The JAMIAT-E-ULEMA- SURAT'S advertisement in the VOHRA SAMACHAR of October 2018 about its plans to hold a GROUP MARRIAGE session for unmarried Muslim women as well as divorcees and widows helps to show the interest some of our organisations are taking to help fellow coreligionists. We all should hope and ask the ALMIGHTY ALLAH to help make the event successful and help all those who get married a happy married life.

                  The JAMIAT, according to its advertisement has been arranging GROUP MARRIAGE sessions for some years and the event planned for the near future will be the 19 We feel with its long history of helping our Muslim women and men to get married the JAMIAT will have gathered a lot of information on those it helped over the years. We believe the JAMIAT must have sought information on the religious education, secular education, employment as well as the social and economic standing of those who approached it for assistance. We feel the JAMIAT should share this information with all Muslims if it is not doing so. As Muslims we feel we all need to know how the others are faring in the face of inflation, lack of job opportunities and the scarcity and cost of living accommodation.

                  The JAMIAT'S wish or intention is to spend twenty-five thousand Rupees on each couple that it helps to get married. For our not so well to do brothers and sisters this is a big sum of money they may not be able to raise to help them get married and for them the JAMIAT'S assistance will be most welcome.

                  We feel we SURTI SUNNI VOHRAS need to learn how our less well-off brothers and sisters need to depend for help on others to get married. With what we have just said in mind should we VOHRAS spend large sums of money on the weddings of our sons and daughters when there are so many others living as our neighbours or near us need to depend on organisations like the JAMIAT to help them get married?

                  Our VOHRAS we feel have tendencies to imitate others and compete with others. These tendencies lead to the introduction of new customs and new fashions into our wedding ceremonies and helps add to the cost of weddings. We also know that most of those who spend big sums of money on the weddings of their sons and daughters often need to seek loans from banks, borrow money from friends or sell a plot of land to raise the sum of money they wish to spend. We feel as Muslims we should all try to follow the SUNNAH of our PROPHET S.A.W. and make our marriages simple and less expensive and if we have more money that we wish to spend we should help our fellow brothers as well as sisters as well as those who are not Muslims.

                  We feel with the help of our ULEMA and our community elders we SURTI SUNNI VOHRAS give up one practice or custom and in no time, we fall victim to another practice or custom. Before the substantial increase in the provision of religious education and awareness among our VOHRAS we followed some practices and customs which with the increase in our religious education we gave up totally or partially. This giving up was for most of our VOHRAS a temporary break from what we were doing as we opted for other practices and customs to replace what we had given up.

                  Historically speaking no VOHRA wedding ever took place without some form of entertainment or practices and customs which often fell outside our religious expectations. For example, some years ago we had our village barbers entertaining the guests with their PIPI DHOL music and our women folk singing GEETS they had learnt from their elders. These forms of entertainments came to be replaced by dancing girls who danced and sang and later these came to be replaced by both men and women QAWWALI singers and by loud speakers blaring out film songs and music. With all these entertainment VOHRAS also hired music playing bands. In recent years our VOHRAS both men and women have started dancing to entertain the guests. We gave up giving coconuts to the bride's and groom's families and these came to b replaced by wedding cakes. We encouraged our brides and grooms to stop smearing PEETHEE before their wedding and this practice got replaced by getting a beautician from a beauty parlour to help the bride with her make-up. The practice of giving jewellery to the bride also lost its importance. This practice came to be overtaken by buying expensive clothes and among these the wedding dress gained great importance. Our transport arrangements have also changed over the years. From transporting people by bullock drawn carts, we went on to hiring buses and trucks for transporting wedding guests. Some hired horse drawn carriages for transporting the groom and the bride.All these have been replaced by motor cars. B,M.W.'s are hired or stretched limousines.

                  We feel, we should have a JAMIAT-EULEMA like the JAMIAT-E-ULEMA - SURAT which helps our socially and economically disadvantaged persons to get married to help our people to stop spending large sums of money on the weddings of their sons and daughters. We feel BAYAANS delivered by our ULEMA to get our people to stop imitating other people or competing with others do often not help produce the expected results. What is needed we feel is more intensive and long-term work with our people to get them to change their thinking.

                  Our readers will agree with us that for us to spend big sums of money on the weddings of our daughters and sons will be wrong when poverty is staring a lot of our Muslim brothers and sisters in the face. Besides this should we not use the religious education we have to live our lives. The provision of religious education too costs a lot of money.