Suffered poor treatment by people in Egypt
Fatwa No: 88648

Question

I want your advice in the following matter please. I have been with my husband to Egypt this past summer, and there I discovered that we have no friends there. Everybody treats you nice as long as you pay them, but it seems to me that nobody cares for his Muslim brother or sister. People have stolen from us, a woman sold me 5 kilo mombar, and at my arrival in Holland it turned out to be 2.5 kilo. The manager at our land tried to cheat my husband for thousands of Egypt, pounds, and so on and so on. I have lost my confidence in the people and more worse, I have no feeling to go to Egypt anymore. What should I do now? My husband still loves his home country and I am completely fed up with it. I am Dutch, and we have been married for almost 30 years, so it is not that I don't love my husband, I love him very much, he is a very good man. How is one supposed to treat the people there? Must I be a hard woman to deal with if I go there, unkind? If I am kind they walk all over me. I am so very sad, I cant explain it. All our live we said, if the children finish their education, we go there to live on our land, we have a mango tree land.
Now I am so disappointed, I don't know how to tell my husband about that. Advice please.

Answer

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 ask Allaah to exalt his mention as well as that of his family and all his companions.

 

First of all, we advise you to take it easy. You have to know that as long as a person is socializing with people, he/she is in need for them, and they are in need for him/her. So one cannot be safe from the occurrence of such behaviour in any given society. However, a Muslim has to be tactful, shrewd and vigilant. He/she should not give a chance to anybody to cheat him/her. As you have seen people with those bad qualities, you have certainly seen as well other people with good manners and good conduct, all of whom live close to each other and deal with one another. So you should not worry or think too much about this matter.

As regards travelling with your husband when he asks you to do so, it is an obligation upon you to travel with him as long as you are able to do so, because it is an obligation upon the wife to obey her husband in what he asks from her as long as it is permissible. Just because of your disappointment about being badly treated in that country is not an excuse to refuse to travel with your husband.

Allaah knows best.

Related Fatwa