Questions About Shi’a Sunni Marriage

July 10, 2024

2 min read 2 min

Question

I have studied a question on your site posted by somebody entitled “can a sunni marry a shia?” Your answer was positive but I want to ask you that in such cases which fiqh the children of such a couple may follow if both are right? Because both partner’s feel that children should follow their fiqh and in the end the children may find themselves in utter confusion. Kindly explain.

Answer

In answering this question we stated that legally there is nothing to prevent such a union. We also added that while deciding a course of action in social issues such as this one cannot base the decision merely on legal rulings. There are social and cultural questions that need to be thought of before forming any decisions.

We do appreciate the confusions and difficulties you are referring to. I think the solution is quite clear. The couple should be open minded enough to allow their children to study and choose the Fiqh that they deem to be more correct. If the couple are not open minded enough to allow this then perhaps the whole idea of getting married is not a good and workable idea.

Also please note that except for a few issues (some of which are not that applicable in today’s life), most of the differences of Fiqh between Shi’a and Sunni are quite minor and (for one who study the whole picture) not really that different

Answered by: Farhad Shafti

Date: 2015-03-07