I am a 24 years old girl. I fell in love, no dates, no meetings involved, pure love to a pure religious person. He promised to marry me and asked me to wait for him as his circumstances are difficult. I do not remember that he called me more than once. I asked him not to call me; because I feel this is wrong, although I love him. I felt that our love started going in the direction, he agreed to this feeling, and respected my opinion. He just sends me E-mails every so often via internet, so that I know his news. We have been in this love relationship for one year. I know this person and his family, and they know us well as well. I love him for Allah’s sake and sure he loves me as well. The problem is that I started receiving proposals, about 8 so far. Every time I refuse because I promised to wait for him. Now I am confused, is what I am doing halal or haram? I pray, Alhamdulillah, all obligatory and optional prayers, and pray qiyaam in the night as well; I fear I lose my good deeds because of what I am doing. Is a pure chaste love haram? Is my love to him halal or haram?.

Is it permissible to eat food that is distributed on the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him)? Some people quote as evidence the idea that because Abu Lahb set free a slave woman on the birthday of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), Allaah reduced the torment for him on that day.

I embraced Islam -praise be to Allah- and now I want to keep myself chaste, but my parents think that the most suitable age of marriage is not until twenty-five or preferably twenty-eight. Even worse than that, one of them thinks that there is nothing wrong with friendship and relationships outside of marriage - Allah forbid. The matter is extremely difficult and I do not know how to talk to them about this matter. I want to keep myself chaste; I want to marry a man who will help me to adhere to my religion, a man who will stand beside me and help me, a man who will live with me, because I am living far away from my parents. They are divorced and each one lives in a different city. I do not know how to explain these details to them in order to convince them that I should get married early; rather they think that getting married at an early age is something that is not appropriate. I am the only daughter of my parents, hence I do not want to disobey them and I do not want to upset them; I do not want them to forsake me either. I want at least to do the marriage contract, then delay consummation until Allah wills.

My questions are:

1. Is it permissible for me to do the marriage contract but delay marriage and the waleemah (wedding feast) and consummation for five years, for example?

2.  Do I have to repeat the marriage contract in front of my family later on and pretend that I was not married? Or is that regarded as coming under the heading of lying? I hope you can advise me because I do not know what to do.