Re: please advise
Turst in God, pray to Him and leave this to Him..I don't think engagement will make much difference. There is no way you can predict how he will act with the daughters after marriage.. People normally gets change after marriages. Secondly regarding people there is always one way...Shall trust your first feeling after meting that guy and leave the rest to God. Otherwise there is no way around.
once the guy marries her, he is not a na mehram for her daughters ..
He is going to be a non-mahram for her. Allah tells us in the Quran who our Mahrams are and thats that.
There is a difference.
I can understand the family's concern as these young girls are not real daughters of this new guy she is planning to marry. Meaning step daughters. And I know of a case where a woman having a daughter from her previous marriage married for the second time and her new husband turned out to be a pervert. Meaning, this woman later divorced that man due to many other reasons and her daughter's safety around her own house was one of the reasons.
right, so her family is saying that she cant trust a man in the house with two young girls? did then not, all those years ago, give their own daughter away for marriage to a man too? You cant protect yourself bcoz you feel you cant trust ppl. Sure be careful, but the lady should have a chance to live the rest of her life in happiness. May Allah SWT bless her with a kind partner who is a source of happiness and security for her, and her daughters.
The parents did offer to look after the girls but she does not agree to this.
In this case that lady should not marry ,or should wait until her daughters get married some where.
Because step father will always be Na Mehrum for her daughters.
Re: please advise
Sana, there are two ways to look at this:
A: Your friend can marry again and take a chance with this new man in her life. She can be happy, her daughters can have a strong male figure in their lives again and she wont be alone for the rest of her life. I can imagine her fear of living single for the rest of her life and wanting to take advantage of her youth right now to secure a partner for herself. I can imagine the panic going through her mind. I know of one woman who had a 6 year old boy and got remarried recently. She had actually decided to leave her son with her parents until she got settled in with her in-laws. Her new husband turned out to be a good guy who refused to leave the boy behind as he didnt want to separate mother and child. This is a true story...her in-laws came with her husband to pick the boy up. They now live in Alabama...all of them together. This is one scenario where it worked out so well we were all shocked. Ive got a relative of mine whose wife passed away due to cancer and he couldnt handle a 5, 4 and 1 yr old alone. We were all so worried for his children after his wife's death because they had absolutely no direction and were simply living day-to-day as was he since he had just lost his wife. But after his new wife came into the picture, there is a HUGE difference in them. They are learning, developing, maturing, etc. It turned out to be a success in so many ways.
B: She can get remarried and things could take a turn for the worse...Khudana Khwasta.
The point is she has to be extremely careful in her choice of mate and Im sure she will be. She has every right to be happy and live her life to the fullest but to take as long as she needs to get to know the guy first. His habits, likes, dislikes, temperament, dreams, goals, property, even his finances to make sure this is a sound and stable guy for the sake of her girls. There is no way she can enter a risk-free marriage but she can try and minimize it as much as possible.
That is my take on it.