Assalamo Alikom Wa Rahmato Allah, I hope you are in the best of health Inshallah. I am 19 years old and I have been engaged for 10 months now. My fiance and I plan to get married next year Inshallah after I finish college. We are very close to each other. We both live on the opposite parts of the world- I live here, and he lives in the Middle East. He is a religious man, very caring, and his character is very nice. He is modest and shy.. He prays all his prayers, fasts, pays sadaqa, zakah, and he has done Hajj and Ummrah countless times. He can translate any Ayah in the Quran if I were to ask him. Also, he memorizes a lot of Hadith's and Quran. Overall, he is a kind, generous, and thoughtful person. The only characteristic that keeps me worried is that he watches porn. The reason for this to relieve his desire and please himself because I cannot. Though, we do talk to each other everyday, and sometimes without a Mahram and this causes us to do "bad" stuff and I ask Allah to forgive us and I always pray Istikhara to ask Allah for the best. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to accept this matter, and how to accept him watching things like this, and how to stop ourselves from doing the bad stuff that we used to do. Whenever I tell him to stop doing or acting the way he does on Webcam, we get into a serious discussion and we start talking about Islam and how everything we have done is practically saying we are married and that the only thing is missing is that sheet of paper (the contract). Whenever I stop pleasing him, he watches... I am not pleased with this, neither is he. He feels the guilt after watching porn, and he prays, and asks Allah to forgive him. He tells me it is not in his hands, and he cannot control his desires sometimes. I told him countless times that if he does watch, it means he is hurting me..but he cannot control it. I don't know what to do. I cannot get married as soon as possible, not until I graduate from college.

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

We have already issued Fataawa 86143 and 81356 clarifying that a fiancé and his fiancée are non-Mahram to each other, so it is not permissible for them to talk to each other or to be in seclusion with each other and the like. Therefore, you have to treat your fiancé as a non-Mahram until he conducts the marriage contract with you as we clarified in Fatwa 83629.

As regards the things that happened between you and him and the way you act on webcam with each other and the like, then this is evil and it is the devil who is playing with you. Therefore, you are both obligated to repent to Allaah and stop doing these acts immediately; for more benefit, please refer to Fatwa 86527. Also, you are obligated to stop chatting with him because it is this chatting that led you to do these abominable acts.

Besides, how can this young man be religious and shy while he does with you these evil acts and watches porn that does not quench one’s desires, rather it increases his desires and leads him to do what is more evil. 

The Sharee’ah has guided us to take many means by which a person may keep himself/herself chaste and we have mentioned some of them in Fataawa 89267 and 83829.

Finally, we advise you not to hasten to marry him, and to ask the trustworthy people who know him about his religion and moral conduct. Then if they say good about him, then what happened between him and you was only due to the whispers of the devil, and in this case you should accept him as a husband and you both should take the initiative to marry as soon as possible.

But if he is not a religious man and he does not have a good moral conduct, but he is just deceiving you, then we advise you to cancel your engagement because this is better than that marriage takes place and then dissension and divorce happens.

Allaah Knows best.