Just curious - how many muslims are on mumsnet?

[Galvanise]

Hello/Salaam,

I know mumsnet has a wide and diverse population and I tend to recognise some MN usernames as regulars. Just intrigued to know how big/small a community it may be.

Of course, I respect that there may be those who do not wish to even identify themselves for various reasons - which is fine too.

I am not asking for 'religiousness' levels or any vital stats! Nor is this a muslim-only thread or an 'no non-muslims' thread.
If you really wish to tell me that you are not a muslim, that is fine too :)

:)

I am not recommending to anyone not to have a civil marriage and I think that everyone should be aware of the differences.

For me personally, with full knowledge of the consequences, the best choice was not to. I was married young and I did want to be able to exit relatively simply if I needed to.

My lifestyle is different in a couple of ways. For instance we rent and both names our on the tenancy agreements, if dh tried to kick me out I would have the same legal recourse to return as if we were married. We have financial arragements and wills in case one or both of us dies etc.

You hear all the time about on her about men not paying child support etc. if he was to ignore his islamic duties to support his children he would be far more likely to ignore his legal duties!

We dont have a joint account and never will. Although we do internet transfers and share money day to day, if ever something happened I want to be financially seperate, it sounds awful but I want to maintain the independence to have a 'running away fund.' Dh could never walk out and clear out our accounts!

Obviously my situation is different from women who don't work, didn't know to request a large enough mahr to protect themselves, are reliant on their dh's income or are immigrants and so don't have family here to support them etc.

I got spousal maintenance as its repaying money ex stole from me.

Basically my legal divorce is giving me what I am Islamically entitled too, well not everything but I'm not asking for lots, I figure he can answer for his actions later.
Islamically I'm entitled to a lot more financially then I asked for in the courts.

Had I not been legally married my children and I would be financially in deep trouble.

I'd always get any marriage legally done in future and would want the same for my children, it ensures one is able to obtain ones legal rights in the event of death or divorce.

I've heard of pretty horrendous things happening to women who've not married legally.

i am sure you have read of horrendous things happening to those who have married legally as well!! I certainly have!

Legal marriages give you financial security if the worst happens.

I've not heard awful things about women divorcing they have legal back up to get what they and their children are owed.

In an Islamic country if my nikah was a legal and binding contract I would be fine, women have a lot of rights they'd have legal recourse to get what is their right thro the courts Islamically ( well that's the theory).

Having been thro the worst case scenario, I personally would not want it for myself.

Besides isn't the nikah contract supposed to be just that, a legally binding contract stipulating the conditions of marriage?

If I ever marry, I'll have my nikah contract drawn up as a pre-nup. So it is recognised as legally binding here too.

i know women who were legally married and dont get a penny from their ex husbands, women who were legally married and had to run away from their husbands and live in b and bs with their kids and stuff, and leave all their stuff behind. Being legally married did not help them.

In fact it hindered them in some cases. When they go to the bank and say my husband has intercepted my post and taken my card and pin, i didnt even know he ordered it through online banking, please stop the online banking etc, they dont take it seriously and carry on the online banking, say its their fault for giving out the pin and dont treat it as fraud as it is their husband,

financial abuse happens within legally registered marriages. If this is occuring the man doesnt suddenly stop being financially abusive when the marriage ends. Men like this would rather leave work and work illegally cash in hand and stuff then give their wives money.

Nailak, if you're a joint signatory on a bank account the banks regard it the same, your husband can run up thousans in over drafts and debts and you are jointly liable.
I had my joint bank accounts frozen.

Never ever give out your pin to anyone, if you want someone to be able to access your bank account have them on your account as a second card holder, altho I'd check first to ensure you could cancel it if you so chose later on.

The most heart breaking story I heard was a woman asking me what she was entitled to as her husband turned her and her children out and her name wasn't on the property they lived in.
I told her to get legal advice.

It's personal to me, I would not live under marital conditions with a man in a country where my marriage was not legally recognised.

I know where it works very well, a friend is a second wife, and has her own property and life, her husband comes and goes and she likes it that way. He has no claims over her and her finances. Altho he did say in the event of a divorce he would take the child they have together.
I doubt very much he would have a leg to stand on to do that as she is the main carer.

What do you think is the difference between a traditional mortgage and a sharia-compliant one?

I know that one is based on interest and the other isn't, but I used to work in finance and it is a well-known thing that the "equity payments" of the sharia-compliant mortgages are trail very closely the interest payments of traditional mortgages. My understanding is that they are actually pretty much the same thing, and it is just the marketing (i.e. what they tell the customer) that is different.

I'm happy to be corrected, though, as it's not a subject I've looked into in the past 10 years.

That's the reason me and dh decided not to get a shariah compliant mortgage. After doing our research it seems as if its basically the same thing..just sounds different. As my family in particular own a lot of property as do dh's in his native country, we figured we wil always have a roof over our heads whatever happens lol but that we didn't want to enter a 'grey' area where supposed Islamic mortgages are the answer. Would appreciate more info from crescent if possible in case ive also missed something

fuzzy in the situation i was talking about it was not a joint bank account. the husband intercepted her post to get online banking details and ordered new card and pin and intercepted them, then put her account in to overdraft. The bank said there is nothing they can do and she should have protected her pin basically. I went with her a few times. the lawyer that womens aid gave said same thing. they were legally married. she still ended up in a bed and breakfast with her 3 kids when she left him.
she had no money to access to her paperwork, didnt even know her ni number, her husband had all her documents and she had to pay for b and b as she had no proof of identity etc, we had to collect money for her and do shopping for her and stuff.

Juma Mabarek everyone.
We had our Islamic marriage contract stamped by an official authority in the country where we got married, which wasn't an Islamic country but the Muslims there were organised enough to have some kind of system.
We also had a civil marriage there, which is recognised here. We thought it was OK to have my parents as witnesses, who were visiting at the time. It wasn't, so my husband literally went outside and got 2 people of the street!

Well, all the talk about Turkey has been fascinating, and I finally have something to add, from a site I was on which contained lots of coffee trivia:

"In the 16th century, Turkish women could divorce their husbands if the man failed to keep his family's pot filled with coffee"

Now I would really like that law, as I have on occasion sent my husband to the opposite side of the city to pick up the particular type of coffee that they only sell in one small Arab shop!

I was thinking as this thread has gone through so many mutations, maybe it would be nice to have a general Muslim prayer and chat thread, like the Christian ones I've seen? Non-Muslims welcome as well of course.

Jummah Mubarak ladies :)

hardly I thought this was a general Muslim chat thread? lol

Yeah but it's a good idea to have non Muslims too as its part of giving dawah and getting general info about islam. Crescent that was interesting to hear about your friend. I think we all have different ideas on things though don't we and its all about your niyyaa too

I'm curious - why do you all use so many words in Arabic?

nailak I thought we should make it official!

I think the Arabic words are common phrases that even non-Arabic speakers come to know through being Muslim because they are so often used, perhaps they don't have entirely accurate English translations. I think Muslim then forget that they are actually not English words and then sprinkle liberally!
A wierd thing is when you end up using English grammar rules with Arabic words, e.g. masjid (mosque) plural would be masajid (mosques), but it is not uncommon to hear 'masjids' instead.

I wanted to comment on the mortgage theme and provide a link. I personally would not touch a normal mortgage with a barge pole, I don't judge others who do, but it is a very strong conviction I have. The hadiths regarding it are not pleasant reading etori.tripod.com/on-interest.html

We rent as cannot currently afford an Islamic mortgage, and this is not really a big problem. We hope one day to be able to get a mortgage with these people

www.ansarfinance.com

An oversimplified explanation of how they work is:
you pay £10 a month to them as sadaqa (charity), you don't get this back, but this makes you a member of their organisation. When you have been a member for 1 year you can apply for a loan or a mortgage. They set up specifically to allow Muslims to borrow money without having to take unlawful means, and are highly commended by scholars.
We had a loan from them, and it was so nice to deal with a small organisation, it was a very personal and flexible service.

In regards to where to invest, does anyone know much about investing in gold? I knew a little about it through the Islamic movement called the murabitun, they believe paper money to be unlawful and say we should all trade in gold. I suspect they may be right but I can't see how we could do it.
I then heard an interesting programme on radio 4 about investing in gold, apparently a lot more people are doing that because of the risk of financial collapse and the devaluing of paper money, as gold would retain it's value. If you are not comfortable burying gold bars in your back garden and planting doffodils to mark the spot, you can get a third party to store the gold for you.

Nailak, that's shocking, the banks will try and get away with what they can.

There is no way that poor woman should have been held liable for the fraud on her account, did she report it immediately on discovery and demand all access be stopped and report it to the police?

The bank will only refuse to refund the money if she has known about it and let it happen. Otherwise according to my experience they do refund the fraudulent transactions and investigate the fraud, you have to report it to the police tho and give the bank a crime reference number.

I was legally married for over a decade, it didn't give ex automatic rights to my personal bank account which did not have his name on it. He tried tho, and I had all details immediately changed and kept a very close eye on my account for a while.

Also my experience of legal aid solicitors is not great, so unless your friend had discovered for herself how to deal with the bank fraud I'm sure her solictor would have re-iterated exactly what the bank said, unless she consulted a solicitor specialising in bank fraud.

Hardly that finance company looks promising

the woman didnt go anywhere without her husband, he used to lock her in and stuff, and unplug the phone and take it with him to work. so she didnt really have the opportunity to do all that.

her solicitor is rubbish.

i use arabic words because i just say what i think, sometimes arabic words describe concepts better, like i could say sabr or i could day patient perserverance, but look i cannot even spell perserverance!! so much easier to just say sabr. lol

I asked re Arabic words because it seems to me that you are using many of them between yourselves, even where perfectly adequate words in English exist. Like "niyyaa" (niyyah) rather than "intention". And you only seem to be using these words in a religious context, and not when you are saying for example "It wasn't my niyyah to hurt you".

It's not offputting or anything negative. I do understand what you are saying, even though I have to think a little about what they might be referring to. Just wondering why English people talking to each other in English would be using Arabic words in religious context rather than English ones.

Like "jahannam" rather than "hell", "shaitan" rather than "devil", etc.