بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
The Muslim Family and Sullen Dissociation
(Translated)
The family system of a nation is closely linked to the ideology of that nation and the ideas emanating from it, which define the set of criteria, concepts and convictions of the people. So that the laws and rules are shaped harmoniously with what the society has believed in, creating the unique feature that distinguishes one nation from another. But the harmony between the systems and the creed, does not necessarily create balance and discipline within societies, and certainly does not mean the validity of the systems in caring for people's affairs. The correct system depends on the correct doctrine, and this is only with Islam.
Since the doctrine in the West is based on two basic ideas that are contradictory to the Islamic Aqeedah namely: separation of religion from life and the absolute freedoms of the individual, the view of the family was based on these ideas. Thus, the western legislator considered the guarantee of the individuality, the freedom and the contradiction of religion in the enactment of family laws, which explains the state of the breakdown of the value system within the family in Western society, and the resulting disintegration, chaos and crisis that has caused on the individual and on society. So that the concept of family became limited to a meeting between two human beings, irrespective of them being a woman and a man, a man and a man, or a woman and woman, whereas children can be added to the family by adoption or even by renting wombs (surrogacy)!
Yes!! These absolute freedoms with the eradication of religion have enabled the Western legislator to tamper with the institution of the family and make all the provisions related to it "personal status." And the laws of "Personal status" were consistent with this individual view and respectful for the roof of freedoms. Hence, same-sex marriage became legal, and gender, incest, single mothers, extramarital relations, children of incest, divorce, inheritance and custody, are all based on this excessive individualism, which sanctifies the individual and makes his or her own interest above the interest of the society (after me comes the flood).
It was indeed a flood that ravaged the Western society and hit its core until the moral, humanitarian and spiritual values were collapsed, and no consideration is given except to what achieves the individual’s material benefit! So, laws themselves became one of the problems of family relations and increased the depth of the crisis, because they are based on a corrupt view point of man and life!!
Despite the corruption of the Western creed and the corruption of the systems emerging from it, the consensus on the laws, their acceptance, and even their desirability in many cases, despite their oddity and corruption reflects the state of harmony between the idea and its system. We find huge rallies in the streets of Europe and America demanding the protection of homosexuals and their rights, or enacting laws permitting infidelity, or demanding marriage legislation between humans and animals, as in Norway, for example, which is expected to allow this except for marrying insects, marine animals and poultry!
Such corrupt and shameful laws show the extent of the corruption of the Western creed in its dealing with human beings, and the extent of its shortcomings and its incapability in understanding it first and then in addressing its problems. This has made lawmakers in the West resort to the lie of freedom, "do what you want to do and however you want", due to their helplessness to comprehend human problems and provide solutions, so, "Freedom" is a peg for impotence and failure!!
But the crisis of the family in the Muslims countries is of another kind, it is a crisis of the corrupt system disconnected from the doctrine of the people, that has been forcefully introduced and compulsorily applied on them, forming a state of overwhelming chaos, due to its failure, on the one hand, and principally its contradiction to the doctrine of the Ummah, its criteria and convictions on the other hand!!
Our Muslim family today is living a state of sullen dissociation, between a religion that it believes in, which is inherently inseparable from life, and legislation based on the separation of religion from life. This blending of opposites destroys and does not build, and makes the situation of the individual and the society a troubled and complicated double crisis!
Between Allah’s rulings in marriage, divorce, provision, guardianship, inheritance, custody and lineage, and the hybrid rulings that are imposed on our necks, so they severed that which Allah has ordered to be joined and allowed the application of other than Allah’s laws, in an arbitrary attempt to establish a new view for the family and for the roles of the wife, husband and children contrary in their origins and details to the view of the Great Islam!
Starting from the Personal Status magazine founded by Bourguiba in Tunisia in 1956, which sparked widespread controversy in the land of Az-Zaytouna for declaring war on Allah and His Messenger in its origins and clauses, which included prevention and criminalization of polygamy, abolishing the right to divorce by men and giving it to the court and abolishing his right to be obeyed, legalizing abortion and the recognition of adoption. And through the CEDAW Convention and the provisions of its articles that are contrary to the Islamic law, especially in the system of inheritance and the marriage of a Muslim woman to a Kafir, which most Arab countries reluctantly have made reservations about them except Tunisia in the current reign of El-Sibsi who continued the proxy war for the deceased Bourguiba before him or the Maputo Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, or the United Nations plans on the rights of women, the family and children, and women's rights committees and feminist associations, and all those conventions and projects that seek to eradicate the Islamic understanding of the family, that are deep rooted in Muslims, which created the deep gap between the hopes of the family and its reality.
On viewing the reality of the family in our Islamic countries today, one cannot deny the deterioration of its status through the spread of the divorce phenomenon and its rising proportions day by day, the percentages of the unmarried individuals, the reluctance of young people to marry for fear of the family tie, the decline of family bonding, the conflict of roles within it, and the marginalization of the role of motherhood and marital relations, with the pressure of economic life and living conditions that contribute to the threat of its bonding, and above all, the state of schizophrenia between the creed and the laws.
The origin of a Muslim’s personality as s/he lives in a society is to be a coordinated and consistent personality. This makes him/her a balanced and disciplined individual, whose behavior is shaped in accordance with the concepts he believed in. And in his pursue of linking his relations with himself, with man and with his Creator, his adherence to the laws is self-motivated driven by his piety (Taqwa) of Allah Almighty, so the implementation of the provisions and his satisfaction by them become easy. The individual thus respects his role within the society, especially within the family to which he belongs to or he establishes as an impregnable fortress by the provisions of Allah and His Messenger, so that the family is strong, bonded, productive and fused with the Ummah that encompasses it and responsive to the state under which it is shaded.
In order for our Muslim families to achieve that revival, tranquility, harmony and balance and produce responsible and mature personalities, they must remove these corrupt regimes that destroy and do not build, and adopt their original system which is inspired by their doctrine and is rooted in them. And establish their just and righteous state that protects and guards them to revive the concept of unity in its correct sense, from one soul, to one family, to one state and to one Ummah.
﴿هُوَ الَّذِي خَلَقَكُمْ مِنْ نَفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ وَجَعَلَ مِنْهَا زَوْجَهَا لِيَسْكُنَ إِلَيْهَا﴾
“It is He who created you from one soul and created from it its mate that he might dwell in security with her.” [Al-A’raf: 189]
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Nisreen Buzhafiri