 و أقولوا في القرآن ما جاءت به آياته فهو الكريم المنزل و أقولوا قال الله جل جلاله والمصطف الهادي و لا أتأوّاله أسأل I really want to get married but I wear an Qab and it is not possible for me to speak to people openly is it permissible for my mother to ask someone questions in a public setting on my behalf how else can niqabis find potential husbands whilst maintaining their shyness الحمد لله رب العالمين والصلاة والسلام على عبد الله و رسوله نبينا محمد و على آنه و صحبه أجمعه I think the fact that you wear a niqab is not the real issue of being able to speak to people openly or the problem in finding a person for marriage I actually think that generally it is the general modesty of the Muslim woman and the hijab in general as a whole the whole concept of the hijab which means that it's not really practical that you come across someone in a public setting and then you judge them by their looks and you ask someone to speak to them or you introduce yourself to them so I think that the whole idea here we need to sort of go back to how we approach someone for marriage so the first thing is to understand that in terms of marriage born very very generally speaking and in a very summarized way you are looking at the brother's religious commitment you are looking at his character and you are looking at his compatibility with you now in that sort of situation how do you go about finding the right kind of person so there are really several possibilities here and I'll just mention a few of them one is that you do come across someone now I don't think that someone you just walks across your vision so to speak but someone that you find out about it could be that you have a brother who is studying and someone is studying with your brother for example your brother mentions that he is and so on it could be that you hear of that brother through you know a lecture or whatever and you hear of that brother I don't think it should be something where you just judge it on what you see but you know you find out more about them you become aware of them so that is one option when that takes place it's really important that it is the wedding that should find out more about your potential spouse it is the wedding that should be finding out more now that would normally be your father if your father is not available or your father is not there to be able to do that then it would be ideally someone that your father had appointed from your close relatives like a brother for example and there are some situations in which a person doesn't have a wedding at all in which case the wedding might be appointed for them by a person of Islamic authority so that's something to you know sort of without wanting to get into too much of it too many of the details there but the wedding is the one that should approach the wedding is the one that should go find out now the fact that you are wearing the car obviously it is something which is even further helps to protect that modesty and shyness so it's not going to be the case that you're going to approach that person yourself and even if you were to be in the same space as them to walk past them on the street they would not look because of the the fact that you're wearing the proper hijab and the complete hijab so it's not that's not the purpose is not for them to see you or something or to take notice of you but for your wedding to discuss the option of marriage with them it is okay for you to find out more about them through people so it might be that like I said you have a brother who studies with them or something like that or you know their sister for example you know the potential spouse's sister for example or you know the potential spouse's mother for example and you in a way that is you know female to female and obviously male to male you find out more about that person to find out if they might be suitable and if they might be interested in getting married but again ultimately it's going to be the wedding that manages that and takes care of that approach other ways could be for example asking friends, family members, relatives to help you suggest to you people and this is different from getting you married you know different from them just getting you married but the idea is that they look for people that might be suitable for you and they suggest this person might be suitable for you this person might be suitable for you what about this person what about this person and again they can tell you about them you can learn more about them you can ask a few things but ultimately it's going to be the wedding that's going to take care of that finally one of the ways that I think is is an excellent way and I thoroughly approve of it is to use websites or marriage services which are Islamically acceptable now I don't mean chatting I don't mean dating websites I don't mean unestablished marriage websites I don't mean things with photographs I don't mean things where people meet up or chat but what I mean is websites or services where marriage profiles are shared so for example a brother fills out I'm a brother 25 years old earning this much money I work in this job I live in this place and I'm looking for a a woman to marry who has these characteristics and so on and maybe write a bit about their hobbies and likes and dislikes and the profiles are shared online and what that allows a person to do is to look through many many profiles of suitable people usually you would suggest an interest like say I'm interested in this profile and then they would also look at your profile and say yes I'm interested in this profile when the two profiles come together that both are interested it should again be the wedding that gets involved it shouldn't be the case that it is the girl speaking to the guy or an email or a chat but it should be the wedding who approaches that particular brother who we already know is interested in that sister and we already know that sister is interested in that brother in a general sense they can find out more in terms of obviously with the niqab at some point and I don't think it should be right away but as the discussion progresses and there seems to be religious commitment and character and compatibility at some point it would be the right of that potential spouse to look at you without your niqab and again that should be managed by the wedding and the wedding should take care of that whereby he would see you without obviously adornment or makeup or anything like that but he would see you without your niqab in order to be able to look at you and to be able to sort of help him to make that decision as to you know how to take the marriage forward or whether to take the marriage forward so I hope that has answered the question generally speaking I just mentioned three of the ways that people could potentially find spouses one is to just come across someone to become aware of someone one is to ask friends and one is to use a marriage service which doesn't share photos doesn't allow chatting and doesn't allow the men and women to meet up together that's what Allah made easy for me to mention and Allah knows best wassalatu wassalam عالم البيئة محمد وعالم الهلية صحبك اجمع if you have any questions you'd like to see answered as part of this series then you can email us at questions at amau.org