The Status of Ethical Parity of the Married Couple in Formation of Family in Jurisprudence and Statutory Law

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

• Muḥammad Mahdī Zāri‘ī
• Abdulkarīm Abdullāhī

10.22067/fiqh.v0i0.3140

Abstract

One of the fundamental secrets of durability of the true religion of Islam is the moral-ness of its doctrines. Jurisprudence or Islamic law, which gives direction to the behavior of the compos mentis and their life skills, is so intertwined with practical ethics that it can be said that all legal rulings in Islam appear in various areas of life with an ethical tone, and this appearance is the outcome of the intervention and impact of ethics on the process of the inference of legal rulings by the jurists.
In any of these areas, family is regarded as one of the most important centers for human development and growth. In this respect and with a special attention to this issue, Islam has duly explained how the family should form and has necessitated the lawful cohabitation of a man and a woman as a couple for its consolidation. On the other hand, since family formation is intended to reach higher goals, such as achievement of peace, stability, survival, and rearing offspring, the basic role of the ethical and epistemic parity of the couples appears to be more evident.
In order to elucidate the fundamentals of ethical parity of the couples, this research has made reference to certain Qur'anic verses, traditions, and various other sources and thereby seeks to demonstrate that each of the wife and the husband must be equally free from the ethical attributes that "always" or "often" contradict the philosophy of marriage. Furthermore, the present article is intended to explain that such parity and equality, whose efficiency has been proved according to the religious knowledge and doctrines, has similarly been established by psychologists and social scientists, who have gone so far as to even regard the durability of a marital relationship dependent upon the parity and similarity of the wife and the husband in their religiosity and faith.
In the end, this research has drawn the important conclusion that in case of the ethical non-parity of the couple, the prohibition or invalidity and revocation of the marriage contract can be maintained in the preconditions before and after marriage as well as before and after consummation.
Keywords: parity, ethics, married couple, compassion, compatibility, family.

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