LEMU highlights solution to marital discord

Lekki Muslim Ummah (LEMU) has emphasised the need to make marriage successful, as marital discord is natural and inevitable in relationships.

Scholars at the quarterly daw’ah workshop of LEMU, themed ‘The Muslim Home and contemporary challenges’ highlighted solutions that can prevent marital discord, in the quest to overcome parenting challenges in the 21st century.

Speaking during the workshop, a renowned marriage counselor and founder of Baynakum Family Counseling Centre, Abuja, Dr. AbdulFattah Adeyemi, described marital discord as insubordination from the wife to her husband, vice versa, saying woman who does it looks like the land that sticks out from its ground.

He said lack of shared interests, conflict, irretrievable breakdown in the relationship, infidelity, extramarital affairs, lack of intimacy are causes of marital discord in a marriage.

Adeyemi called on women to be merciful to their husbands and manage whatever is available, asked men to reciprocate their wives’ good gesture by not taking them for granted, irrespective of whatever they’re going through.

“Let’s not blame anymore, let’s looks within ourselves. In fact, it is when things are going wrong in the community that we need to be more merciful towards each other. Let the wife understand that this man is going through stress, he has to pay school fees, house rent, take care of a lot of financial commitments and he doesn’t have the means of doing so conveniently. Let the wife be merciful towards him and make life easier for him. Let them manage whatever is available and speak encouraging words to their husbands.

Adeyemi enjoined the man to rather take things, as everybody understands that things are not going on well.

“ If you don’t have, don’t turn it into a quarrel. Don’t become aggressive and vindictive, complaining about everything. Just accept and let everyone understand that you are actually not angry with your wife, but your situation.”

Chief Imam, Light House Estate, Imam, Najim Jimoh urged parents to pay more attention to their wards as the rate at which bullies are emerging in the society calls for attention.

“I want parents to pay attention to their children, their children may not be bullies but may be bullied. If you don’t pay attention to them, it may lead to regret.

“A child may be innocent, but keeping the wrong company or keeping a company of bullies can ultimately make that child a bully. In most cases the home where such a child who ends up being a bully comes from had earlier raised modest children.”

The Chief Imam of Lekki Central Mosque, Shaykh Ridwan Jamiu advised Muslims to be preparing for polygyny as women outnumber men.

“Everyone wants happiness and nobody knows where it is tied to. Many are in a monogamy marriage and they are not happy, while some are married to many wives and the wives are happy.

“The most important is once you have found a righteous man who comes to you even though the person has another wife, as long as he is competent and righteous, marry him. What is important is to find joy in marriage and to find a man who will lead you to Allah and Jannah”.

Lecturer, Lagos State University, Dr. Ganiyat Adenle-Tijani, noted that the advent of technology, social media and the challenge of political correctness are making parenting harder in the 21st Century.

Adenle-Tijani, who spoke on the Challenges of Parenting in the 21st Century, noted that the apps that kids are exposed to today weren’t in existence before now; saying, “the online platforms are new to us. Now, somebody far away can access your daughter, arrange a meeting with her and then violate her without your knowledge.

“Apart from that, the challenge of political correctness of everybody trying to recognise all these behaviours as human rights makes it difficult. I think at the end of the day, as Muslim parents, we just need to understand that there will continue to be emerging challenges. The responsibility on us is to pay attention and to adjust our training models to be able to cater for these challenges,” she noted.

She called on parents to monitor, dedicate time and ensure their kids relate with other children who share the same ideology with them.

She said, “There should also be a lot of monitoring. I don’t believe in today’s freedom, where you give secondary school students android phones that are connected to the Internet and then you allow them to go out with friends, and you don’t know what they are doing. No form of monitoring whatsoever for them.

“I think today, we are becoming more like part-time parents. That is actually what is responsible for most of our problems. Another thing is, we actually think we can use authority to control our children. It doesn’t work. We have to convince them that this is the right thing, so that when you’re with or not with them, they will be conscious of doing the right thing.

“Also, we need other people who share our views to actually mentor our kids. If you’re determined to do it alone, when they run into problems and they’re not confident to talk to you, and you haven’t provided them with good mentors, they will take advice from the wrong people,” she said.

Adenle-Tijani urged parents to constantly pay attention to their children while in school, saying, doing this will afford them the opportunity to know what’s happening to them.