Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
There is no hadith, as far as we know, stating that God unites equal people in marriage. However, we are recommended to look for compatible spouses for marriage.
In his response to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
There is no such hadith, according to the best of my knowledge, stating that God unites equal people in marriage. Also, there is not any support in the sources for us to harbor such beliefs. This is the reason that Islam, unlike Christianity, has sanctioned divorce in case of irreconcilable differences or valid reasons.
Having said this, however, I must add that a Muslim should choose a spouse who is compatible in faith and character. In order to determine this, we should use all the available methods to ascertain the soundness of character.
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.