Fatwa No. 12

Question:

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

Answer:

Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. 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 love (ʿishq) is composed of two elements: admiration of the beloved, and hope of attaining him. When either of these two is removed, the passionate love disappears. 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(mahramyah) or marriage. This young man is neither your maḥram(unmarriageable kin) nor your husband  so for what purpose is the conversation and upon what basis does the communication 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 seeking  his rescue, 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/physical  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 physical 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.Thus [it was] that We might avert from him evil and immorality. Indeed, he was of Our chosen servants”¹

This indicates that sincerity (ikhlāṣ) is a cause for repelling infatuation and the evil and indecency that follow from it as its fruit and outcome. Averting the effect is achieved by averting 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.

Footnotes

(1) Sūrat Yūsuf (12:24) — “And she certainly desired him, and he would have desired her had he not seen the proof of his Lord.”

(2)  Ibn al-Qayyim in his book Zaad AlMaad (4/246).