Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the former Mufti of Egypt, continues to provoke controversy after each episode of his Ramadan program "Nour El-Din," which addresses children, teens, and young adults by answering their explicit and sometimes embarrassing questions. In a recent episode, a young man asked the sheikh about his opinion on love before marriage, similar to the story of Qais and Layla. He humorously responded, "When Qais married Layla, he divorced her after all that love and longing and the poems he wrote in her honor."
He added, "A study conducted on relationships and love among university students from 1980 to 1986 showed that the majority of students fell in love with each other in college, and then got married." Furthermore, he said, "Love does not have halal and haram because it is a heart feeling we do not control; however, the issue of marriage after love is a different matter." He also emphasized the need to maintain chastity in love relationships outside of marriage.
In previous episodes, Gomaa made several statements that stirred controversy among many Egyptians on social media, as he asserted that paradise is not exclusively for Muslims and that individuals from other religions will also enter it, explaining this through a verse from the Holy Quran.
