What is the ruling on marrying women from the People of the Book?

The questioner : The third question concerns the topic of marrying women from the People of the Book. If the command regarding the companionship of polytheists...?

The Shaykh : Companionship with what?

The questioner : Companionship with polytheists or their social interaction, etc. How do we reconcile this with the permissibility of marrying women from the People of the Book...?

The Shaykh : There is no contradiction between the two; the difference between them is vast. Associating with polytheists is, first, the weak associating with the strong, and the few associating with the many. Is that clear?

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : Whereas the wise Lawgiver’s permission for a Muslim to marry a woman from the People of the Book is the exact opposite. She is alone and weak, and the husband is strong, first because he is a man, and second because he is the head of the family, so he is stronger than her. And always, it is the strong who influences the weak, not the other way around. Therefore, they are completely different. From our observation of this point, we do not see today that it is permissible for a Muslim to marry a woman from the People of the Book, especially if she is a Western or American woman from the People of the Book. The reason for this is, first, from the Qur'an itself, and second, from the understanding referred to in my earlier remarks. As for the Qur'an, it did not grant unrestricted permission for a Muslim to marry a woman from the People of the Book, but rather qualified it with the saying of the Exalted: . It is not hidden from anyone that "al-muhsanāt" means the chaste women. And where is chastity today among European or American women? It is contrary to the norm to find a chaste woman in some of those lands; this is contrary to the original state. As they say, I say that a person forgets, especially if he reaches old age like me, but there are things that, because of their importance, are never forgotten for all time. A man from the Turkish military told me this, of course, forty or fifty years ago when I was young. I remember in my shop in the outer building in Damascus, one of the Turkish soldiers who had reached Austria in the old Ottoman conquests, an officer, told me that among the Austrians, the midwife, when she receives the baby from the mother’s womb, looks to see if it is a female, and if so, she immediately breaks her virginity. Why? So that she is not accused later of being a deflowered virgin, meaning she is a fornicator. Why? Because it is known in advance that her virginity is broken while she is still falling from her mother’s womb, due to the prevalence of corruption and fornication, and so on. Satan inspired them with this method. So where are these chaste women?
And therefore, we do not encourage the Muslim youth to marry women from the People of the Book today, because, as mentioned earlier on past occasions, the Muslim society today, in its preservation of Islamic morals, is below the first level, the original Islamic level. Likewise, the Christian society. It is true that the Christian and Jewish societies were greatly deviated, especially in creed regarding the Torah and the Gospel, but they had some guidance, piety, and chastity. Perhaps many of you remember that Christian and Jewish women in the lands of Islam used to wear the jilbab and the black sheet that Muslim women wear. That was the case in the early times. But today, Muslim women, as they say in our region of Sham: "They have let their hair down," except for those whom Allah protects. So what can be said about women from the People of the Book? Therefore, we never see it as permissible for a Muslim to marry a woman from the People of the Book, for the reasons I mentioned earlier. And secondly and finally, my brother, there is a stagnation in marriage. I told you this morning that that mother is complaining that she has three daughters out of twenty-seven, and they are not getting married. Perhaps she is bewitched, because every time a suitor comes, he does not see them again! Perhaps there is sorcery? It means that the society now is not the previous society. The previous society used to marry off their children while they were young. The story of 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar ibn al-'As, whose father married him to a girl from Quraysh, and there were fifteen years between him and his father.
Questioner: ...
Yes. Fifteen means his father married him while he was young. If he married his son while he was young, but the boy, may Allah protect him, was a worshipper, an ascetic, standing in prayer at night and fasting by day. So when he asked his uncle’s wife, "How are you and your husband?" she said, "He is a good man, but he has not yet touched our bed!" That was how they were before. Now, may Allah protect us, a young man is thirty years old, and the girl is the same, and there is no marriage. What is the reason? Studies that have no benefit, except for the rare case, and the rare case has no ruling. One does not get married until after thirty...

Another questioner : ... The reality is that the polytheist woman, and because, as we mentioned, European society imitates, she is the one who raises the children...

The Shaykh : This is another calamity.

Another questioner : This is the great catastrophe, because we touch it and see it now in various homes...

The Shaykh: Correct.

Another questioner : The mother is the one who chooses the school, and they choose missionary schools...

The questioner : ... The women from the People of the Book who were in the time of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) were among those who said that Allah is 'Isa ibn Maryam?

The Shaykh : Without a doubt.

The questioner : Were they so?

The Shaykh: It is known.

The questioner : And despite that, he married them, and this marriage was not conditional upon changing their religion to Islam...

The Shaykh: No...

Another questioner : This applies to what you told us about eating the slaughtered animals of the People of the Book; it is assumed that even their slaughter is halal, because they used to slaughter halal and perform the ritual slaughter...

The Shaykh : That is it.

Another questioner : So now they no longer slaughter except by strangulation, so is their food no longer halal for us?

The Shaykh : It is this.

The questioner : ... That they are polytheists

The Shaykh : They are polytheists, but in addition, they are from the People of the Book. Every person from the People of the Book is a polytheist, but not every polytheist is from the People of the Book. So distinguish the person from the People of the Book from the polytheist by the fact that he is from the People of the Book; you have given him specific characteristics that distinguish him from polytheists and polytheist women...