Fatwa No. 22

Question:

I am a young woman who fell in love with a young man, but it was not destined for us to marry — and he has since married another. To this day I still think of him, and he speaks to me in ordinary conversation. What can I do to forget him?

Answer:

Al-ḥamdu lillāhi rabb al-ʿālamīn. To proceed:

Despair, my dear daughter, is one of the two forms of relief. When marriage cannot be realised between two people who love one another, despair and the severing of hope is the remedy — for passionate attachment (ʿishq) is composed of two elements: admiration of the beloved, and hope of attaining him. When either of these two is removed, the attachment dissolves. When the soul despairs of something, it finds rest from it and ceases to turn toward it.

The first and most essential step is to cut off all contact and cease all communication — for there is no place for a private relationship between a male and a female outside the framework of the bond of unmarriageability (maḥramiyyah) or marriage. This young man is neither your maḥram nor your husband — so for what purpose is the conversation, and upon what basis does the contact continue?

If you find yourself unable to do this, then nothing remains for you but sincere turning to the One who answers the distressed when He is called upon — cast yourself before Him at His door, beseeching Him, supplicating with humility , and submission. Occupy your time, my dear daughter, with beneficial and useful work — such as seeking knowledge, or participating in useful daʿwah or social activity. Beseech Allah — Exalted and Majestic — to decree for you what is good wherever it may be, and to make you content with what He has apportioned for you.

Know that infatuation with outward forms afflicts only those hearts that are empty of the love of Allah — hearts that have turned away from Him and substituted something else in His place. When the heart fills with love for Allah and longing for His encounter, this drives away the disease of infatuation with created forms. For this reason Allah Most High said concerning Yūsuf (peace be upon him) “And she certainly desired him, and he would have desired her had he

not seen the proof of his Lord.” — indicating that sincerity (ikhlāṣ) is a cause for repelling infatuation and the evil and indecency that follow from it as its fruit and outcome. For turning away the effect is achieved by turning away its cause.

For this reason some of the early scholars (salaf) said: “Infatuation is the movement of an empty heart” — empty, that is, of all but its object of desire. (2)

And Allah Most High knows best.

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Footnotes (Takhrīj):

(1) Sūrat Yūsuf (12:24)

(2) Ibn al-Qayyim, Zād al-Maʿād fī Hudā Khayr al-ʿIbād, vol. 4, p. 246 — on the Prophetic guidance (hudā) in the treatment of passionate attachment (ʿishq).