Family Life in Islam

850 Words4 Pages
Family Life in Islam In a time when values tend to be turned upside down, family life as the very heart of society was attacked just as much as many other handed-down traditions. About ten years ago, when it became fashionable for young torch-bearers of "Modern- ism" to live in "communities", share sex and children and earnings, many people feared that this might mean the end of family life. Fortunately, this is not so. In the end, the over- whelming majority of young women still dream of having a wedding ring on their finger, living in a comfortable flat as "Mrs. So-and-so" and bringing up their children in an orderly home, just as young men prefer to introduce "her" with the words "This is my wife" instead of "this is my mate or comrade". Neither Socialism nor any other "isms" were able to uproot what has been implanted into human nature from time im- memorial. If dangers for family and particularly matrimonial life could be overcome successfully in the West, they were the more unable to gain ground in the Muslim World. There, family life with all its aspects concerning not only husband, wife and children, but all other relatives too, is so firmly established by tradition as well as by religious law that it could not be affected seriously. The Islamic Approach Now, one may say that a happy and healthy family life cannot be guaranteed by law. It is true that it depends so much upon the goodwill of all concerned that the best laws remain written phrases where this goodwill is missing. Here, however, as in all other spheres of the Islamic Way of Life, the ruling factor is the fact that Islam is not a religion in the Western sense of the word, but truly THE WAY OF LIFE for those adhering to it. Islam means on the one hand the complete submission to the Will of God. And on the other, it is the conscious acceptance of man's vicegerency on earth as ordained by God.
Open Document