Sermon Introduction

Praise be to God. There is no other God except God. Today I want to talk about dowry calculations, limitations, assumptions, and agreements. It’s connected with a Friday sermon which I delivered two weeks ago.

It’s a really dense sermon in the sense that it has lots of information. Try to pay attention. Most of it you don’t have to really know, but I’d like that people sort of get exposed and informed about that information so that they know what’s going on, however they get a feeling of what’s going on. However, you don’t have to know everything. In the end, I’ll tell you what you actually need to remember. You don’t need to remember everything.

Inspiration Behind the Marriage System

Before I do that, maybe actually I should sort of congratulate myself. I don’t know if people have seen the Mark Zuckerberg movie. There’s many movies about him, like probably four by now, if not more. In some of those movies—I don’t remember, I haven’t seen all of them—at least in one of them, and I think it’s kind of a true story even though Mark Zuckerberg denied it later, the way Facebook started is that Mark Zuckerberg was trying not really to create Facebook. He tried—I’m assuming he was concerned about his looks, like whether women like him.

This is my own interpretation, like this is what I think was going on, but he will tell a different version, his friends will tell a different version, the movie tells a different version. This is my assumption of what I think was going on. He was in college, women didn’t really like him as much, I guess. So I think he was curious whether it was his looks or maybe he’s not charming enough. So he created an app, being a nerd that he was, where people would actually go and rate each other’s photos. He kind of stole the photos from—I think it was in Harvard or somewhere, I don’t know where he was in college. You know how students, when they go to college, they get an ID photo, and they take photos for all the students? So he stole them from the university database, and then he asked the students, of course unofficially, to rate each other’s photos, compare like: “Do you like this more or that? Do you like that or that? Do you like that or that?”

In this way, he could create some sort of rating and know pretty much how much women like him, how much they like other men, and how much other men like other women, so they have a better idea—pretty much to put people in their own place. Eventually, he kind of sort of got criticized for that, so he switched it into a social media. However, his initial idea probably was better, with the wrong motives though, because he was trying to do that so people can hook up.

My motive with this marriage system is that the ultimate motive is correct: we are trying to do it for marriage. By the way, it’s a similar system to what Mark Zuckerberg did, and I think it’s actually better in the sense that it calculates better, it makes certain sort of assumptions, it makes better assumptions about people. So I just want to sort of congratulate myself for doing what Mark Zuckerberg did years and years ago, but doing it better. I pray to God that God rewards me with more than what Mark Zuckerberg has, but I want it in the next world, not in this world. Whatever Mark Zuckerberg got in this world in wealth, I want that a million times more, because I think this will help more. This will help the people more than Facebook. This is better than Facebook.

Of course, when we create it in an app, however right now I’m just presenting it as a starting point.

How the System Operates: Making Dowry Offers

How does this work? How does the marriage system work? I’m going to explain it here in what I call the dowry calculations, limitations, assumptions, and agreements.

Imagine some of you guys have filled the questionnaire, or the marriage compatibility CV, or if we have an app, it’s going to be called probably a profile. You filled your profile: your photo, who you are, how well you know the Quran, and stuff like that. You fill the profile, and then let’s say John—let’s take John as an example. Let’s say John filled the profile. The next step he will do, he will receive another CV. John will receive another CV, and he will have now to make dowry offers.

Here’s how it sort of would look—an example of how John’s dowry offers look. This will happen soon; guys who have filled the CV, they will actually receive another questionnaire to actually make the offers or make the dowry requests if they are women.

Example of how John’s dowry offers look: John will get this sort of a page where it will say, “I read all the information in the marriage compatibility CV profiles, and after thinking about it, and while agreeing with the dowry calculations, limitations, assumptions, and agreements presented in the Friday sermon about it, here are my dowry offers for each woman.” This is from John’s perspective; he’s a man, so he’s going to make an offer for each woman. Let’s say there’s four women who put their CV out there through the system so that John can see it. Then he makes dowry offers.

I had to make two sections for each person, because in today’s world, unfortunately, we have to do that because it doesn’t measure it very well otherwise:

• My dowry offer to marry Emma and move to her country: Let’s say he puts a number, let’s say $10,000.

• My dowry offer to marry Emma and have her move to my country: Maybe John wants to stay in his country. “I’m going to offer Emma let me say $30,000 to move to my country, but $10,000 if I go there.”

Then:

• My dowry offer to marry Olivia and move to her country is this number.

• My dowry offer to marry Olivia and have her move to my country is this number.

For each female, he makes two different offers: one to move to her country, another one to have her move to his country. The reason I did two is because usually what people are willing to marry in one country versus if they move to another country is way different. It can be very different, so I really had to sort of go into that detail. I wish we didn’t have to have two, but unfortunately, we will have to have two, at least for the time being when people cannot travel easily from country to country. In the future, we might just have one if travel limitations become easy and when countries become more similar.

This is what John would fill. Now, how are the calculations, or let’s say what will go in the database? Let me present it here.

Database Structuring and Dowry Offers vs. Requests

These are the offers by men. These will not be seen by people. This is all John sees—he sees this. Then when he puts his numbers here, which are real offers, sincere offers, legally binding offers, then this will go into a database. In a database, it will look like this. Basically, I’m going to do it manually for a while until there’s enough people, so for a while I’m going to be able to see them. Eventually, the database will go in the app, and it will be secret—no one can see it of course, except God.

How does it work? Let’s say John had his offer. John is offering $0 for Emma; he just doesn’t want to marry her. $0 for Emma if she comes into his country. Zero again for Olivia. He kind of likes Ella; he would give her $5,000 if she married him, and he kind of likes her country, he probably wants to go to her country. But Ella, if she comes to his country—I don’t think he likes his country as much—so he’s going to offer Ella $30,000 if she comes to his country.

Then, apparently Aurora is the top woman there, according to this database. John is willing to offer Aurora—what do I mean by top woman? Not only by her looks, but because the CV asked other questions about her knowledge, about what she does, her belief as well. Aurora, I guess he prefers, he likes Aurora more, not just her looks, everything about her. If he likes her more, I guess he’s willing to pay way more for her to marry her—not to buy her, but to marry her. John is willing to offer $40,000 for Aurora if he has to move to her country, but he would rather stay in his country, so he’s willing to offer $100,000 if she moves to his country.

This is kind of the same for Nick; this is what Nick is offering, different numbers of course. Ryan is offering different numbers. Leo, I guess Leo thinks he’s attractive, so he’s not going to offer much. He’s like, “Oh, I can do better.” So Leo is not offering that much to women. He’s like, “Okay, if you want to marry for $0, fine, otherwise I’m not interested.”

Arthur is offering something to Emma, but he would rather move to her country. Then Arthur and Olivia: there’s an empty space here because Arthur and Olivia are brother and sister, so they don’t have to offer each other dowries. That’s why that is empty there. If someone is family, they don’t have to offer a dowry. In the questionnaire, they will tick a box which will say, “This is family, I don’t want to offer it.”

These are the offers from Arthur. Now let’s go to the requests by women, which are red.

Women are requesting usually more than what most men were offering, because they want to avoid—by the way, this is all free will; if they don’t like someone, they want to avoid him. There’s no way to avoid them unless she asks a lot. She cannot say no, all she can do is make it impossible.

Requests by women: we’ll deal with the limitation later. Women are not allowed to request less than $1,000.

Emma is asking from John $15,000 if she moves to his country, but Emma is asking from John $10,000 if he moves to her country. I guess she would like to go to his country. Whatever the motivations are, it doesn’t matter. Of course, the motivation should always be marriage, but people have preferences.

Emma is offering this for John, this for Nick, this for Leo. Women are asking less from Leo because I guess he’s the attractive guy. Look at John: maybe John is a 70-year-old, not very good-looking man who doesn’t have much money and doesn’t have any sort of future. Of course, they are going to request—Aurora definitely doesn’t want to marry him, she’s like, “$1,000,000 or nothing.” Or maybe Ella, she’s like, “$500,000 or nothing.” Olivia is probably okay with it.

They are making a request, but the request is made in a sincere way where you truly do it in a way where that’s how much money it would take for that man to convince you and to give it to you—not to just dangle it in your face and not give it, but to actually give it to you.

These are the requests by women from men. In this case, they will all be hidden. No one sees them except for the person who filled their own number, which they know, but they don’t see the database.

Calculating Dowry Proportions and Binding Engagements

Men are making dowry offers, women are making dowry requests, and then they get matched and compared. Let’s go now to dowry proportions. Instead of dowry differences, I did it as dowry proportions for a reason, so we can also measure the percentage differences, but here’s what it means:

We take each number in this table, divide it by each number in that table, and we get this table of proportions. What do these proportions mean? It’s John’s offer divided by Emma’s request, or John’s offer divided by Ella’s request, or Ryan’s offer divided by Ella’s request.

This number, 1.5, represents Ryan’s offer for Ella to go to his country and marry him divided by Ella’s request to go to Ryan’s country and marry him. Why are these numbers important? The most important part which that database does is, if anything is bigger than one, that means they can agree.

Basically, Ryan is offering—we have two numbers which are bigger than one here, but the biggest one is 2.5. Ryan is offering Aurora 2.5 times more than she asked from him. Basically, they can agree, because what she’s asking and what he’s offering is way more than what she’s asking. As long as this number is bigger than one, that means that they agree. If the numbers are smaller than one, they don’t agree.

What happens if there’s two numbers which are bigger than one? The bigger number matters, because the bigger number shows that Ryan likes Aurora much more than he likes Ella. Ella would agree to marry Ryan, Aurora would also agree to marry Ryan, but Ryan likes Aurora more. Can you see the difference? It matters what Ryan likes, but it also matters what they like. Unfortunately for Ella, Ryan likes Aurora more, so he’s going to marry Aurora. He could afford to marry both of them, he would agree with both of them, however in the database, he’s going to have to marry only one, because Ella made the request under the assumption that Ryan was not married. Now that he gets married to Aurora, Ella’s request is not applicable anymore.

If there’s a match, Ryan and Aurora are removed from the database, and the rest of the people now do the same thing over again. They don’t have to go through the whole process because the CVs are already there, but it’s going to be done in cycles. This is how the calculation happens. Basically, we’re trying to see who is agreeing. This is what we call an agreement about the dowry. If there’s more than one, they agree, and they actually are considered officially, according to the Quran, engaged. It goes straight to engagement, then they can do the official whatever they want to do extra. But if they agree, it’s an engagement.

Have that in mind, because you cannot say later, “Oh, wait a minute, I didn’t mean it.” No, if you use this database, you should be serious about it.

We found here a couple who would be the best match for each other and who would agree. These two here are because Arthur and Olivia are brother and sister, so you cannot divide by zero, by nothing, anyway.

Repent to Allah. Praise be to God. There is no other God except God.

Understanding Ranking, Percentiles, and Matchmaking Results

Now we have a method to match the dowry requests with dowry offers, and to see if they agree, if there’s an engagement. For the rest of the people, this is still useful even if it doesn’t happen in the first cycle. It might happen in the second cycle, third cycle, fourth cycle, because once these women see that men don’t like them as much, maybe they’ll lower the dowry request, if they’re smart, or the men will increase it or try to work harder to increase it, or to sort of think, “Oh, maybe they like someone more.” It’s a constant update. In the app, it’s going to be constant; here, I’m going to have to do it in cycles when there’s enough new people.

Now, what Nick sees at the end—let’s take Nick as an example. These will not be seen by anyone. It’s all in the background of the app. The thing which Nick will see—unfortunately this time around, Nick didn’t get married, there was no number which was bigger than one. What Nick sees in the end: Nick is going to see best matches according to your wishes and capabilities. Based on what Nick wanted, and based on how others liked him:

• Nick’s best match is Aurora in a woman’s country.

• Then Ella in a man’s country.

• Then Aurora again in a man’s country.

How did I come with these calculations? Basically, all the app does, we go to dowry proportions and check which numbers are the biggest. The biggest number here is Aurora in a woman’s country, at 0.4. Basically, this means that Nick offered 40% of what Aurora wanted, but that’s the biggest number he got. Aurora in a woman’s country is the top woman for him right now. Basically, he’s able to see who are the best matches according to his wishes and the women’s wishes. These numbers are just ordered from biggest to smallest, and then those names are put there.

What about this other information which Nick will receive: best match according to the other submitters?

• According to the other submitters, Ella would be the best match for Nick.

• Olivia would be the second best match.

• Emma would be the third best match.

• Aurora would be the fourth best match.

Basically, this will help Nick see what others think about him in relation to who he should marry. You know how sometimes people want to help a couple, they’re like, “Oh, I see this boy and this girl, I think they would be a match.” Basically, the app does that, except that it does it for everyone.

How does it do it? These numbers—it looks like, how could numbers reflect emotions and all? Actually, they do a great job at that.

We go back to these numbers in the database, and we see here that dowry offers by men which were made to these women: on average, Aurora received $36,000 as an offer. Basically, men are willing to offer her a lot for her to go to their country, or they are willing to offer her a little bit less for them to go to her country. Then, Ella is the second preferred woman for men. Then we have Olivia, who is the third preferred woman for men. Then we have—no one will know these, it’s all in the background in the app. No one will be insulted or put down if someone is last. Emma in this case is last, but she will not know that she’s last. No one will know that she’s last in the app. However, this number will be used to actually put them in a percentile.

Basically, it’s just ranking women from men’s perspective, and men from women’s perspective, but ranking them in a percentage. This person is the top 1%, that person is the top 15%, the other person is the 15th percent in a row. If there’s 100 women, Aurora would be 13th in a row in relation to how much men like her.

Then I did an average for both countries: Emma in a man’s country versus Emma in her own country, in a woman’s country. The average between these two numbers is 81%. Because there’s very few submitters right now, we can get a number which is similar or the same. In this case, we just order them in any order, but the more submitters there are, the more accurate this gets. At this point, it’s about 13% inaccuracy, but later it’s going to get better and better. If there’s five submitting men and four submitting women, then the accuracy of the app is 97%, but 30% can be wrong.

It’s important that others—let’s say there’s women or men who think, “Why should I even go here? I’m not that interested in marriage.” Maybe a woman thinks that she’s too old, maybe a man thinks that he doesn’t have enough money. However, you would actually do a very good service to the community by helping rank those people, even if you never get married. Basically, you would be doing a service to the other submitters so that they can get married with the right match instead of the wrong match. Through an app, you’re doing what in real life would be like trying to match two people which you think are a match. You’re using your influence, even if you never get married, to help the community have better marriages, better matches. That’s important.

If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for others. Even if you never think that you’ll get married or want to get married, go there. Because when you rate the man, if you’re a woman, what you’re telling the other women who might get married is: “Look, this is the best for you, then this guy is the next best for you, this guy is the next best for you. Based on my opinion, this would be the best guy for you.” You’re actually helping create better matches, even if you never get married, or even if you’re not interested. It’s charity to do this, even if you get nothing out of it.

I’d encourage every man and woman who’s eligible to actually go and fill the questionnaire, the CVs, because in this way, they actually help the system work better, and they help the couples who would be the best match actually find each other. They might not find each other if you guys don’t help. That’s why it’s important for people to do it, even if they are not that interested in marriage.

Now we have Emma who is at the 19th percentile in her country or in the man’s country, then we have Ella, Olivia, and Emma. These are the percentiles. This is where they would rank if we had 100 women: Emma would be 81st, Aurora would be 19th.

Now let me go to what the women requested. Here we have the ranking of the men. Unfortunately, here the accuracy drops because there’s only four women. It’s really hard—I don’t know if it drops, but it’s kind of not very high. It actually increases a little bit, but it’s within 10% of error. There’s 10% error because there’s not enough people. In statistics, by the time there’s 30 people, it really measures well. But even like this, it actually helps, it works. It’s better to be 90% accurate than not at all.

Let’s explain these other numbers here: these are calculations. Basically, this is the average of all these numbers in the woman’s country, and the average of all these numbers in the man’s country. Then we calculated the percentile from these, and again, it’s the same as previously.

Nick, in the end—look, this is the last number for Nick, taking Nick as an example. Nick is in the 55th percentile, meaning that if there’s 100 men, women would rank him 55th based on how much they like other men, how much they like him, and how much they like other men below him. Nick is an average guy. What this means is that Nick is an average guy.

What would be the best match according to other submitters for an average guy? An average girl! Of course, other submitters will never propose to Nick, “Oh, you should get the top girl, even though you’re average.” No one would say that if they’re reasonable. Nick might not think so—Nick probably thinks he deserves better or worse—but other submitters think he’s an average guy based on this.

We found that Nick is in the 55th percentile, so that means that Nick is average. When we tell Nick, we don’t tell Nick that he’s average. He will never know that he’s average. He might think that he’s a top guy, he can still think that, it’s okay. He will never know that he’s average. What the system does is that it finds the average girl in these numbers here. Which one is the closest to an average girl in these numbers here? It is number 44—44%. Ella! Ella is the average girl.

Now the app is telling Nick—here’s what Nick sees: “Best match according to the other submitters for Nick is Ella.” Why? Because Nick is average, Ella is average.

Who’s the next best one? The one who is closest to it. Let’s go to the numbers: remember, Nick is in the 55th percentile. The next closest number to 55th percent, I think it’s 81%. Olivia and Emma will be next, and Aurora will be the last one. Olivia is next, then Emma, then Aurora.

Nick will never be told that he’s average. However, Nick will be told who’s the best match for him, and that woman will be average. Then the next best match for him will be a little bit above him or a little bit below him, and then the next best match will be a little bit more above him. From the 55th percentile for the case of Nick, the system will propose him the 56th, then the 54th, then the 57th, then the 53rd. Without insulting anyone, without making them feel bad, the system will propose an average girl to an average guy, a top girl for a top guy, and a bottom girl for a bottom guy, if that makes sense—whatever that means. That probably sounded bad, but anyway, you guys get it.

This is how the system works, and this is why it’s important that people use this. Why is this important? Because there’s no way to help other submitters in marriage unless, in today’s world, you do it for all of them at the same time, otherwise you are unfair.

How is this different from the past? In the past, two people would meet, and no one else was there—let’s say one family with one family or something, and that was the whole pool of marriages, and then they would meet someone else later. Here, we all know each other at the same time because we do it online. Because it’s online today, the difference is like in the past, people would go and trade with people in the market. Today, we trade on Amazon, and on Amazon, the buyers and the sellers are matched all at the same time. There’s no way to match them unless there’s some kind of advanced, accurate, and fair system. This is the fair system, accurate, which is fair, accurate, and helpful for the submitters.

This is how the calculations work. I spoke about the calculations. The next thing I want to talk about is the limitations, then assumptions and agreements. Sorry guys, this is a long sermon.

Dowry Limitations: Rules for Men and Women

Let’s talk about the limitations: dowry limitations. I’m not going to go into detail, but I’m just going to sort of tell you what they are:

1. Men are not allowed to offer a dowry which is more than half of their net wealth plus two years of their net income. Why is this important? It’s important because we don’t want some man who doesn’t have the money to offer a big dowry just so he can get the girl. If you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money. However, some people have just finished college, they don’t have the money yet, but they have promise, they have income. Eventually, they’ll get the money. For those people, they get a chance to actually offer up to two years of their net income—half of their net wealth plus two years of their net income. Why specifically this? There’s a verse in the Quran which says: “Would you elevate the subordinates to higher than yourself?” There’s a verse in the Quran which says that—basically saying that if you do that, you’re stupid, you’re stupid and you are immature if you do that. When the man offers a dowry, he’s actually also proposing to make the woman a subordinate. If he gives her more than he has, then he’s left with himself. Basically, he’s going to make the woman richer than himself; he’s elevating her more than himself. Actually, because of that, she will not respect him. Women don’t like the man who likes to be second; she likes him to be first, but she also wants to be second after him. She wants to be the best person in the world for him, but she wants him to be the best as well in front of her. What I’m saying is, it’s stupid for men to offer more than half of what they have, according to the Quran. It’s allowed, but it’s stupid. I’m just protecting stupid men here. Men are not allowed to offer a dowry which is more than half of their net wealth plus two years of their net income. Why the two years? This has to do with how it happened with Moses. I’ve calculated it years ago. It might be three years, but I just sort of remember it as two years, I don’t know why. The verses in the Quran which I used for this is that Moses worked to marry his wife for eight years. I did adjustments, because that was a different era: I did tax adjustments, I did life expectancy adjustments, I did the fact that Moses got free housing—we men don’t get free housing—and stuff like that. I did all those adjustments, and those eight years which Moses spent to work for his wife are now reduced to two years. Basically, you can only offer a dowry up to half of your wealth plus two years of your net income. If you don’t have any of those, unfortunately, just wait, get a job. Get a job, and then you can actually have a dowry. Either get a job or have money, unfortunately, otherwise I don’t think you are actually ready. Anyone can get a job if they try hard enough, even if they are not wealthy.

2. Women are not allowed to request a dowry which is less than two months of average world rent. Why is that? I relied on the verses in the Quran which say that women wait for three menstruations after they divorce. Basically, you don’t want a woman who requests less than $1,000, and then the man just uses her unfortunately as a prostitute and leaves her in the street. She has to have two guaranteed months of rent—by the way, this is actually more like four months, but it’s half of the rent, which means two months, because she would only pay half of the rent, not all the rent, because half of the rent would be paid by the man. That’s why I made it two months. Basically, if a woman is asking for less than $1,000 in today’s world—in the past it might have been different, in the future it’s different, it might be more—but basically two months of average world rent. If she asks for less than that, then she’s stupid. He’ll probably just use her and leave her.

These are dowry limitations. In the past, they didn’t exist because women had guaranteed living conditions. Today people rent, so it’s different.

Pre-Marriage Assumptions and System Agreements

All dowry offers are made under these assumptions and agreements. Why is this important? This is important because some women might get married and are also planning to get half of the wealth when they divorce. They want all the good sides of democracy including all the good sides of marrying a man in a religious marriage. You cannot get both: if you get one, you don’t get the other, or you have to adjust them. You cannot go, “Oh, I got a dowry, now I also want money after divorce.” No, you got the dowry. Basically, if women agree to this system to get a dowry, they also give up some of their rights, which is that they are not going to go to a judge and ask for more money.

Let’s go to all the issues which need to be agreed upon:

1. Daughters of submitters fill this dowry request together with their fathers because they need their father’s permission. Other submitting women, if their parents are not submitters, fill it themselves. Basically, if you’re a daughter of a submitter, you do the CV yourself—you don’t have to ask your father, it’s just a photo, information, all that—but when it comes to the dowry, you ask your father. You’re like, “Father, we did the CV. There’s these men who would be potentially interested to marry me, what do you think I should ask from them?” The father might be like, “You’re still in college, I think you should ask a lot, at least they should pay for your college,” or he will be like, “I think there’s nothing better you can do, how about whatever you want to ask.” If your father is also a submitter, you should ask your father for the dowry, like what it should be. He might actually help you to sort of be more realistic. He probably knows that men have more and you might not know that, or he knows that men actually don’t have enough and you might not know that, and it might be helpful. That’s the first assumption: that the daughter has filled the dowry requests together with her father.

2. The newly married couple will live in the city which corresponds to the dowry which they agreed. Basically, if they agree to a dowry which implies that the man will move to her country, that’s how they should stick to it. Or if they move to the other person’s city, they simply make up the difference between the two dowries. Basically, they have to adjust it. They’ll be like, “Wait a minute, I agreed to come to your country, but unfortunately I cannot move. Would you like to change the dowry so you can move to my country?” and stuff like that.

3. The wealth which one spouse had before marriage belongs only to him or her and will never become the other spouse’s wealth. Some people, typically women in the modern world, they even want wealth from what the husband had previously. Of course, don’t give that to them—even courts will protect from that, however they will try. The wealth which one spouse had before marriage belongs to him or her and will never become the other spouse’s wealth, of course unless they die, which is inheritance.

4. Any new income after taxes and expenses for going to work—this is key: expenses for going to work—which any spouse earns during marriage, 30% of it will be given to the other spouse. A woman gets a dowry, however if only the man works, she’s not going to get half of his salary; she gets only 30% of his salary. Or it can be the opposite: maybe the woman works, he shouldn’t get all of it or half of it, he gets 30%. I’ll explain this another time.

5. If one spouse immigrates to the other spouse’s country, the spouse in the home country is financially responsible for all his or her expenses for one year. Basically, if you are a woman let’s say, or a man, and you are offering or requesting a dowry, have in your mind that if they come to your country, you will take care of them for one year. Let’s say you’re a woman, you don’t have any money, and you know that if you marry a man, you’re going to have to take care of him if he comes to your country. You add that into the dowry: you be like, “Okay, I want $5,000 more, because who’s going to take care of him?” Or the opposite, whatever the case may be. Again, I can find support about this from the Quran. Basically, the person who moves to his country should get free expenses for one year. They cannot ruin their job, their career, the people they love, and all of that just for one spouse and then get nothing.

6. Both spouses plan to work with reasonable efforts and cooperation in their professions. If one of the spouses already plans not to work for some time or permanently, they should mention it before marriage and seek the agreement of the other potential spouse. If they both agree that one of the spouses will not be expected to work for some time or permanently, then the spouse who stays at home is expected to carry the main burden of the house chores which happen during the time when the other spouse is at work. Only when the other spouse is at work; the spouse at home should actually do something at home, not stay and waste time.

7. In case of divorce, no spouse will seek additional money. They already should have received their agreement money before and during marriage.

8. Both spouses will rent the space to live together, with rent and living expenses paid 50/50. Even if one of the spouses owns the place already, the other spouse will pay their portion of the rent. Some women, but also men these days, will get the dowry and then also want free living. The man can use that house to rent it to someone else, so you’re going to have to pay half of the rent if they decide to live together.

9. If they decide to live together with the parents of one of the spouses, the other spouse should live for free without having to pay rent. In today’s world, women don’t get free housing; however, they also typically don’t live with the parents of the spouse. In the past, the only reason why they got free housing is because they agreed to live with the parents of the spouse. If they decide to live together with the parents of one of the spouses, the other spouse should live for free. If a man says, “You know what, I want to marry you, but I’m still living with my parents. Unfortunately, I cannot move out, we will have to live with my parents,” in that case, she will say, “Okay, but I live for free.” No problem! If she wants to stay with his parents, no problem, but: “I’m going to have to live for free in the home, I don’t pay rent.” Now the opposite: if she wants to say, “You know what, I don’t like your parents, I want to move out,” fine, but you’re going to have to pay your rent, you have to pay 50% rent. The same thing if it’s a man and he has to live with a woman’s parents—it happens these days more often than we know. If he agrees, if the woman asks him to do that, she should offer him to stay for free. Why would he stay with your parents if he doesn’t get free housing? Otherwise, the reverse is also true: if he wants to move out, he better be ready to pay half of their rent. Basically, you pay with money; if you don’t like someone’s parents, have money, move out. Otherwise, you’re going to have to actually respect someone’s parents.

10. If the man is already married, the woman should make the dowry request under the assumption that he will continue to stay married with his current wife. This is just a case for men who are already married. If another woman wants to marry him, the woman should make the dowry request under the assumption that he will continue to stay married with his current wife, she will not try to separate them in any way. The husband should assume that the wives will naturally want to live in separate living spaces—he cannot assume, be like, “Oh, I want to marry another wife and I’m going to bring her in the same bedroom, same home.” No, you should assume that it’s going to be a different space, and assume that the wives will naturally want to live in separate living spaces with equal, separate time spent with him, unless one of them willingly makes tolerances for particular instances.

11. Any disagreements before, during, or after marriage will never be sent to court without the approval of the congregation director. If someone uses the court system despite not getting approval from the congregation director, then that person will be fined with the penalty zakat equal to the amount with which the other party got damaged. If the person does not pay the penalty zakat, then he stops being a submitter and is excluded from the community of submitters. Basically, if you use this dowry system and then years later you got $10,000 or $50,000, and years later you want to divorce and you want to go to court and get more, in that case, if you didn’t ask the congregation director to tell you if it’s okay or not, the congregation director will say, “No, you actually damaged this guy, you have to pay him a penalty zakat.” If she doesn’t pay it—the zakat basically takes the money from her and gives it to him—if she doesn’t pay it, she hasn’t paid zakat and she gets kicked out. It’s a risky business. Of course, if there’s something really bad which happened to her or him, like there’s a crime going on or there’s adultery and stuff like that, of course she might send him to court or he might send her to court. However, once they consult the congregation director, he will agree with it because he’ll see that there’s something wrong.

These are the rules and assumptions under which you request the dowry and under which you offer the dowry. Don’t assume something else. Basically, men are paying, but also they should get some privileges out of it, which is that they have priority in some issues and things like that because they are paying.

Summary of Essential Steps for Participants

Does anyone have any questions? Quick though, because—should I even go into questions? It was a long sermon, sorry guys, but it’s hard to cover all of these.

God willing, whoever has filled the questionnaires, the CVs, soon—I don’t know which day, soon when I have time, I will send you another questionnaire which will be visible only to you, where you can actually make dowry requests and offers for men and for women, like men for women and women for men. After that, we can go in another cycle.

Before I go into answering any questions, let’s actually summarize something very important. What do you need to remember? You don’t need to remember all the calculations; all you have to do is trust that it works.

What you need to remember:

1. Fill the marriage compatibility CV. You can do this on our website at any time, the sooner the better. If you go to the website, go to publications—it’s working slow this time—go to publications, and there’s somewhere where it says “Find a marriage partner” or something, and then you click there and fill the CV. You can fill it at any time, you don’t have to wait for the next cycle. However, because I’m doing it manually, I’m going to spend some time until a lot of people fill it. This time it’s just going to be the ones who filled it already, but you can fill it anytime. It’s going to take me some time until I do something about it.

2. When given access to the other gender’s CV profiles, make your sincere dowry offer as a man or dowry request as a woman.

3. Wait for the results.

All you have to remember is these three things. If you don’t want it complicated, just remember these. If you’re an eligible man or woman, do these three things. You will have helped the community find the best match for each other, and you might help yourself. Just in case, do it for others first and yourself second.

Q&A Session

Let’s go to the questions quick.

FAL is saying: “So what you said according to the Quran, if the number is higher than one, it’s engagement. However, what about the dating process, is that notified?”

Dating: I’m not going to prohibit it. You guys in the meantime sort of can talk to one another if there’s a close match or so. However, the reason people date is because they want to know if it’s the right person. What more do you want to know? If you know that she is a submitter, and she tells you how much she reads the Quran, she tells you how she looks, she tells you basically everything you need to know, why would you need to date? If you’re serious, you’ll just make an offer. It’s not easy to make an offer because you want to make sure that it’s the right person, but it’s mostly your problem, your doubts. I’m not stopping it; what I’m saying is I have given enough information, and the best information you have is that the person is a submitter. People who date outside of submitters basically want to know that the person is a good person. We already know by the fact that we’ve joined this community, we already know that.

Guom is saying: “Can the civil marriage be done also in addition of the rules you mentioned?”

We are doing this under the assumption that the civil marriage can be done, but it will not be considered valid in the sense that—you can do it for reasons of immigration and things like that. However, at the end of the day, when that contract says, “Oh, we will be equal partners,” all of that means nothing if you do it like this.

Adnan is saying: “If I’m correct, agreement is only and only if the number is higher than one, else there is no need to proceed.”

If men want to avoid a certain woman, they just offer less than $1,000, and she’s not allowed to request less than a thousand, so you kind of avoid her. Same thing for a woman: just ask a lot, whatever would actually make you change your mind, and in this way you can avoid him. In those cases, it’s going to be less than one.

Guom is saying: “What if the man and the woman decide to live to a third country, or if they want to move after the wedding?”

It depends how much after marriage. If it’s years and years after marriage, they’ll negotiate. They’ll be like, “Okay, kind of like this.” It depends who wants it. No, I didn’t go into all the details; this thing is not perfect. I thought of it, I just thought it’s something to be worried about later.

Closing Remarks

Yeah, so this is pretty much the dowry system. I think it solves the issue of keeping it fair, being helpful, and at the same time—this is hard—while not insulting anyone. People will not know where they rank; they will only know who’s their rank.

That’s it. God willing, whoever has filled the questionnaire, I will send you the dowry questionnaire to fill it. Whoever has not filled the questionnaire, please fill it, because the next cycle might be soon—it might be a week later, it might be two weeks later, it might be three months later, I don’t know, whenever enough people fill it. It might be a year later depending on how many people join the marriage system.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. The rest of you, peace be upon you.

 
Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director