Thursday 6 Jumada al-ula 1446 - 7 November 2024
English

Abnormal relationship between women

Question

I am a believer and I am in love with a believer. We are both women and have already had children who we are taking good care of, but their fathers have deserted us . We both want to live as good muslims, but we love each other so much . We have been told culturally that our love is an abomination, however we cannot find anything in the Quran which condemns us or our actions. We are hurting no one. We are employed. We are educating our children and nurturing our families. We know the passage in the Quran about Soddem and Gommorah, but that appears to deal with the rape of men by men. It does not speak to monogamous love between two women. We love Allah and want to do his will. We need more information about our situation.

Answer

Praise be to Allah.

Just as illicit sexual relations can occur between men, they can also occur between women. The Muslim fuqahaa call this sihaaq (lesbianism), which they define as sexual relations between one woman and another (al-Mufassal fi Ahkaam al-Marah by Zaydaan, 5/450), and state that it is a punishable offence (the punishment is a form of discipline for disobedience; no specific punishment is given in the Quran, so the punishment is to be set by the Qaadi according to the circumstances of the crime and the one who commits it). The lesbians testimony is unacceptable because she is a evildoer (al-Mawsooah al-Fiqhiyyah, 24/253). Ibn Qudaamah, may Allah have mercy on him, said: "If two women masturbate one another, then they are cursed fornicators" (al-Mughni 10/162). Some of the scholars, like al-Izz ibn Abd al-Salaam say that a lesbian is not permitted to look at a Muslim woman, and that a Muslim woman is not permitted to uncover (take off her hijaab) in front of a lesbian, because she is an evildoer who cannot be trusted not to describe her to others.

If what is described above is the nature of the relationship between the two women mentioned in the question, then they must repent sincerely to Allah and stop their evil actions. If their being together in one place will lead to them committing this sin, then they must never meet, so as to avoid this wrongful act. Their husbands desertion of them may be one of the reasons for them falling into this kind of perversion, because they have no legitimate way in which to fulfil their desires and so they have resorted to this haraam way. So they must think seriously of finding Muslim husbands with whom they can live in the way prescribed by Islam.
 
As for love, this is a different kind of sin, which need not necessarily be associated with physical desire. It is dangerous because it leads to the lover worshipping the beloved, so that he thinks only of the one he loves, cannot bear to be parted from him by day and dreams about him at night; he lives and dies for his sake, and may change when he sees him and become sick when he is absent. This kind of relationship destroys a persons mental health and destroys his relationship with his Lord, because it makes the lover worship his beloved and it is haraam to worship anything other than Allah.
The solution to this disastrous situation is total separation, so that one will never see that person, or hear news of him again.

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Source: Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid