Is This Marriage Valid?
In the Name of Allah, The Most Gracious The Most MercifulDear Respected Scholars,Assalama alay kum. Before I post my question, Alhamdullilah, its really nice to have you here to enlightened us on the doubts and questions we have as Muslims especially those who are revert to Islam like me. I actually send this query 3 months ago however I didn?t received any response yet. I was involved to a muslim man before I reverted back to Islam and the same man whom I make a contract with. I mean to make our relationship halal, we make a marriage contract of ourselves, I am actually the one who drafted it, we signed and he let his friends signed as a witness and he let his friends and those we know that I am his wife, including his family, Is this valid? We did this as of the moment since we cannot yet live together as taking an accommodation here now is very expensive. I read most of your discussions about marriage and really I guess the one we have is null and void. Now I am really confused, he told me that this is fine and Allah knows best our intention, but I insist that we should marry on the Shariah court to make it legal and since no local imam is making a marriage ceremony here in the UAE that is the only option we have to do. I had discussed this to him many times and we really had a disagreements but he told me that he have asked sheikhs from his country, Egypt and nobody there can tell that this kind of marriage is haram (urfi marriage/temporary marriage) and he told me that the reason why he put it in paper is because he means it. Based on my reading and understanding of marriage in Islam it should be made easy. Could you please enlighten us on our situation right now?Jazakallahu khayran.