Marrying off a son and giving a daughter in marriage is the parents’ work.

Marrying off a son and giving a daughter in marriage is the parents’ work. This includes finding a girl for a son who has come of age. Let the parents themselves choose a lifelong companion for their sons. To this end, let them shape the character of the future bride, saying, “I will take as my daughter-in-law a girl who is steadfast, hardworking, loyal and chaste.” Let them say, “What we need is not a girl who has studied and earns money by working, but a girl who is modest, enlightened, devoted to the family, fond of housekeeping and obedient.” Likewise, let the girls’ grooms be chosen not by the girls themselves but by their parents. Words like “Son, talk with such-and-such a girl, win her heart, and then we will go” are wrong. It does not work that way. With the elders at the head and the young ones at their side, one must inquire about the candidate for bride throughout the neighborhood, check her lineage back to seven generations, go to the household firmly resolved to make her a bride, and say, “We have come to offer our service, we have come to sweep your threshold.” For a candidate who meets all the requirements, however much service one offers and however many thresholds one sweeps, it is worth it. For such a girl, any bride-price and any mahr is too little. But finding a girl in the street like a toy picked up in the street, and leaving it to little kids who don’t know the first thing about life — “find yourself a wife, a husband” — is a huge, huge failing! Dear parents! Let us return to the way of the people of old: let us not throw our children out into the street, but take charge ourselves, and ourselves marry them off, settle them and give them away in marriage. Otherwise, a family put together by two inexperienced greenhorns will be weak, and the danger that it will soon break up is great — may Allah protect us! Dear “family experts”! Of course, it is easy to show off one’s cleverness on podcasts, saying, “Find such-and-such a match”; rather, let us call parents to responsibility and urge brides to receive the upbringing of their mothers-in-law. If we do not restore the old bonds, if we do not tie ourselves to the old bonds, we will collapse, and tomorrow our state will be a thousand times worse than today.