The Family and the Mosque in North America

At the community level in North America we are actually left with only two institutions that can provide the desirable moral imperatives and an operational criterion for defining what is right or wrong for our youth: the family and the mosque. Islam regards family as the most important institution in maintaining the healthy state of an individual's moral and spiritual life. The commonly heard motto that "the family that prays together stays together" reflects a reality founded upon human experience of many generations of families that have prayed together and stayed together. The parents can do more than just provide the means to sustain the family and educate their youth. They have been made responsible for character development of their children by setting good examples. Those examples include not only performing the religious rituals together. They also entail involving children in helping develop a moral sense by helping the poor and hungry, in respecting the rights of others, and so on. The culture of disbelief that dominates American social universe has trivialized religious devotion and relativized moral commitment. The youth today does not have the moral guidance to be able to pursue the right course when faced with a moral dilemma. The school, in view of its insistence in developing an autonomous individual who knows what is good and bad through his/her own intellectual development, has created a moral wilderness in which an inexperienced youth without adequate guidance in dealing with complex human situations is supposed to find his/her way to moral resolutions.The parents, consequently, have to assume an active role in the moral development of their children. This can come about in two ways in the North American framework: first, by becoming fully involved at every stage in the child's mental growth until he/she attains maturity. This involvement includes learning to communicate with the younger generation through their books and reading materials, that is, the sources of their mental and moral education. Second, by providing constructive entertainment through personal involvement in the selection of the types of entertainment (whether at home or outside). Involvement in this aspect of moral education is very critical and almost inevitable because there is enormous pressure on the children from outside their home to participate in these apparently neutral activities. Moreover, it is precisely at this stage when the images created by the mass communications through television and video production will put their permanent imprint on the child's character to detract it from its moral development. It behooves the parents to understand fully the impact of the mass communication technology like the videos and television on our young ones. Parents who succeed to communicate with their youth in these two areas also enable the youth to make moral decisions based on their personal communication of the situations confronting them with their parents.The key is to develop relationship with the youth who is under constant external pressure to conform to the demands that smack culture of disbelief and meaningless existence. In the age when both parents are in the work force, whether through economic necessities or personal choice, very little attention is paid to this aspect of family relationship which goes towards cultivating a personal history full of valuable experiences that go towards creating a source for tough moral decisions. The ability to recall this personal history gives meaning to our lives and actions. The most shocking aspect of the culture in which we live today is to discover how badly behaved American children are. This is attributed to the lack of communication between parents and children. According to the Wall Street Journal (April 6, 1990), on the average American parents spend less than fifteen minutes a week in serious discussion with their children. American fathers spend an average of seventeen seconds per day of intimate contact with their children. As a result, children and adolescents are increasingly ignorant about the ways of communicating with their parents, and appear to be disrespectful and disobedient to adults. The bad behavior of the children, in most cases, has caused the adults to shun the company of children. Mothers are anxious to get a job simply in order to get away from the children.I mention these observations because I think they help us to understand our problems in rearing our children in the American environment. It also makes us realize the difficulty of our task in helping our children acquire character. It is for this reason that Islam created a reciprocal responsibility between parents and children: the parents will love their children as they bring them up with care and concern, and the children will obey and respect their parents to deserve that love and care. The parents have the right to instill their values in their children. They cannot be bystanders when others in the society (TV, video, etc.) insist on their values to children. Character formation is a serious matter and no parent can afford to be indifferent about it. A Muslim father has to put his family first and guide the child through difficult stages of moral growth. For a young son, a father and a mother in a stable family setting are the source of understanding what it means to be a moral person with the sense of honor, loyalty and fidelity. Likewise, for a young daughter, a father and a mother are the source of love and comfort that can help her avoid surrendering her virtue in a fruitless search for love outside her home.Religious activities in the mosque provide the structural route for bringing meaning in lives and actions of the Muslims. Religious establishment (mosque and madrasa) shares the responsibility of generating strong familial relationships necessary for the healthy upbringing of the future generation. It is through marriage and parenthood that Islam seeks to impart moral education. As an institution of socialization among Muslims the mosque therefore assumes a central role in the development of Muslim character. Is the mosque delivering what it is supposed to do? As a person intimately aware of the ways in which the mosque has or has not performed its expected function in the North American context, I can say that ultimately it is the community that decides what it wants from the religious institution. If the membership becomes satisfied only with the rituals that have been traditionally performed in the mosque, then the mosque will stop at that. However, if the community expects the mosque to deliver more in terms of moral and spiritual growth of the youth then it has to plan the activities in accord with such expectations. It is here that I find the Muslim leadership, both religious and administrative in the community, has failed in recognizing the importance that should be given to attract and hold the youth to Islam. Despite the fact that it is the youth that faces the moral peril in his/her everyday contact with the world outside the security of home, the Muslim community has continued to neglect to develop programs that would specifically benefit the youth.The young Muslim girls face even greater challenge in maintaining their moral fabric in tact when out in the society. There is very little understanding of the ways in which a Muslim girl's existence and human rights are regularly violated in the society that looks down upon her Islamic moral outlook as "old-fashioned" and "retrogressive." It is not an exaggeration to point out that, according to Islam, a threat to a woman's personal and moral security in any society is a threat to the family, community and even the nation's moral and social fabric. It is my hope that the present survey undertaken to assess the intellectual as well as social-religious needs of our youth in North America will make adequate recommendations to correct the prevailing negligence in this sensitive area. More importantly, it is my sincere hope that community leaders will take necessary steps to implement these recommendations to strengthen the Muslim youth by instituting creative programs in the Islamic centers that would solicit Muslim family participation at all levels of their planning and implementation. The key is to create an interactive atmosphere in the community and not wait for crisis to require reactive and less organized effort to correct the situation. May God guide us all to the Path of True Prosperity, "Submission to the Will of God," al-islam.