need.  If it’s a situation where ‘at times’ I do this or ‘at times I do wrong’.   If you find out after the marriage then it becomes problematic.  These are issues you should look for beforehand.  You have to really work on the person if you find out after and it becomes a long road.

Question: Normally people do not check the right things before the marriage, so how should we deal with that?

Maulana Baig: Marriage is not like a used car, that we didn’t check before we buy.  It’s not like this.  It’s something that we don’t want to let go of so easily.  Divorce is really not an option for a mo’min.  The reason is because of the fact that we don’t know who the right husband is.  Maybe he is bad but his faults may be the reason we are better.  Aasiya the wife of Fir’awn is the best example of this.  She wanted to leave him but she carried out her duties as a wife to him.  She became an example to the believers.  On the other hand, we need to understand that we don’t know how things will help us or make us go ahead. So when we do marry, the criteria are very important and this is a lifetime commitment that we are working for.  It’s not like waiting a year or two to see if things will work out.  You can’t look at it is like buying a used car.  We have to make the young understand what Islam says about marriage.

Question:  There is a saying from Imam Sajjad (as) that – ‘a wife should obey her husband and refrain from being disobedient.  Although your rights upon them are greater, your obedience is greater so long as he doesn’t ask you to sin.  Obedience includes the things that are big and small.’  Should she obey him in all situations?

Maulana Baig: We need to first look at the goal in our life.  If that is answered in our mind and hearts then everything in our life will become easy.  If it’s not answered then everything will contradict itself.  If the reason in our life is to please Allah swt, if we please Allah by making ruku, then we make ruku, if we please Allah by making sajda, we will make sajda.  If we please Allah by making sajda to Adam, we make sajda to Adam.  The problem we have here in the West is that we say, ‘I like you Allah, but this is just an ordinary man, I can’t obey him.  I’m not going to bow down to him. ‘ This is what we do just as Satan never understood the meaning of life and the meaning of worship. 

When you were a child, you listen to a parent.  When you are a wife you listen to the husband.  When you are a husband, you listen to the leader.  When you go to the leader, you are listening to Allah.  That’s what it means to follow the Imams.  This is just a training to get rid of our ego. When we prostrate to Adam, our ego is destroyed so we can truly gain the pleasure of Allah.  A child obeys the parents, wife obeys the husband and husband obeys the leader.  The leader lets the husband know, the husband lets the wife know and the wife lets the children know.  This is a process and training by which ego is either followed or disobeyed.  In the west, they say ‘I’ll pray to god because he is abstract but I’m not going to obey my husband. ‘ Because of this ego, we are being destroyed as human beings.  This is an ego problem that Allah swt is trying to get rid of. 

However, you never obey anyone in sin or wrong.  That’s why with obedience across the board, everyone understands that the child must obey the parents but Allah says to disobey the parents when they disobey Allah.  But in disobedience to Allah, we do not obey anyone, you’re only asked to obey your husband in the obedience to Allah.  So obviously if the husband says, ‘to sit, to stand, make a right.’ This is not what it means to be obedient to him and this is not what the hadith has to do with.  This hadith is something that has to do with issues with the house, issues that affect the family.

There should be a mutual understanding that the wife is the best advisor of the husband. Make sure she gives the input but one of you has to make the decisions because there can only be one leader in any place.  One can be the advisor or general but there has to be one person making the decision, and the husband is the person.  But obviously most do things on opinion. But when there is a difference of opinion things stop working.  So when that happens, then you should just go on with your life.  When you look at the life in entirety, the disagreement is a non-issue.  For those angels it was a non-issue, it was just a test to see if they would obey Allah

Question: How do we solve issues of backbiting, jealousy, diseases of the soul that lead to major community problems/issues?

Maulana Baig: Things like gheebat (backbiting), or riya (showing off) or envy ( hasad) have not only an effect on the person but also a social effect.  They affect the whole society itself.  A society that has gheebat or is involved in gheebat, you see that they will hang out more, their conversations will be more jokes than being serious and conversations will always be based around other people.  When you do gheebat, it really has a huge effect on the person.  You need to understand that if I talk bad about you in front of others, then what happens is that I will not be able to really greet you with an honest straight face because I said something behind your back that I will not say in front of you and it will destroy the honesty in this friendship we have together.  If you have not done gheebat then you will be able to approach him honestly and will not have any sort of guilty feeling about that.  So when you look at these situations that we have in our communities, this warning should be written on the walls of the masjid in very creative ways.  For example, “Allah is watching you, don’t do gheebat or backbite”.  The people need to be reminded over and over again.  You have to be told a lot before you can break the habit. We need to be reminding each other of these things as they are happening. 

Envy is another thing.  It has been described in hadith as something that destroys your faith like fire destroys wood.  Anyone in relationship compares themselves to another person, either they are better than you or you are better than them.  If the other person is more skilled or stronger than you are, then there are two types of reactions you can have.  The first reaction is that it inspires you to be like him, and the second type of reaction is that it doesn’t inspire you, and you want him to be like you or you want to lower him to your level.  The first thing is ghitta or admission, something which encouraged in Islam, seeing someone better than you and wanting to improve yourself to try and be like him . But if your thinking is that you don’t want to put in an effort to be like him but you want something to happen to him so that he is not as good any more, this is known as hasad, and disliked in islam.  Having the emotion itself is not haraam, but the expression of hasad, every expression is evil.  As long as it is inside you, there is nothing wrong.  But once it expresses itself is when you have a problem.  There is no way of expressing itself that isn’t harmful and why it is haram. You will destroy yourself just because you want to destroy the person you envy.  So these are the reasons people must understand and know about the effects of these sins so that they can make decisions to not having that.  They may need to seek the help of other.

Question:  How to empower ourselves through concepts of tawakkul and khulus, or sabr in Islam?

Maulana Baig: In empowerment of ourselves, we need to see what the meaning of power is.  Let’s say that we have a rich person but he is in need of financial institutions. He needs them to keep his wealth rolling.  If he is poor, he is not in need of anyone and is content and living on his own.  Power is not Having wealth, power is not being in need of anyone else.  When you are not in need of anyone else, you are stronger than the person who is in need of others even when they have money.  This is why Allah mentions things like trusting Allah, and having eman.  The reason these things are mentioned is that when we see someone trusts Allah, they make him self sufficient, they make it so he isn’t in need of others.  When you see a mo’min or individual, your strength is in the fact that you are not in need of others.  But when you desire something or this dunya; wealth or a house, you will see that you will always need others in order to achieve that.  You will need a loan for example to achieve that.  Not everyone can just afford half a million dollars.  When you get a loan you are need of the bank and have to pay the mortgage off.  So the more you want the more you will be in need. 

This is why Allah says, things that empower you are, trust in Allah.  What this means is very simple. When you trust Allah, then you trust all the decisions that He has made for you.  When you trust Him and believe that whatever He has given you is what is best for you.  If He didn’t give you a lot of wealth then He gave you what is best for you.  If it was not what is best, then He would not give it to you.  It is only for the kuffar that Allah gives them what they want.  If they want dunya, Allah gives it to them.  For the believer we only get what is best for us.  If we have trust in Allah, if anything was better, Allah would do it for us.  If what I have is the best, then why do I want something else?  You only want something when you are dissatisfied with what you have.  When you don’t trust Allah you feel like Allah hasn’t done right to you.  You have to have trust in Allah, and when you recognize that then you don’t have desire from anyone else.  This is power. If anything else was better, Allah would have given it to me.  This is done as individuals and as nations.  Like the Islamic republic being satisfied with what they had and not wanting more.

Question: What is the difference between Allah’s will and our ability to change our situation?

Maulana Baig: Allah does not speak about our financial situation, but our spiritual situation.  Allah is raziq, he gives rizq.  He is hadi, he gives guidance. If Allah gives us rizq, if he gives us 1000 dollars, we recognize the rizq and use it.  The same way with rizq, he gives us guidance.  Do we use Allah’s’ guidance the same way we use his rizq (provisions).  We see that most people don’t.  So they understand the physical existence of guidance but not the spiritual existence of guidance.  So when Allah speaks about us changing, it deals with our spiritual self and using our guidance to improve ourselves. We have to put in the effort.  Recognizing that we are willing to put in our effort, how much we are willing to put in for rizq and how much for guidance.  Which will we put more effort towards?  If we put more effort towards provisions, we see where our priorities lie.  If we put it towards guidance, we see where our priorities lie.  The evil we have, we need to check out ego.  We need to test ourselves time and time again.

Question: What should we think about Obama’s speech to the Muslim world?

Maulana Baig: Obama’s speech to the Muslim world is that America is reverting back to the policies during the time of Clinton.  The policies which say, talk to people, but keep on doing the things you need to do for your own self interest.  America’s interests are in everyone else’s business.  This is the problem with America.  For example, Angola, they have a navy.  Their navy ships are not in the pacific near China and North Korea.  Why are American ships over there?  What gave you the right to go to other countries and have your war ships all over the place.  The issue is that these types of talk are just talk and nothing else.  When you are going to get all your armies and navies out of other people’s countries, then we can say you are doing something.  Until then, you can say that nothing mattes. 

The Muslims used to love Clinton and hailed as a hero.  He was a very popular American president throughout the world.  He would talk very nicely and in a gentle way to people. Obama was right in his campaign to people about getting back to the fundamental policies.  Obama is reverting back to this, talking nicely to others but doing what you always wanted to do.  Say you want to talk and be nice, but continue destroying their country behind their back.   These things are useless. It’s just a video-op.  It makes no sense, it has no value.  Nothing is being done and nothing is going to be done.  At least George bush is an honest person.  He was open with what he was doing. You know what he stood for. Obama will give you another talk but will do the same thing that George bush was doing, only behind your back.  All he did was to make it harder to get to him.  George Bush was easy to get to because he was honest.  At least you knew what he was.  Obama is harder because he says he is with us but sending more troops.   This has always the been the American way.

Question: Can you please comment on the current situation in Iran?

Maulana Baig: It’s not even an issue but there are certain elements that have always been there.  Last time there was rioting was in 98.  This time they find that a larger group of people in the campaign for Mousavi got emotional.  There are certain people in Tehran that don’t like Ahmadinejad.  They see that he is hated by America and Europe.  Ahmadinejad says America is not the world.  Iranians say that the world hates us because of him.  But the rest of the world loves him.  But to these Iranians, the world is America and Europe.  To these people that’s all that matters to them.  When you get down to what is happening, it is actually nothing.  For some reason they thought that Mousavi is a liberal.  The only difference between him and Ahmadinejad is the tone.  He is actually a strong right winger.  It only happened that in the last month, the idea of Mousavi as a reformist, they found a person that they can gather around.  It wasn’t even him, it was his wife. You always have elements there that are working. 

When you look at America since the 80s, the Martin bill was introduced where, in those days, 20 million dollars a year will be put aside to overthrow the government of Iran.  This is the first official sponsored terrorist bill.  You actually have a bill that you will use to overthrow another government.  This is a bill that no one said anything about, and that is being used to insight the people. Channels in LA for example that feed wrong information about dislike for the government and things like that. 

You can’t compare Iran to America.  The Islamic republic has been established recently.  Iran has been attacked and on the butt end of all the attacked since the creation of the Islamic republic. What Iran has achieved in this short period of time with all the difficulties they have faced shows that they have really improved.  After the elections it is very clear what happened.  The leader said that they Mousavi says that we are going to overthrow Ahmadinejad.  What they didn’t realize that modern Tehran is not Iran.  If you look at these rallies you see that these people look Western.  If you look at the millions of Iranians, they look more like asian.  These people from Tehran are much more westernized.  Iran has many more religious and simple people then compared to the western thinking in Iran.  They thought that everyone thinks like them and so they hyped up that they were going to win.  Now that Ahmedinejad won by a huge margin, how can they justify themselves?  Either they were lying or they made a huge miscalculation. American news agency, three days before the election, according to their polls, they said Ahmedinejad was going to win 2 to 1.  He has more votes and people all across Iran.  The people just couldn’t digest it and became sour losers that hate him so much that they didn’t want to give up. 

If you remember the second election of George bush, you saw that all the hype was going on about how much they hated him.  When he won the election and you see that the liberals were all upset.  Let’s say that John Kerry had said that we don’t accept these elections and go on the street and protest.  Honestly, what would the government have done?  It would be like John McCain telling his people that we can’t let this guy be here, we have to kick him out. The fact that Iran has not arrested Mousavi or any of these people shows that they are lenient towards their people.  But at some point it has to stop.  You see the Leader came out and made it clear that enough is enough.  It stops over here. Your coming on the streets is not going to do anything.  There is a legal way to do things. If you don’t do things the legal way that that isn’t correct.

Question: If Mousavi is on the right wing, then why is he doing this to destroy his image?

Maulana Baig: If you remember Montazari, one of the things that hurt him was the people who were around him.  If you start putting trust in the people around you who aren’t good, it will affect you.  If all of them are saying to go, then it will be hard for you to control yourself.  If he thought for a second that he was doing something wrong by going against the Rahbar, then would not have done it.  He made an on the spot decision in the moment and he is in a fix about what he is going to do.  Now the Rabhar spoke out openly that if he does these things, he will be arrested and any aspirations he had of becoming the president have been ruined.  Now any chance he had is gone. Now that he realized this, he is going to take his chances now.  But, he doesn’t have people now. The same million people who voted for him are coming out.  The West is making it seem like this is Tran and those going against them are agents of the govt.

Question: How do we attain the best Salaat, in which we can fully concentrate on Allah swt?

Maulana Baig: One of the things we need to make sure is that you are working proactively for Islam. When your life is a struggle to establish Islam, then you will see that in every prayer you make, your mind is on the prayer. You are actually talking to Allah.  If your life is something else, and you just come and pray because it is an obligation, then it is very hard to concentrate because your mind and heart are somewhere else.  Your mind must change because your mind will be more on your prayer.  Any other advice would be just like taking Tylenol to cure cancer.  It won’t happen if your mind and heart are somewhere else. Trying to make your poom clean and making sure nothing is around you it won’t have any effect.  The main thing is what the Prophet said.  Allah said in the Qur’an, my prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death are for Allah.  We see that your concentration will be there when you see that you’re in need of Allah.  Because of the hardships and struggles you are involved in.  Then you will see that with this need, your heart will be in prayer.  But if you are living for something else and just come for prayer, then you will see that, yes give your zakaat, khumas and sadaqah, they are good things but will not cure the disease.  If your life is away from Islam then it will be very difficult and one has to think, if my goals and ambitions are different from Allah, then it becomes difficult.  For example if you have a wife but you love someone else then it’s not going to work. Physically you are with your wife but your heart is with another person.  If your mind and heart is with Allah then you will see that the real change comes.

Question: What are gnaha-e-kabira & gunah-e-saghiras?

Maulana Baig: Look at the book called Greater Sins by Ayatollah Dastagib Shirazi.  On the whole, major sins, in the word of the Imams, are sins in which the punishment of Allah are in question.  If you do it then you are liable in punishment from Allah.  Minor sins are sins in which there is a chance for forgiveness. There is a chance that Allah will forgive you for it.  But the major ones, you are liable for Allah’s punishment. Everyone should know the major sins.  Lying and stealing and zulm and oppressing, murdering someone, etc.. gheebat, and all these things that are known to us are major sins mentioned by Allah so one should know the effects of it so how one can avoid it. We need to keep in mind.

Queston: If one wants to become a scholar of islam, how can one know who to look for in a wife?

Maulana Baig: Anyone who wants to become an alim, they have to sacrifice more than others.  If you are truly working for Allahs’ cause, then you know you don’t have a set schedule, you are always running around.  The wife has to sacrifice more.  You don’t see your husband a lot of times.  It’s very hard for a wife to be able to be with an alim.  It’s very difficult but anyone who wants to take that step should be ready for that lifestyle.  She has to make sure she will be happy with that.  It’s not like an 8-5 job where you will be home and eat dinner with the family every night and everything will be happy.  It’s a choice that one has to make and this is the issue with what happens.  It’s not that she has to be more religious than others, but she has to be willing to make more sacrifices than others.

Question: What are the steps for doing tawbah?

Maulana Baig: It is narrated that someone said: 'Astaghfirullah (I seek God's forgiveness) before Imam 'Ali (a). He said to him: "May thy mother mourn for thee! Do you know what is istighfar? Verily istighfar is a degree of the 'illiyyun (people of high station) and it is a word that means six things. First is remorse over the past. Second, the resolution not to return to it ever. Third, to return to the creatures their rights (usurped in the past) so that you meet God Almighty in such a state of purity that no one has any claim against you. Fourth, that you fulfil every duty that was neglected by you, in order to satisfy your obligation in respect of it. Fifth, that you attend to the flesh of your body that had grown on unlawful nourishment so that it melts away as a result of grief and mourning and the skin adheres to the bones, after which new flesh grows there between. Sixth, that you make your body taste the pain of obedience in the same way as it tasted earlier the pleasure of sinfulness. When you have done these things then say Astaghfirulllah! – Nahjul Balagha saying 417

Question: If our children are not listening to us, how do we connect with them, to make them better?

Maulana Baig: We want our children to be stronger than we are.  Make them strong and good unlike us.  Our weaknesses are of our own character.  We want them to have stronger personalities and eman. When we talk about our days of jahilia as ‘the good old days’ it says the wrong message to our kids.  It was the wrong days when we were fools.  It is wrong to talk about and we should be shameful .  They love what they have done.  It’s not something to be proud of.  The way we talk about it will be the foundation for the children to build their ideology.  Talk about those things having been done out of ignorance and that they were regretful.