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I recently saw a notice advertising a summer seminar entitled, The Surrendered Wife. I had never heard of the book of this title, nor of the movement that has sprung up in its wake, but I immediately felt unnerved. I’m not some prison guard, I felt like writing in response, the surrender conjuring up images of a captive and a battlefield. Instead I decided to follow the link and try to understand what was meant.

‘As you surrender the control of your life to the greater powers…’

Well if the purpose is to put one’s trust totally in God, I have no problem with that—Allah is enough for me is a favourite refrain—although that would be a power in the singular. Sure, if the purpose is to surrender to God’s plan, instead of crying over mine, I’m all for it. And so came my reply,

‘Is the purpose to give oneself over to Allah and His way? If so, will there be a course for husbands too?’

‘Yes indeed,’ came the reply, ‘the purpose is to surrender to the will of Allah and accept His creation as they are. To ride the waves instead of swimming against the tide.’

Fine, I thought, I can live with that, for that’s what Muslims are meant to do. We want to boil with rage over the most trivial matter, but the sunnah of our blessed Prophet, peace be upon him, tells us not to act on our anger, to sit down if we’re standing, to lie down if we’re sitting, or to go and make ablution and pray.  An Englishman’s response to a bad day or some bad news might be to drown his sorrows in bottle of wine, but the Muslim restrains himself for he submits to a different plan.

Yes, I could live with that if this is what it meant, but as the discussion developed those initial reservations returned. It was not that the Surrendered Wife began to resemble the Submissive Wife of sections of US Christendom—the non-conformist who embraces the words of Paul in his letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians about the wife who submits to her husband in everything. It was something else. Something about the caricature of the wife that it appeared to present, and of the husband.

The wife seems to be someone who is constantly trying to control her husband, criticising him and often interrupting him. A woman, we learn, is a creature that nags and wants everything her way. A Surrendered Wife then is one who stops controlling, criticising, interrupting and having everything her way. She lets him pay the bills, fix the house and the car. If she doesn’t like what he’s doing, she should be quiet and ignore it.

As many were at pains to explain, while this may not suit everyone, it can work well for some. That may be the case, but I am afraid I fall into the former camp. One of the greatest blessings I have treasured in my eleven years as a Muslim has been the sincerity of friends. Before I was a Muslim I had friends who would always tell me what I wanted to hear; after I became Muslim I discovered friends who would not shy away from advising me, even criticising me if need be. Without the sincere advice of others I might have made no progress at all.

I cannot then comprehend tolerating my best friend—my wife—going dumb on me. I married a woman with deen because I need all the help I can get. Before I got married I had real problems rising on time for fajr—I tried everything from multiple alarm clocks, alarm clocks locked in cupboards, the alarm clock left on the sink, to staying up all night to catch it. My wife—surrendered to Allah, but not me—rescued me, mashaAllah. I need her to tell me when I’m being lazy, to make me sit and study and learn some Qur’an.

But my wife is not captured by a shallow caricature. She tells everyone that she’s going to buy me a shed for our tenth wedding anniversary so I can flee the house to escape her nagging, yet I always find myself wondering, ‘What nagging?’ I don’t let on about this, of course, because a shed is every sane man’s dream. Men and women are different, no doubt, but there’s something not quite right about the simplistic prescriptions set out to please the ’simple man’.

A man, we might say, who cannot tolerate his wife’s true thoughts and feelings is perhaps not very much of a man at all. Marriage, I suppose, is rather like a garden: it has to be nurtured, fed and kept in check, so that it neither become a barren patch nor an out-of-control mess. Sometimes a garden, if it is like mine, requires pure hard work to sort it out; you can’t just scatter a few seeds and water them, but need to almost break your back instead. Why should a marriage be any different? If you’re fortunate enough to be able to keep the weeds in check—they would be your nafs I guess—you can spend your time nurturing it. If not, equip yourself with the tools to complete the groundwork.

I am happy for my wife to surrender—to God. But to me? No, I’m sorry, I’d rather surrender to God as well, remembering the lesson of our Prophet, peace be upon him, when he gave the example of a rib that is naturally shaped in a curved form. I pray instead, that each of us may return to Him, hand in hand if God wills, having purified our hearts and stripped away the negative traits of ours that cause the other sadness or discomfort. I pray that together we may return to Him as two souls who really were deserving of the title, ‘Muslim’.