The Ruling on Informing a Prospective Husband of the Bride’s Characteristics and Its Relation to Backbiting
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
What this questioner says is that she is asking and saying: Many men ask me to find them a wife, and some of them ask me about specific girls to see their character. I see in some of them bad characteristics that are disliked and not apparent to anyone. Is it permissible for me to inform them about them? And would that be considered backbiting?
Answer:
It is not backbiting, if you are commanded to seek for him a righteous wife, you inform him of the one who is righteous and the one who is not righteous. This is part of trustworthiness. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), when Fatimah bint Qays said to him, "So-and-so and so-and-so have proposed to me," he pointed out their defects to her as a form of advice. He advised her to look at the man, and he was Usamah. He advised her to seek for herself a woman. She seeks for her a good woman, and mentions her characteristics. If there are defects in her, she mentions the defects she has. If someone proposes to her, otherwise she leaves him. It is for him, it is for the people, it is for him only, for the sake of advice.
The presenter:
May Allah reward you with good.
What this questioner says is that she is asking and saying: Many men ask me to find them a wife, and some of them ask me about specific girls to see their character. I see in some of them bad characteristics that are disliked and not apparent to anyone. Is it permissible for me to inform them about them? And would that be considered backbiting?
Answer:
It is not backbiting, if you are commanded to seek for him a righteous wife, you inform him of the one who is righteous and the one who is not righteous. This is part of trustworthiness. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), when Fatimah bint Qays said to him, "So-and-so and so-and-so have proposed to me," he pointed out their defects to her as a form of advice. He advised her to look at the man, and he was Usamah. He advised her to seek for herself a woman. She seeks for her a good woman, and mentions her characteristics. If there are defects in her, she mentions the defects she has. If someone proposes to her, otherwise she leaves him. It is for him, it is for the people, it is for him only, for the sake of advice.
The presenter:
May Allah reward you with good.
Source
فتاوى الحج ١٤١٠ هـ - ١٤ — archive.org (16:56)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.