A Muslim view on pair-bonding

A brother asked in the comments about this concept of pair bonding and what I think about this. Pair bonding is a term that is used mostly in evolutionary biology, and then subsequently in evolutionary psychology and in a lot of the discourse about male female relations among humans. And for example, you know, the idea that a woman who has had multiple sexual partners will have more difficulty pair bonding with a husband later on down the line and so on. And you hear this a lot in they use these sort of terms a lot in these studies in red pill discourse, the Thomassian talking about pair bonding and the things that are impediments to pair bonding and so on. The problem is first of all, it's all based on evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology equating human behavior to animals.

And that the tendencies that you see in animals, therefore, they extrapolate from that that that human behavior resembles this or duplicate replicates this. The way that they're processing the data is based on a framework that is not ours, And that matters because there's an element of these things that is science, that is data collection, research, study. But then the process by which they reach their conclusions about the data, about the findings is informed by a belief system, and it's not our belief system. For us in Islam, as far as pair bonding goes, the concept is best summarized, I think, by the hadith of Rasulullah in Sahih Bukhari that the souls are like conscripted soldiers. Those whom they recognize, they get along with.

Those whom they do not recognize, they do not get along with. And the scholars have explained the meaning here as in the nature of the soul, whether it's righteous or evil, whether it's good or bad. It inclines towards a like soul, a similar soul. So souls that are created righteous, incline, and have an affinity towards other righteous souls. So for example, if someone has been, if a woman has been a Zania, that's indicate something about the nature of her soul.

If there's no repentance there, if she hasn't come to Islam or whatever, it's not a good indication about the nature of her ruah, of her soul. So it could be that she's not getting along with her husband because he's a good man. Possible. You know? There's other ways of looking at it other than through their framework.

Because in Islam, the most important bond in a marriage is the bond that the husband has with Allah and the bond that the wife has with Allah And if they both have a strong bond and connection to Allah, then they can have a happy marriage. If there are personality issues or if there are other things that come up, obviously, people people can have various reasons why they don't get along. If those reasons interfere with them fulfilling their obligations and duties to one another justly, then it's a grounds for talaq or khul. But it's entirely possible for people to not have, for a man and a woman, for a husband and wife, to not have an affinity for each other, an emotional affinity for each other. But because of their bond with Allah, keep their duty, they fulfill their obligations and the rights of one another and respect the family that they're building, respect their home, treat each other with honor and respect and appreciation, and they can have a happy and healthy and long lifelong marriage.

That's my view about pair bonding. I don't feel that animals' behavior is necessarily informative about human behavior because we have souls. We are a different creation. We have a different origin. We have a different nature.

We have a different function in this world. So I would rather be informed by the hadith of about souls that recognize and resemble each other and souls that do not recognize and do not resemble each other. And that's the basis for pair bonding in the Islamic understanding, and Allah knows best.