A husband and his wife were standing in front of a mirror The wife asked: “What do you see?” The husband smiled and said: “The rest of my life..”Allah subhana wa ta’ala has already written the names of your spouses for you. What you need to work on is your relationship with Allah. He will send her/him to you when you’re ready. It is only a matter of time!!
I find such statements very difficult to reconcile. My instinctive response is that it has to be a misinterpretation of the concept of taqdeer. It is based on the premise that a single partner has been intended for every single person. What then of those people that have married more than once and divorced more than once? It simply doesn’t add up. I love the idea of having that perfect person just waiting for the right time to walk into my life, but I know it doesn’t happen. I know this from experience on more than one occasion.
It reminds me of the following hadith:
One day Allah’s Messenger noticed a Bedouin leaving his camel without tying it. He asked the Bedouin, “Why don’t you tie down your camel?” The Bedouin answered, “I placed my trust in Allah.” At that, the Prophet, sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam, said, ” Tie your camel and place your trust in Allah” – Tirmidhi
To me, taqdeer is more than just having everything set out for us regardless of our actions or efforts. Maybe I’m completely off the mark, but the more I consider it the more I believe that the whole issue of taqdeer is very misunderstood. The above hadith is a prime example of this misunderstanding.
The fact that everything is pre-ordained I do not dispute. How it is pre-ordained is where the interpretations come into play, and again, as can be seen from the above hadith, it is not a predetermined outcome regardless of your actions. Within the context of the original post, what would you say to the person who has been married and after trying their hardest, ended up being divorced? Divorce, although hated, is halaal. So are we suggesting that even that is predetermined? If so, where does our accountability start and where does it stop?
Or perhaps we’ve got this entire perspective on taqdeer all wrong. Perhaps taqdeer comprises of rules and laws that determine the effect of every cause, or the reaction to every action. Perhaps, within this context, our limited free will allows us to choose the outcomes based on our choices, and the more informed our choices, the more predictable the outcome? In the absence of this relationship between cause and effect, our limited free will would be inconsequential, and subsequently, there would be no basis on which we are to be judged for what we do.
So isn’t this romantic idea of marital bliss and perfect partners really an over-simplification of divine decree?