With all due respect this is completely inaccurate and has no basis. Rather a woman is allowed to live alone if she’s living somewhere safe and she’s a woman of good character. Its a little unfair to make comments that living alone is somehow less Islamic and means your relationship with your parents is not that good. I’m an example that that’s an incorrect assumption. I had to move from home because I couldn’t get a training job near to home and yet I talk to my parents many times a day and visit a few times a month. And I come from a very close knit family.

I’m sure the people who previously made comments probably did not mean to make assumptions about religiosity but that’s how it came across.

I have not ruled out moving back in with my parents should I find a job closer to home but I also have not ruled out moving to another place to live alone. I think the issue some people seem to have been thinking of when discussing this is the travelling without a mahram thing which is completely different to living without one and subsequently is covered by completely different rules.

One suggestion: turn your focus to what you can do to help your parents ( not vice versa) and remind yourself of how grateful you are for having them and for being able to spend time with them.

Thank you for your reply. I read that. It was a good article. I just wish there was a way to go about it without upsetting my parents.

As a more specific example of some of the more critical benefits of outside experience: I actually have friends who, if not because they had gone away to university and obtained their own independent jobs and knew they could manage on their own and was actually not in the house of their parents to be directly pressured, would have succumbed to parental pressure to marry people they did not want to (soft pressure and emotional blackmail is a powerful thing) – i mean like, their father’s friend.

I mean, some of us who are lucky enough to have good parents or educated parents, or live in places where there are minorities, have language skills to access different viewpoints, or whose parents are fine with giving us reasonable autonomy despite living with them, should not take only our own situation into consideration when commenting on matters like this, nor should we be touchy and defensive when others share their views for why – for *their* situation – moving out enabled them options and knowledge they could not access had they remained in their parental household. Other people have limitations that we should be grateful we never had to face.

Yes, I agree it depends on the parents, the individual, and the parental household. I agree with Shuhada from a Malaysian perspective (do note that I personally, however, live with my parents still and I am financially very stable and in my 30s). I feel that my countrymen are not nearly as independent and self-confident than youths in many other countries, even within this region. And the reason is parental coddling and low exposure to individual participation with others in an extra-home setting. You can see it in the timidity of young people even when they are in jobs that interface with the general public, e.g. as waiters and receptionists. Also, in a large part of the country, there is no real opportunity to interact with people of minority races and religions. It is palpably apparent what this lack of experience results in, when such young people eventually do get out – say for a university degree or a city job – and suddenly face the culture shock of encountering people who challenge their ideas for how things should be. From personal observation, it takes about a couple years at least until they ease up.

In this cultural context, unless one is individually inquisitive and independent, or one’s parents is culturally atypical and actually raise you to become independent, it is better for the child to move out and learn how to carry himself in the wider society, manage finances, and a household. In our traditional culture, it is in fact encouraged (more for men than women) for youths to travel outside the village (“berkelana”) to acquire outside world experience. Recent affluence and stability among our people has eroded this positive view of “berkelana”.

Obviously though, if one’s parental household has prepared you for independence, diversity etc. as might be expected in the West where Muslims are the minority and the cultural tendency is to raise children to independence, then it is not necessary to physically move out to grow these skills.

This article might be of help inshaAllah: http://www.virtualmosque.com/relationships/marriage-family/parents/moving-out/

I know Islamically girls should not move out until they are married. But I feel so suffocated and find myself resenting my dad more and more. Because I have to repress my opinions I feel that my parents don’t really know the real me but a ‘watered down’ me instead. And this also scares me because ultimately they need to find me a husband and they will match him to me by what sort of a person they think I am.

I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that, in our household everyone (siblings etc) have all grown up and there are arguments, conflicting interests etc and surely moving out will ultimately bring us closer together (I have n observed this from experience) There would be less fights and everyone could live happily on their own terms.

I am looking for some advice on this. I am not generalising but saying in my experience, living with parents is ruining the close relationship we had. We are all growing up and developing and discovering our own tastes but if it happens to be one which goes against my dad’s/mum’s belief it causes fights.

I would like to also add we are all fairly religious but my parents are the most practising.