Sheikh Bilal had taken<br />him aside the day before the wedding and spoken to him of marriage<br />and his wife’s rights in the Law, stressing to him that there was nothing<br />for a Muslim to feel shy about in marrying a woman who was not a<br />virgin and that a Muslim woman’s previous marriage ought not to be a<br />weak point that her new husband could exploit against her. He said<br />sarcastically, “The secularists accuse us of puritanism and rigidity,<br />even while they suffer from innumerable neuroses. You’ll find that if<br />one of them marries a woman who was previously married, the<br />thought of her first husband will haunt him and he may treat her<br />badly, as though punishing her for her legitimate marriage. Islam has<br />no such complexes.