The Triangle
“And one of His signs is that He created for you spouses from among yourselves so that you may find tranquility in them. And He has placed between you love and mercy. Surely in this are signs for people who reflect.”
[Ar-Rum, The Romans, Chapter 30, Verse 21]
Marriage is an ayat (a sign/symbol/direction) of Allah and a sacred covenant between spouses, contracted under Allah and the Messenger of Allah, ﷺ.
A Muslim marriage is like a triangle, with Allah above on the highest point of the vertical axis and the spouses on the two vertices of the horizontal plane. The husband and wife select each other for marriage, based on the criteria of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. As the spouses move towards their Lord on the vertical plane, they also move towards each other on the horizontal plane. As the marriage grows and matures over time, the triangle shrinks, demonstrating that the spouses move closer to their Lord and to each other simultaneously, as our ultimate journey is to Him.
The children are within the triangle, placed there as an amanah, a sacred trust by Allah, within the care of the parents, both for their spiritual and worldly upbringing. There is a flow of knowledge, wisdom and awareness between Allah, the parents and the children, as they all turn to the Lord for guidance and supplication. Within the triangle is Mercy, Love, Tranquility and Safety.
The relationship between the parents and the subsequent ambience created in the home based on the relationship of the spouses, is the primary determining factor in raising children in a beautiful, holistic environment of Islam and preserving the sacred nature of childhood. The children need to see their primary role models, attachment figures, and caregivers treat each other with overflowing love, mercy, compassion, peace, warmth, with the Qur’an, the Sunnah, the Seerah held closely in the practice of the five pillars and cultivation of noble prophetic character. The first role models of establishing the rules and norms of the Muslim man-woman relationship is the one that is observed between the mother and father in their interactions and relationship with each other. Thus, the children will witness the lived reality of the beauty of Islam between the spouses, if this is practiced correctly within the home.
