Eid sa'eed, wa kull 'am wa antum bikhair. Taqabbal allahu minna wa minkum. I sincerely hope towards this close of Ramadan you find your strength of spirit to be sustainably strong.

There is a shortage of good men. Or so this is what I hear. Young, religious, educated women find themselves faced with a sea of inadequacies and compromises between which to choose, be it in their husbands or in the idea of marrying itself. But I admit to being the bearer of bias on this issue. I am a woman of many brothers, fathers, and sons, you see. They were my inheritance far more than anything in the way of properties and dollar bills. Most of them single. Many of them seeking. Some, I would say, are among the very best of men. And are often heavily unsought themselves.

They hold the requisite high degrees. They have saved to afford home and family. They are pious and faithful and chaste, gentle in demeanor, generous, well-mannered, and occasionally a bit self-effacing. They are chivalrous without condescension. They are not perfect ... some may read as a bit awkward around women, some more than a bit, some may tell bad jokes, and others may have bought a little too much into movie-scripted flowery romantic ideals. But they are, above all, devotees of Allah subhana wa ta'ala, devotees of their families, and mean to be right by the latter in the effort to be right by the former. They are, in short, good men. And, from where I sit, they do not appear to be in short supply.

They are immigrants though. All of those degrees are sometimes useful, and sometimes not. And I can not help but to notice that it is they who have found their degrees useful -- the ones who are practicing doctors, practicing engineers -- who are married already. Most of the rest ... the limo drivers, the clerks, the baggage check attendants ... well, they look and wait, and sometimes go back home just long enough to be engaged in the traditional way.

As I see this time and time again, I have to wonder: how much of that degree of compromise I keep hearing women lament is really a compromise in the way of the quality of men, and how much is a compromise in the way of the economic and social status those men bring?

I just want to make a note that a number of Imam W.D. Muhammad's lectures are available for listening on the New Africa Radio website.

Inna lilahi wa inna ilahi raji'un.