The Family and Society

The family is a part of the Islamic social order. The society that Islam wants to establish is not a sensate, sex-ridden society. It establishes an ideological society, with a high level of moral awareness, strong commitment to the ideal of Khilafah and purposive orientation of all human behaviors. Its discipline is not an imposed discipline, but one that flows out of every individual’s commitment to the values and ideal of Islam. In this society a high degree of social responsibility prevails. The entire system operates in a way that strengthens and fortifies the family and not otherwise.

The family is protected by prohibiting sex outside marriage. Fornication (zina), as such, has been forbidden and made a punishable offence. All roads that lead to this evil are blocked and whatever paves the way towards it is checked and eliminated. That is why promiscuity in any form is forbidden. The Islamic system of (hijab) is a wide-ranging system which protects the family and closes those avenues that lead towards illicit sex or even indiscriminate contact between the sexes in society. It prescribes essential rules and regulations about dress, modes of behavior, rules of contract between the sexes and a number of other questions that are central or ancillary to it.

The finer qualities of life have been given every encouragement, but they have been torn from their carnal or sensate context and oriented towards what is noble and good in human life. A number of preventive measures have been taken to protect the family from influences that may corrupt or weaken its moral and social climate. Some of these measures are in the nature of moral persuasions, others take the form of social rules and sanctions, and some take the form of law whose violation entails exemplary punishments. All these protect the institution of the family and enable it to play its positive role in the making of the Islamic society.

Marriage and the family in Islam should be studied and understood in the context of the scheme of life in Islam wants to establish. They cannot be understood in isolation. The concept of man and the family which Islam gives is in conflict with the concept of man and the family that is prevalent in the West today. We do not want to be apologetic at all. We refuse to accept the allegedly value-neutral approach that willy-nilly fashions the life and perspective of man in the secular culture of the West today. We think the disintegration of the family in the West is, in part, a result of confusion about the place and the role of the family in society and about the purpose of life itself. If the objectives and values of life are not set right, further disintegration of this and other institutions cannot be prevented. The tragedy of our times is that changes are being imposed upon man under the stress of technological and other external developments and the entire process of change is becoming somewhat non-discretionary and involuntary. In an age in which freedom is worshipped like a god, man is being deprived of the most important freedom – the freedom to choose his ideals, values, institutions and patterns of life. One of the greatest tasks that lie ahead is restoration and rehabilitation of this freedom of choice and its judicious and informed use to set the house of humanity in order. Non-human and moral forces, be they of history or technology, must not be allowed to decide for man. Man should decide for himself as vicegerent of God on the earth. Otherwise, whatever be our achievements in the fields of science and technology, we shall drift towards a new form of slavery, and man’s forced abdication of his real role in the world. This we must all resist, at least all those people who believe in God and in the existence of a moral order in the Universe.