The Problems Facing Modern Civilization

PERVERSION IN MUSLIM SOCIETY AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION

A contemporary commentator once observed that of perversion has set in in western society, so also has it taken root in Muslim society. Then how do you regard western civilization as being wrong and Islamic civilization as being right? This objection, if we examine it, will be found to be ill-judged, because our comparison of western and Islamic civilizations makes a judgement on the basis of standards versus behavior. The rot of Muslim society is the result of deviation from Islam, while the rot of western society is the result of putting into practice the very principles in which it believes.

The evils of Muslim societies stem from the gap between principle and practice, whereas the evils of western society are the result of a clash between principles and realities. Western civilization of modern times has formed principles, independent of religious principles, to govern social life, and has maintained that modern principles were superior to older principles. Through colonization and the industrial revolution, etc. the western nations achieved political and material domination over large areas of the world, which placed them in a position to reject the old principles of life and construct a human society based on modern principles of life.

This experiment in ethics has now been going on with the dominance of western nations for more than a century, but practical experiments have failed to verify the new principles. All that has been accomplished is to effectively demonstrate that the new principles favoured by the West are completely incompatible with what nature intends for mankind. The clash between ideals and reality has, in fact, given rise to ever-increasing manifestations of depravity in western life.

While the solution to moral backsliding in Muslim societies lies in a return to the Islamic principles adhered to in the past, this cannot be said about the West. If western society retreats to its past, this return, will be a return to exactly the same principles on which it still adheres to the letter. Those who gave credence to the concept of permissiveness, or those who insisted on the entrance of women in every department of man, or those who advocated that marriage is an unnecessary bond, if they were to return to their past where will they return. This going back will be to the same principles which they still observe and the disastrous consequences which they are now facing. The solution to the perversion of Muslims lies in their going back to the path of Islamic principles which they have left behind, while the rectification of western society lies in renouncing its self-made principles. Here we present some examples to illustrate this point.

REVERSE COURSE

Time magazine, which has a readership of over 23 million, spread over 95 countries, published a revealing report on the condition of women in America. The following is the gist of the report:

Over the past 25 years there has been an influx of women into the American job market. Some 65% of women of childbearing age now form part of the American workforce and 90% of them have had, or will have children during their careers. This has created a tremendous problem for women: the onerous task of holding down a job and having children at the same time.¹

One such American woman is Lillian Garland, who worked as a receptionist at the California Federal Savings and Loan Association in west Los Angeles until she became pregnant and left work to have her baby in 1982. Her baby girl was delivered by caesarian section and her doctor prescribed a three-month period of leave. When she returned to Cal Fed, Garland found that her position had been filled. She had lost an $850 dollar job just at a time when, with the birth of her child, her expenses had increased.

Garland filed a suit in the federal court against the company for having discriminated against her in terminating her employment. The lawyers of both parties entered into interminable arguments, and after prolonged litigation—five years to be exact—Thurgood Marshall, former Justice of the American Supreme Court, gave his ruling in January, 1987, that the state requires an employer to provide special job protection for workers temporarily disabled by pregnancy.

This ruling triggered a tremendous controversy. On the one hand, women are happy that they have secured the protection of the law for the bearing and rearing of children. On the other hand, serious American thinkers maintain that this ruling will harm the cause of women.

The debate over pregnancy leave has thus created a deep rift among feminists. One side argues that pregnancy leave, even though it benefits individual women, poses a general danger to female workers because it singles them out for special protection. Historically, they point out, such privileged treatment has eventually led to discrimination against women, says Marsha Levick of the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund: “That almost always backfires.”

Don Butler, President of the Los Angeles-based Merchants and Manufacturers Association, said that the decision “spells disaster.” To this he added: “Larger companies can makeshift to fill a hole, but small ones cannot do that very easily. If I employ ten females, and two or more get pregnant at one time, I might as well file for bankruptcy.” Discrimination against women might increase. Many companies “just won’t hire women in their childbearing years,” says the Chamber’s Attorney Lamp.

A well-known feminist, Betty Friedan, said in support of the ruling regarding Garland’s case, “Equality does not mean that women have to fit the male model.” There is something very incongruous about this argument. When women are so different in their biological structure that they cannot “fit the male model,” where is the necessity to bring women into every sphere of life to do the same work as men, and then attempt, by passing laws, to enforce an artificial equality of the sexes.

As economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett puts it: “This decision means that there is recognition at the highest legal levels that, in order to get equal status for women in the workplace, you have to create family supporters.” This is an indirect acknowledgement of the rationality and appropriateness of the old traditional system. The concept evolved by modem civilization that woman does not need man as her supporter implies that she should earn and be her own supporter. When this principle was put into practice, it soon became evident that a woman could not do without a supporter. The only difference was in the name. Formerly it was husband,’ now it is “the company.”

In old, traditional society, when religion was still a positive force, men used to do whatever was required outside the home, while women took care of all indoor work. This was a division of labor which was both practical and natural. But modern civilization has held that this “division” is nothing but sexual discrimination. It is this view which launched the women’s liberation movement and encouraged women to come out of their homes in order to take up employment in offices and factories.

At an early stage it became apparent that under this new arrangement, the path to progress for women was strewn with obstacles. For example, when a woman becomes pregnant and bears a child, she is thereby rendered incapable of tackling jobs outside her own home for a considerable period of time. To remove the disadvantages implied for the woman, a law was passed granting special paid leave to pregnant women and nursing mothers. This was the kind of law which legislators, who were far removed from the situation, could pass with no discomfort to themselves, but whose implementation could not be afforded by those who have to come to grips with the everyday running of a factory or management of an office. This is a situation which has sparked off an unending controversy.

The government so far is supporting women in this conflict in order to maintain the superiority of its cultural principle. But taking sides against reality is hardly practicable. If the government required the managements of all offices and factories to give four months paid leave to women, how many establishments would be able to afford what would seem to them an unwarranted extravagance? Finding the cost of such a cultural luxury prohibitive, many employers would simply not hire women during their childbearing years, and older women would themselves opt to stay at home. It seems very probable that such negative factors will reinforce the very discriminatory attitudes which the women’s liberation movement came into being to end.

WHITHER “WOMEN’S LIB”?

From the 12th to the 16th of January 1987, a conference was held in Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, in which philosophers, scientists, writers and artists from 15 countries participated. This five-day conference was arranged by the Government of India on the topic, “Towards New Beginnings.” Many distinguished ladies of the western world, who have now grown old, were among those who participated. They had spent all their lives working for Women’s Lib, but their mood was one of frustration. The Indian Express cites Germaine Greer of Australia as a case in point:

They are feminists of different hues—Ms. Germaine Greer, the outspoken, aggressive writer from Australia, and Ms. Gisele Halimi, a Tunisian-born lawyer who spearheaded the women’s movement in France along with Simone de Beauvoir and others. But both voice a concern that is troubling feminists in the West today—Whither women’s lib? Ms. Greer seems more mellow today: the fire that raged in The Female Eunuch is strangely missing. “The movement has solved some problems and left us with a different set of problems,” exclaimed Ms. Greer. “Perhaps the problem was that we didn’t take our mothers with us. We left them behind, found them antiquated. And now that many of us are mothers ourselves with teenaged daughters, perhaps we understand our mothers better.”²

“The West has no answers to the problems of inequality between sexes,” says the internationally acclaimed writer Germaine Greer. The erroneous belief of western women that the females in veils are unequal and the ones with make-up minus the head-cover are free and liberated has to be rejected. Referring to the prevalence of “wife-beating” even in the so-called civilized West, she asks, how about the unequal treatment meted out to females in the U.S. and England in the areas of wages and jobs? Well, one-fourth of the crimes in England emanate from violence against women. The man-woman relationship understood in the West as an extension of role-models is the primary cause of strain in the sexual relationships. All the western women identify themselves with the bahu—the bride—forgetting that the mother-in-law and the sister-in-law are also the specific role models to be played by females. She feels that childbearing for a woman is a unique investment: “The joys of motherhood fill the blanks that cannot be satiated in the specific husband-wife role models.” Known for her non-conformist and non-traditional views, Ms. Greer advocates “coitus interruptus” in the area of birth-control: “The array of occlusive devices, spermicidal creams, quinine pessaries, douches, syringes, abortifacient pills and rubber goods of all shapes and sizes are the ill-effects of a growing consumer-culture. These have achieved nothing but added strain in the sexual relationships.”³

Ms. Halimi is more frank. “It is a bad time for the women’s movement” she admitted. “It is down at the moment and we are trying to find the reasons for it. Perhaps we got everything women wanted too fast—contraception, abortion, and divorce. And the problems that face women today are not strong enough to give the movement new force and strength.” Women have very specific values and morals. “They have a different view of humanity. I am not saying that it is better than that of men, but it is different. And women have to prove that they are women, and not men,” she emphasized.⁴

According to religious teaching, the woman’s “role model” was that of mother and housekeeper. She was meant to bear and rear children and manage the home. The modern role model is that of the busy woman executive, functioning on an equal footing with men in every sphere of the professional world. Years of experiment have shown that the latter role is unrealistic. In their old age, the same western women, who had fervently advocated the new role model, are the very ones who are now asking for a return to the status quo ante. Does this leave any room for doubt about the superiority of the role model postulated by religion?

TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES

Plain Truth, a well-known American magazine with a world-wide circulation of 7,850,000, published an article entitled ‘Teen Pregnancy’ along with a photograph of Sally, an American teenager. The article included a letter written by Sally, which, though short, is painful and shocking: 

When I was 8 years old I first had sex with a boy of 15. I did it because I lack love and attention from my parents. I need love, and my parents never show me any. Nothing really changed at home, and at 15 I became pregnant. My boyfriend blamed me and left. I had nowhere to turn, I was trapped, so I had an abortion. Now I’m afraid to date anyone, and I cry myself to sleep every night.⁵

“For every 1000 girls between 15 and 19 in America,” wrote New York correspondent George Gorden, “96 of them are pregnant.”⁶

Such are the tragic consequences of deviation from nature. This is the result of deliberately ignoring the fact that when God created men and women, He laid down rules for their relationship with each other: on reaching a sufficiently mature stage of development, they were to marry, have children and, by a process of mutual co-operation, make a home in which to bring up those children, thus providing a stable base for the progress of mankind. But western modernity became so preoccupied with the concept of freedom, that it dispensed with the kind of bonds which held men and women together in a healthy family relationship. The resulting disregard for the institution of marriage gave birth to various kinds of evils in western society, as may be judged from the above-mentioned examples.

The free mixing of men and women, with the sexual liberation it implies, is wholly against nature. In matters of sex, a woman prefers a single partner. It is in her nature to love only one man faithfully. Men, on the other hand, are promiscuous by nature. In a situation, therefore, where freedom of sexual relationships is damaging to faithful sexual partnerships, it is the women who suffer psychologically. Emotionally, they have to pay a very high price for their emancipation.

The famous Australian feminist, Ms. Germaine Greer, has acknowledged, now that she is of a more mature age, that her zeal for the sexual liberation movement in her youth was not realistic. In an interview with the Indian Express she lamented over the present state of affairs: “What is worrying today is the results of the sexual liberation movement—the number of teenaged girls who have been on the pill since they were 12 and 13, the number of teenaged girls who get pregnant by the time they are 15 and 16. What is happening to them? Sex means something quite different for men. They can love and leave. When the time comes to go to university, they can take off quite easily. Women have a different sensibility. They love with their heads, hearts and loins. And a broken love affair leaves them quite shattered. I have seen it happen to people close to me. And it is terrible.”⁷

In modern times Muslim society has fallen prey to many evils, but the reasons for this having happened are different in respect of the West and Islamic civilizations. In the case of the latter, it is deviation from Islamic principles which has caused the rot to set in, whereas in the former case, it is adherence to a new set of man-made principles which has had so deleterious an effect.

ARTIFICIAL PROBLEMS

The unique Nobel Sperm Bank set up by Dr. Robert Graham, a California millionaire, preserves the sperm of Nobel prizewinners so that women, who wish to produce children of above-average intelligence, may be impregnated with it. Dr. Graham established this bank with the aim of compensating for sterility on the part of husbands. But now, unmarried women—such is the degree of modem, western permissiveness—are coming forward to avail of the bank’s facilities. More interested in bearing above-average children, they prefer to ignore the possibilities of marriage, and freely seek the assistance of the bank.

One such unmarried mother is forty-year-old Dr. Afton Blake of California. When she contacted the Nobel Sperm Bank and explained the kind of child she wanted, she was advised that sperm number 28 was what she needed. (Donors of sperm remain unnamed and are given a code number.) Dr. Blake duly became pregnant with the specially selected sperm and bore a son whom she named Doron (a Greek word meaning “gift”). His photograph, at age four, appeared in The Hindustan Times of September 7, 1986. A Daily Telegraph representative, Ian Brodie, who met Dr. Blake at her Los Angeles residence, reports that her happiness is gradually turning to gall, the birth of a child without a father having created a number of problems. Top of the list of such problems is the boy’s repeated queries about his father, which he began to make as soon as he could speak.
Dr. Blake told Brodie that “there was one occasion when Doron got angry with me. He said he was going off to live with his Dad.” For Dr. Blake, what had started off as an interesting experience, latterly seems to have developed into a series of delicate problems. She now says with regret, “One thing Doron is deprived of is a Daddy.”

Deviation from nature has given rise to problems which were hitherto inconceivable.

MARRIAGE VERSUS FORNICATION

“The Big Chill?” a specially researched Time magazine cover story of February 16, 1987, startled the world with horrifying details of a new disease—AIDS. Since AIDS is infectious and fatal, it has produced a new breed of untouchables from whom both men and women flee in fear of their very lives. Publicity on the subject has created such a scare that barber shops in western countries often display signboards bearing the unlikely legend: “No Shaves Here.”

Government officials have described such a reaction as “AIDS hysteria.” Barbers, however, maintain that even the AIDS victims’ perspiration, or drops of blood from tiny cuts made during shaving, can transmit the virus and that it was, therefore, necessary to keep away from them.⁸

After making detailed investigations, Time’s team of experts confirmed that the prime cause of this deadly disease is promiscuity. Since it is transmitted mainly by homosexuals, it has come to be known as the “gay disease.” This disease spreads so rapidly that its explosion in the world of today has been geometric. Chilled by the fatality of AIDS, one of its victims exclaimed: “Oh, what will happen in this world, if we have to die when we make love? AIDS is the century’s evil.”⁹

Promiscuity, euphemistically referred to as “free love” in the western world, has brought down a curse upon humanity. It was estimated that by 1991, 270,000 people will have contracted this disease in the U.S., and that doctors will find it impossible to treat such a large number of patients. The situation will be completely beyond control. The government has started an anti-AIDS campaign whose slogan is “Love carefully.” This same advice, differently
worded, would read: “Love within the bonds of marriage. Stop loving outside them.”

One of the great influences in socially “legitimizing” promiscuity was D.H. Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, first published in 1928. At the time of publication this work was considered obscene and almost immediately banned. Then, with a gradual change of moral climate, permission was given to republish it in 1959. Many young people in America were deeply affected by this novel and, a whole spate of similar literature having followed it, promiscuity began to be the rule rather than the exception. Now, once again, there is a public outcry to ban Lady Chatterly’s Lover and other such works.

Such a complete about-face has been caused by the devastating effects of AIDS. It has forced the west to re-think the whole question of free sex—a development which seems little short of miraculous. “Swingers of all persuasions may sooner or later be faced with the reality of a new era of sexual caution and restraint.”¹⁰

People had been delighted at having discovered the key to unlimited enjoyment in freeing themselves from the curbs of religion, for, according to divine law, a sexual relationship between a man and a woman was permitted only within the bonds of marriage. But now the realities of nature are finally forcing man to forsake the path of free love and follow the path of sexual restraint. It has taken the fatalities of the final quarter of the twentieth century to convince people that divine law and the law of nature are one. Too late, it has dawned on “free lovers” that promiscuity could be a killer. Time’s cartoon showing a man and a woman encircled by a deadly snake, epitomizes one of today’s major human dilemmas.

It was not without good reason that the Quran commanded that sexual relationships should be confined within the bonds of marriage:

(Lawful to you are), in wedlock, women from among those who believe, and, in wedlock, women from among those who have been given the Book before you—provided that you give them their dowers, taking them in honest wedlock, not in fornification, nor as secret love-companions.¹¹

This has been interpreted by Quranic commentators as a clear injunction to establish sexual relations only through marriage, and that there should be no extra-marital relationships. Experiments have shown that this is the only right and natural way. Marital relationships and fornication are not just matters of approval or disapproval by religious authorities, but matters of life and death. The married state is a blessing for human society; any other is a curse.

It is significant that the new education plan released by the U.S.¹² government stresses sexual abstinence as a preventive measure. This public exhortation to observe the rules of old-fashioned morality is a clear indication of the superiority of divine law over man-made law.

A believer in divine law, who errs by entering into an illicit sexual relationship, and contracting AIDS in the process, will be considered to have deviated from the principles of divine law. However, one who belongs to western civilization and contracts such a disease as the result of promiscuity will be said to have shown the error of the principle of western civilization itself. The former case proves the error of a man while the latter case proves the error of the principle of a civilization.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF UNNATURAL EQUALITY

“No one who has ever known me can believe what I did,” said a 35-year old American whose demeanor suggested innocence and seriousness of mind. He related how he had beaten the wife he loved, choked her till she was unconscious, pushed her face in the mud and held a kitchen knife to her throat.¹³ “How could I have done that?” he now wonders. “People know me as a good man. I own my own business. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t chase other women.” In spite of all such contrary indications, he repeatedly beat his wife.

Reader’s Digest gives many instances of wife-beating by Americans in an article entitled, “Why Men Hurt the Women They Love.” According to one survey, in America a woman is battered by a husband or boy- friend every 18 seconds. And every year, it is estimated that more than a million of these need medical help. Every day, four die.¹⁴

Why should the developed and civilized society of America be infested with the evil of wife-beating? A great deal of research has been done on this subject and its findings have been put in a nutshell by Mrs. Susan Schechter, a researcher at the Women’s Educational Institute in New York, when she writes, in her book, Women and Male Violence: “It is a pattern of coercive control.” Ellen Pence, Director of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs says, “Any batterer can tell you why he hit her. He wanted control over her. He wanted his way.”¹⁵

The above statements underline the state of affairs which has resulted from modem western civilization having formulated its own principles of human conduct. Its major mistake was to give its approval to the concept of male-female equality. It opened the doors of the workplace to women, thus giving them the opportunity to earn their own livelihood which, in turn, made them economically independent of men. This made women feel strongly that they were equal to men. They did not realize how artificial this notion was: in spite of the improved economic situation of women, western civilization could not, with all its powers, alter the dictates of nature—that men are the stronger and women the weaker sex.

As a result of this artificial equality domestic life as a whole has met with a contradiction. The women living in these western homes were physically as fragile as ever before, but psychologically (in their temperament, thinking) they had come to consider themselves as equals of men. Men being the stronger of the sexes wanted to hold their control over women. But women due to their artificial/unnatural temper refused to accept their control. The result of this contention proved very bad so far as women were concerned. “You need to feel powerful as a male. I don’t know why, but it is true,” says Chuck Wilder, a one-time batterer and now a counsellor for men at HAWC (Help Abused Women and their Children) in Massachussets.16 But women, thanks to their artificially acquired outlook, have refused to go on accepting their control. The consequences of this clash have been universal and are certainly worse for women than for men.

Had men and women been biological equals, sometimes the former and sometimes the latter would have gained the upper hand.

As it is, modern women have become so oppressed as a result of masculine reaction to their sense of total equality, that they cannot even run away to save themselves. According to the Reader’s Digest report, one woman said, “If you try to leave, your husband may threaten, ‘I’ll find you and kill you.’ Many of the worst injuries—and deaths—happen as women try to get away.” The battered woman often feels trapped. “Imagine you are such a woman,” suggests’ Richard Gells, a sociologist and author of Intimate Violence in Families. “Right now, leave your job. Leave your wallet, everything on the desk. Take nothing but a one-way ticket to a strange town. Could you do that? Could you also take away the children?”¹⁷

By nature’s division, man was given authority over woman. Now, if attempts are made to change this division artificially, the consequences will be as pictured in the above report. This beating of women in their own homes is just one more symptom of the malaise of modernity. Never before has there been so many instances of male violence against women as there are at present in modern civilization. It is true that there were cases of wife-beating in earlier periods, but these were the exceptions rather than the rule, and occurred mostly amongst the lower classes, who were poor and uneducated. In modem times, even the upper classes are no longer innocent on this score. What was formerly considered uncivilized behavior is now becoming a commonplace amongst so-called civilized members of society. This is a direct consequence of upsetting the natural balance of daily living in the futile quest for unnatural equality.

THE PROBLEM OF MODERN WOMEN

A tourist on a visit to America was once sitting in a club during a dance, when he was suddenly approached by an American girl who said to him, quite sadly, “Mr. Tourist, don’t I have any glamour?” ‘‘Why, of course you do, replied the tourist. “Then why don’t the boys date me?” the girl asked.

“Dating” in western countries refers to the social custom of boys inviting girls to go out somewhere with them. In this way, boys and girls become acquainted with each other before marriage. This practice has become so common in western life that a girl who is not “dated” by one or more boys begins to feel herself of inferior value on the marriage market. In former times, dating, as a system of courtship, was confined to meetings during which conversation could take place. But then morals became so lax that such meetings became occasions
for sexual intimacy. The most recent development is to “date” a girl and then forcibly have sex with her—in fact, rape her.

Time magazine has published a revealing report entitled, “When the Date Turns into Rape”:

Susan, now 22 and a college senior, was raped almost three years ago on a first date. She met the man in a cafeteria at summer school and went to his dorm that evening to watch television news and get acquainted. After 45 minutes of chit chat about national affairs, he began pawing and kissing her, ignoring her pleas to stop. “You really don’t want me to stop,” he said, and forced her to have sex.¹⁸

Time’s report shows how common ‘date-rape’ has become in western countries: “Date rape,” according to some researchers, is a major social problem so far studied mostly through surveys of college students. In a three-year study of 6,200 male and female students on 32 campuses, Kentucky State psychologist Mary Koss found that 15% of all women reported experiences that met legal definitions of forcible rape. More than half those cases were date rapes. Andrea Parrot, a lecturer at Cornell University, estimates that 20% of college women at two campuses she surveyed had been forced into sex during their college years or before, and most of these incidents were date rapes. The number of forcible rapes reported each year—87,340 in 1985—is believed to be about half the total actually committed. Says Koss: “You’re a lot more likely to be raped by a date than by a stranger jumping out of the bushes.” Some feminists argue that the U.S. has a “rape culture” in which males are encouraged to treat women aggressively and women are trained to submit.¹⁹

Mr. Sri Prakash, former governor of Maharashtra, and India’s first High Commissioner in Pakistan mentions in his memoirs that in 1947 he once asked an Englishman why his countrymen had such a low opinion of Indians. One of the things which the Englishman cited was the number of restrictions there were regarding marriage, which was totally alien to the European concept of the boy and girl choosing one another and then getting married. He obviously despised the “social shackles” which prevented this happening in India.

When women’s liberation was launched, the demolishing of such “social shackles” seemed a very attractive idea. But when the lifting of restrictions on the degree of intimacy which could develop between the opposite sexes began to lead with increasing frequency to rape, the pendulum of opinion began to swing back in favor of traditional restrictions as being the healthiest social principles to follow. It has become all too obvious that the path of sexual freedom can lead society only to its own destruction.

A HADITH

The prevalent custom of dating, which permits unmarried boys and girls to meet and remain together unchaperoned for unlimited periods in complete seclusion, has been little short of disastrous in its consequences, thus illustrating the meaningfulness of the shari’ah in no uncertain manner. The following hadith, taking full account of the evil inherent in the situations arising from this custom, gives us a clear injunction prohibiting them:

One who believes in God and in the Judgement Day ought not to stay with a woman in private while no mahram (i.e. a near relative with whom marriage is not permitted, e.g. brother, father, uncle, etc.) is with her, because in such cases the third is Satan.²⁰

When an unmarried boy and girl meet alone, Satan immediately grasps this opportunity to tempt them. The presence of a third person guarantees that such a meeting will not go beyond limits.

THE IMPORTANCE OF VIRGINITY

Sexual permissiveness has become such an all-pervasive feature of modern life that the forming of sexual relationships before marriage has become a commonplace, the current philosophy being that advance experimentation is a better and safer way of choosing one’s partner for life. Pre-marital encounters between men and women are, therefore, marked by the same openness and lack of inhibition as those which take place within the sanctity of the marriage bond. This runs counter to nature itself. In fact, deviation from tradition has created problems which have become insoluble in the present-day social set-up. The very intractability of these problems has led to a general reappraisal of sexual permissiveness. Even those who were the greatest champions of permissiveness as a way of life are now beginning to turn against it.

A survey, carried out in America on more than 1400 college students aged 18-19, reveals that young women are more attracted to male virgins than they were 10 years ago.²¹ The New York psychologist, Mr. Srully Blotnick, whose company carried out the survey, said: “The male virgin may not make the best lover, but usually he’s eager to learn—and he’s the safest.” The safest, that is, from the risk of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Mr. Blotnick said it was the risk of sexually related diseases that makes the male virgins so attractive to women. His latest survey showed that 22 percent of college women now want their next lover to be a virgin, compared to just nine percent 10 years ago. This same report was published by the Hindustan Times under the title, “Male Virgins in Vogue.”²²

At the outset of the women’s liberation movement, virginity as a condition for marriage was ridiculed, more particularly as it was an obstacle to sexual licence. It was depicted as a preposterous concoction of the religious imagination. But experience showed that such a condition was not the result of a misconception, religious or otherwise, but a biological imperative: insistence on virginity is the only way to ensure that a married couple will be free of deadly communicable diseases. Whereas virginity had before been just a matter of a religious commandment, it has now been reinstated as the sole basis for a healthy marital relationship, what an amazing proof has been provided by human experimentation of religious commandments having a basis in reality. If, even after this, man does not give the divine shari’ah the importance which is due, it will be out of sheer caprice, or willful misinterpretation of the facts rather than a realistic approach.

THE PROBLEM OF CHILDREN BORN THROUGH ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION

The goal of the feminist movement was to make women equal to men in every respect. But this did not happen in practice. The feminist movement has completely failed in achieving its real objective. An American lady, Ti-Grace Atkinson says: “There is no movement. Movement means going some place, and the movement is not going anywhere. It hasn’t accomplished anything.”²³

Due to this experience, feminist extremists in western countries demand a complete withdrawal from dependence on men, including sexual ties. Village Voice columnist Jill Johnston, for example, insists that “feminism is lesbianism,” and that it is only when women do not rely upon men to fulfill their sexual needs that they are finally free of masculine control.²⁴

Living together like husbands and wives is not so simple a matter. Many problems have to be faced. For instance, if the couples want a child, how to find one? Modern medical science has provided the answer in the form of artificial insemination.

Two women from Holland, Paula Deijs and Jeanine Haaksman lived together like husband and wife. Then they felt a desire to have a child. For this purpose, they contacted the Lydden Institute of Birth Control. Their first attempt did not succeed, but in the second attempt Paula Deijs became pregnant. Through the semen of an unknown person a child was born to them. The child was named Thomas. But after the birth of the child they realized they again were in need of the same “man” whom they had shunned to become lesbians. The women are sensitive to the fact that Thomas needs men as role models. Uncles, a grandfather, brothers-in-law and male neighbours are encouraged to visit frequently. “We have a good friend not too far from here whom we have chosen to be a father image for Thomas,” says Haaksman. “We’ll send Thomas over to him for all the technical instructions.”²⁵

Providing a “father” to Thomas in this artificial way is in no way an alternative to a real father. It is certain that some strangeness must remain between such “sons and fathers.” And when Thomas grows up, this unconscious strangeness will turn into conscious strangeness. Thomas will know his mother, but not his father. This vacuum in Thomas’s life will produce different kinds of mental complications, which will most probably make it impossible for him to become a useful member of society.

It is as if in the system of lesbianism there is scope for producing girls but not boys. Even then, to produce a girl, lesbians will depend upon the same man whom they had rejected in order to have their own independent ways.

It is easy to deviate from the system of nature but the price that has to be paid for such deviation is too high for an individual or a society.

THE END OF MARRIAGES IN THE WEST

An American magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, put a question to its readers: ‘Do you think that family life in the U.S. is faced with troubles? Seventy-six percent answered in the affirmative.

Eighty-five percent said that their hopes of a happy life had not been fulfilled. Similarly, another American magazine, Newsweek, published its conclusion after conducting a survey in May 1978. According to its report about half of the marriages in America ended in divorce, then remarriage which again ended in divorce.

A marriage counsellor, Ronald D. Kelly, writes:

One of the saddest things to me as a marriage counsellor is the many couples who are married, yet strangers to each other in their own homes. They seem to share little in common. Each goes his or her own way, pausing only for occasional conversations—those often arguments about money, child rearing or sex. You wonder how they ever got together in the rust place.²⁶

With whatever good feelings a marriage takes place, unpleasantness does crop up at one stage or the other. This is generally due to the problems of life, or the loss of sexual attractions. Now if the husband and wife have come together sharing the concept of a “marriage for a purpose,” then, keeping in view the purpose they will overlook all such unpleasant circumstances and continue to live together. On the contrary, when the marriage is taken just as a pleasure jaunt (marriage for pleasure) then anything which is not to their liking will take a serious turn. In such a situation they will find no reason to tolerate that unpleasantness and continue to remain together.

ACKNOWLEDGING THE MISTAKE

A book published in the U.S., entitled Finding Our Fathers, by Dr. Sam Osherson, shows the beginning of a new age in American family life. In modem civilization the superior standard of life had come to mean that men and women worked in offices and the children were handed over to babysitters and day-care centers. After the ruination of several generations, Americans have come to understand that there is no substitute for the upbringing and training of children by their own parents. Now more and more parents in the U.S. are taking time off work and other activities to give time to their children.

There is the example of Ken Schuman. He was being offered a high post, but he contented himself with a job at a lower salary. This was because high posts keep people so busy that there is hardly any time left to spend on the upbringing and care of the children. He said that in his present job he couldn’t have lunch at high class hotels, nor could he travel first class by air. But he felt happy at his decision, as he had ample time to help his children in their formative stage. Being one of these new breeds of fathers, he said, “I’m a convert to this way of life.”

Having reached the culmination of his ideology, modern man is acknowledging his mistakes, but due to the powerful domination of previous concepts in modern society, the advocates of this change in thinking do not dare to reveal their names.²⁷

THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION

A book published in the U.S., entitled The Birth Dearth, has become a hot subject of discussion in various circles. In the light of statistics, the author showed that the population of the U.S. and other western countries had decreased to a dangerous extent. On the other hand, the birth rate in the socialist block was increasing. And so far as the third world was concerned, its population will double that of the western world in the next fifty years. Consequently, America in the 21st century will lose its world power status. Similarly, the whole western world will acquire second class status in international politics. The solution, according to one critic of the book, lies is slipping back to “the traditional woman as exclusive child-raiser.”²⁸

The place given to woman in modern civilization bears no true relation to life’s realities. Now western thinkers are beginning to feel that in order to have a successful life, the ancient concept of woman shall have to be fully reinstated.

DEPRIVED OF GUARDIANSHIP

A report entitled “Teen Suicide” published in Time magazine reveals that the incidence of suicide among the 10- to 20-year age group is rising sharply in the U.S., the annual number having tripled since 1950. In 1985 out of 100,000 people, if there were 60 adults who committed suicide, there were also 60 young people who took their own lives. We reproduce below the impressions of three women concerning the suicide of American children.

“I don’t think they think about being dead. They think it’s a way of ending pain and solving a problem,” says Barbara Wheeler, a suicide-prevention specialist in Omaha. “Everybody is in such a rusk that we don’t take the time to listen to our youngsters,” states Elaine Leader, co-founder of a teen crisis hotline at Cedars-Sinai medical Centre in Los Angeles. And Barbara O’Jeary, a hostess at a local diner, says: “When something like this happens, I think about my kids. I have to hope I raised them right. These are the dangerous years. You don’t always know what’s going on inside their heads.”²⁹

The American public responded with a spate of letters, selections from which were published by Time magazine. One of the letters reads: “My heart bleeds for the families of the teen suicides. I know. My 16-year-old grandson committed suicide by hanging. Our family will spend the rest of our lives wondering why, and we will never know” (Eloise Gradin, Pensacola Beach Florida).³⁰ What is the reason for this suicidal tendency among the younger generations of the developed countries? One major contributory cause is their being deprived of the kind of guardianship which a united family would hitherto have provided. Another is their development of unhealthy complexes in the absence of the loving care of the family circle. The breaking up of the family as a social unit must ultimately be recognized as the main underlying factor in the suicidal tendencies of the young people of today.

There are two principal reasons for the break-up of the family system in these countries. One is the concentration on pleasure in married life, rather than on responsibility. Couples marry now as if they were on a pleasure-seeking jaunt, so that when no further pleasure is to be extracted from the marital state, they go their separate ways. This has led to an erosion of the sanctity of marriage, and divorce, in consequence, has become common. Any children born to such couples, who subsequently opt to separate, are little better than orphans, though both parents are alive. Another cause of family fragmentation is traceable to the end of the joint family system, the main symptom of which is the increasing number of elderly parents and grandparents being sent to old people’s homes, where they live separately from the rest of the family. In the joint family system, grandparents were always present to look after grandchildren, but in western society, their place is no longer in the home.

In a sense, the focus of parental life is likewise no longer on the home, although for different reasons. Formerly, the mother was always at home to look after the children. But now, with both parents working, the children meet them only in the evenings when they are both already too tired to give them their proper attention, or on weekends, when they are generally too concerned with their own recreations. The western child is deprived of his mother because, like his father, she has gone to her office, and he is deprived of his grandparents, because they have conveniently been put away out of sight in old people’s homes. It is such children who become so emotionally unbalanced that they see no further point in going on living.

SUICIDE OF A WOMAN SINGER

When the 18-year-old pop singer Yukiko Okada jumped to her death from the roof of a high building in April 1986, because of an unhappy love affair, she ‘inspired’ many young people to follow her example. A large number of young people actually threw themselves off high rooftops because they felt sorry for her and wanted to be in heaven with her. A few left suicide notes mentioning the singer by name.³¹

This is the ultimate damage done by making a woman a mere object of the “screen,” a mere plaything of the imagination. If a woman devotes her life to managing her home, she becomes the giver of life to the young, whereas when she leaves her home to become a means of entertainment for others, she can do them the greatest injury—even becoming a morbid stimulus to annihilation.

AWAY FROM NATURE

The human baby is the weakest and most tender of all the babies of living creatures. It therefore needs its parents’ care and guidance in its physical and mental growth for a more extended period than any other young creature. That is why nature has endowed parents with a special attraction for their offspring.

In the past, the separation of children from their parents was caused only by emergencies such as war, or occasional premature death, and, in normal circumstances, it was taken for granted that the children would enjoy the protection of their parents for as long as they required it.

However, in advanced societies, a prolonged period of guardianship has become the exception rather than the rule, for the simple reason that the modern concept of living has destroyed the sanctity of marriage. Either children are born out of wedlock and are unwanted right from the very beginning, or they find themselves bandied about between parents who have decided to separate shortly after marriage. Their “orphaned” state during their parents’ lifetime soon becomes one of social alienation.

The rising incidence of this kind of orphaning is creating complex problems in modem society, one of which goes by the name of “deprivation dwarfism,” a disease, according to medical experts, that can cause sleeplessness and severe bowel disorders, and used to kill many children in orphanages. A recent report by western medical authorities says, “Lack of love can stunt children’s physical growth, retard their intellect, or even kill them.” Pediatricians say that as late as 1915, some 90 percent of the children who died in Baltimore orphanages (in Maryland, U.S.A.) within the first year of admission, did so because of lack of love.³²

According to Dr. Gardner, studies of human biology have shown that impulses arise from the higher level of the brain. These impulses enter into the bodily system and generate hormones of different kinds which are necessary for physical growth. One of these turns protein into sugar. This natural process in those children who grow up denied of their parents’ affection is greatly inhibited. As a result, their bodies are unable to make full use of the available protein necessary for their growth.

This is an example which shows how fatal it is to deviate from the path of nature. Man cannot make another world of his own by deviating from the world created by God. On the contrary, he must live out his life in accordance with this world. If he abandons the path of nature in favour of some other path, this will only end in failure, if not actual disaster.

THE EXPERIMENT OF UNRESTRICTED FREEDOM

On the question of abortion, Americans have now divided themselves into two opposing groups, one unreservedly upholding abortion, and describing themselves as “pro-choice” rather than “pro-abortion,” while the other is against abortion and calls itself “pro-life.” The American magazine Newsweek illustrates the current mood with a photograph of a procession of American women, whose leader, a young woman, is holding aloft a placard bearing in bold lettering the orders: “Keep your laws and your morality off my body.”³³

Modern western thinkers hold their greatest asset to be freedom. But the experiment in the West of having fewer and fewer restrictions on freedom has demonstrated that personal liberty cannot be the highest good. Had it been so, it would never have resulted in the ugly extremes which the above example suggests.

There is no disputing the fact that freedom as a quality of life is something of great value. But, for man, the highest good is freedom within limits, rather than absolute freedom. Personal liberty, however, must never be subject to man-made restrictions, for no man is superior to his fellow men, and no one has the right, therefore, to curtail another’s freedom. Restriction is a matter of God, and man must bow to God’s dictates when He so wills it.

Every man stands between God and his fellow men. So far as the man-to-man relationship is concerned, every man has his full freedom. But the great, overriding consideration is that man is in complete subjugation to God. As compared to the Almighty, no man has any freedom. This means that in the modern world, man has to use his freedom so that he abides by God’s commandments in all circumstances. It is this awareness of the value of restraint which is the greatest guarantee of the proper use of freedom.

THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF AN AMERICAN LEADER

The well-known American novelist and a leader of the feminist movement, Rhoda Lerman, visited India in 1987. The Times of India published her interview, which is reproduced here: “I come with very bad news,” says Rhoda Lerman. Speaking on the changing role of women in society, she revealed that 77 percent of the poor in America are women and children. The reason she offers is the high wage differential between the earnings of men and women. Women earn 62 percent of what men earn, merely because of the “pink-collared” jobs offered to them. “Equal opportunities and equal pay for equal work are just a myth,” she declares. Women have been able to infiltrate only the lower and middle management and are offered innumerable jobs in food chains and the secretarial cadres.

This discrimination, she believes, is due to the male bias which works against women, branding them as ‘undependable, since they go in for maternity leave and have children.’ Although 96 percent of the working women have children, only 67 percent of them can enjoy maternity leave, without fear of jeopardising their jobs. However, seniority almost always suffers, says Ms. Lerman. “Maternity and childcare are the cause of high wage differentials,” she adds, “economic reality having nothing to do with spiritual equality.” Activists had clamored for sexual equality and abortion rights and won them, without anticipating the economic backlash that would ensue.

With radical feminism accepted as the code, women are treated as equal, without any concessions to their biological differences. For instance, one out of two marriages in America is ending in divorce, with the responsibility of childcare devolving on the mother alone. Alimony and maintenance are merely laws, rarely put into practice. A mere 5-10 percent of the men pay maintenance, and that too, only for the first year. For the rest, the burden is borne solely by the mother. Thus, the quality of life of a divorced woman reduces by 73 percent and that of a man increases by 43 percent.

Single households, headed by women trying to play the role of “super-moms,” are on the increase, she revealed. In the next ten years, therefore, 40-50 percent of the children will be living in female-headed households, an unhealthy phenomenon, which has its repercussions in increased suicides amongst children. “Due to a lapse in the dependency structure, suicide is becoming endemic amongst children,” she said.

Socialist feminism, which takes into account the intrinsic differences between men and women, is the call of the hour, Ms. Lerman believes. We have had an excess of the American dream—of a husband who works, a house in the suburbs, two children, two cars and a mother who stays at home and bakes cookies. With the family structure falling apart, she feels that only government support in the form of day-care centers, maternity leave benefits and subsidies to override the economic limitations of single women can hold the social fabric together. “Otherwise, our victories will be merely Pyrrhic victories,”³⁴ she predicts, similar, perhaps to the freedom experienced on the funeral pyre.’³⁵

The feminist leader has acknowledged that the successes of feminism are little short of Pyrrhic victories. This is the most appropriate word to describe the victory of modem woman. She secured “equality” after a long and hard struggle. In the process, however, of achieving this imaginary equality, she has lost everything. Ms. Lerman feels that only large-scale government support can compensate for the deprivation of western women. This means placing herself under the guardianship of a government, which is completely in the hands of man. Woman was not willing to accept the guardianship of man at home; at her own cost, she has had to come to terms with the guardianship of men in the government.

TWO EXAMPLES

The problems created in western homes by this artificial concept of equality are confined not only to the lower or middle class but have also spread throughout the upper classes and the highly educated classes.

Recently some letters written by Albert Einstein to Mileva Maric (who was to become his first wife) were made public. These reveal the story of their relationship characterized by happiness and sorrow. These letters were found while collecting material for The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. Mileva Maric was four years older than Einstein. His mother was not in favour of this match, which caused him to suffer from depression. Later somehow, they got married, a daughter having been born to them before marriage. What happened to her remains unknown. It appears, though, that she never stayed with Einstein. He had met Ms. Maric in 1896 at the Federal Technical Institute in Zurich. Wed in January 1903, their marriage ended in divorce in 1919.³⁶

The second example concerns the British heir, Prince Charles: “Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, married the wrong woman,” said his biographer, Mrs. Penny Junor in a recent interview with BBC. Charles, she said, was a sad character with the loneliest position on earth. He did not have the support he should have from a wife. Prince Charles and Princess Diana were growing more and more apart. Mrs. Junor said she had drawn her conclusions after talking to people who were close to him. “The palace has seen what I have written and the conclusions I have come to. No one has told me that I am on the wrong lines.”³⁷

UNDEPENDABLE CHARACTER

In its May 25, 1987, issue Time magazine published a report about the Pentagon entitled “Mixing Sex and Secrets.” It says: “The Pentagon has been fretting about the sexual practices of the 2.7 million people with Defence Department security clearances. In January (1987) the Pentagon expanded its rules to compel service personnel, civilian workers and contract employees with clearances to divulge whether they had engaged in such sexual acts as adultery, sodomy and incest. The rules were intended to ensure, that those with access to secrets are not vulnerable to blackmail.³⁸

Believers in permissiveness hold that sexual relations outside the bond of marriage are simply “sins” in the eyes of God but are far from harmful as regards human relationships. Experience, however, has shown that one who does not adhere to the limits of the marriage bond in the matter of sexual relationships is not trustworthy. Through such a moral lacuna, an enemy can find an access to our secrets.

THE SCANDAL OF GARY HART

Mr. Gary Hart, the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Presidential election of 1987, had every chance of success. An incident, however, took place which set off such a storm of protest that Mr. Hart had to resign from the contest.

Fifty-year-old Mr. Hart was busy in the election campaign, for which he had borrowed one million dollars. During this time, he quietly left for Miami on May I to spend the weekend there. He spent one day and one night with a 29-year-old actress, Miss Donna Rice. An American newspaper, Miami Herald, got an inkling of this, and brought out a sensational story with this heading: “Miami Woman Is Linked to Hart.”³⁹ The news was given priority coverage by radio, television, newspapers and journals. Mr. Hart’s photographs along with Miss Donna Rice began to appear on the pages of newspapers. Wherever he went he was asked if he had committed adultery. “He stood in the public dock accused of adultery.”⁴⁰

Had the Miami Herald published the news that in a certain house Mr. Hart had spent the night with his wife, no one would have cared. But when the news broke of Mr. Hart’s spending a night with a woman he was not married to, it caused quite a furor. This incident is a clear indication that establishing sexual relations with a woman, who is not one’s wife, is against human nature. Had such an act not been against human nature, the agitators would never have succeeded in their plans.

Mr. Hart did his utmost to overcome this setback. First, he refuted the allegation; and, then he started giving evasive answers. Then he persuaded his wife, Lee Hart, to travel 1300 miles from New Hamshire to Denver to give her statement to the press. She said: ‘If it doesn’t bother me, I don’t think it ought to bother anyone else.’ When Mr. Hart saw that all his devices had been rendered useless, he finally admitted to the illicit relationship in these words: “Adultery is not a crime. It’s a sin. And that is between me and Lee, and me and God.”

However, this attempt at justification failed to satisfy the American public. Where Mr. Hart’s name as future president had topped the list of opinion polls, it now, after the incident, came last on the list. And in the end, he found himself alone. According to Time magazine, his sexual relationship with the actress amounted to his “political death.” The affair was discovered on May 3, and within five days, on May 8, he had to quit saying he was withdrawing from the race and would then quietly disappear from the stage.⁴¹

Time magazine⁴² rounds off its long article with these words: “Americans now demand the same intimate knowledge about their leaders that once was reserved for the romantic entanglements of Clark Gable or Elizabeth Taylor. Rather than wrestling with the complexities of arms control and a troubled economy, the public tends to look for personalities they can trust, whose judgement and integrity make them feel comfortable.”

The same point was made by George Reedy, press secretary of the former American president, Lyndon Johnson, in these words: “What counts with a candidate for President is his character, and nothing shows it like his relationship with women. Here you have a man who is asking you to trust him with your bank account, your children, your life and your country for four years. If his own wife can’t trust him, what does that say?”

It is a fact that one who establishes illicit sexual relations only proves that he has no mental discipline. He has no power to control his feelings and emotions. Such a person is not at all trustworthy in respect of his character. There is a strong fear that this psychological weakness might lead him to sacrifice great national interests for the fulfillment of his personal desires. Such a person is not even trustworthy in day-to-day life, let alone in a high government position.

Experience shows that breaking the limits set by God in matters of sexual relationships is not simply a religious evil. It is not just a sin, but a crime as well—possibly, in terms of its consequences, one of the greatest crimes of all.

SURROGACY

Surrogacy is one of the products of the modern age. The statistics have revealed that 500 children have been born through artificial insemination from 1976 to 1986 in the U.S. There are about one dozen surrogate centers at the moment in the U.S. The number is expected to increase because there are about fifteen percent married people who are infertile.⁴³

William Stern and Elizabeth Stern had no issue, so they decided to secure one through using the womb of someone on payment. In 1985 they made a contract with Mary Beth Whitehead for $ 20,000 to carry their child. Mr. Stern’s sperm was then injected into her womb, resulting in the birth of a baby girl. After carrying the child in her womb for nine months, her motherly instinct was aroused. She refused to hand over the child to the Stern couple. This case was taken to the court which decreed the handing over of the baby to Mr. Stern in view of the contract. After having won the case, Mr. Stern came with five policemen to Mrs. Whithead, who had already escaped through the back door with the child. However, she was later traced to another town and finally the child was delivered to the Sterns.

Such cases have set out ethical arguments in the U.S. on the matter of surrogacy. The Bishop of New Jersey commented: Surrogacy exploits a child as a commodity and exploits a woman as a baby-maker.’⁴⁴ The woman who bears a child for another person suffers severe psychological complexes. One such woman, by the name of Elizabeth Kane, said: “I miss my baby. I had to suppress those feelings for years.” The unnatural concept of sexual freedom results in unnatural problems, the above case being only one of many such examples.

WOMAN AND WAR

When Germany invaded the erstwhile U.S.S.R. in 1941, the Soviet government made emotional appeals to its citizens to treat the saving of their motherland as a sacred duty. Of those who joined the military in response to these appeals, 800,000 were girls between the ages of 15 and 16. A book has recently been published in Moscow entitled War’s Unwomanly Face⁴⁵ which deals with the experiences of these girls. During her four years of research, the authoress travelled to one hundred cities and interviewed 200 women who had participated in the war.

The book reveals many hitherto unknown facts about women’s participation in the war, one of which is that many women began to conceal the fact that they had ever had anything to do with the war. “We wanted to become ordinary girls again. Marriageable girls.” One of the interviewees, an educated woman by the name of Vera Safronova Davdova, said, “I believe that the women reacted to the war in a completely different way from the men. The men were more matter of fact and casual about the experience, whereas the women reacted in an overwhelmingly emotional manner.”

In recent times, a great deal of research has been done to discover the true nature of women and their inborn aptitudes. An attempt has been made to understand the female species scientifically. Astonishingly enough, the findings of these researches and investigations corroborate the view of women taken by Islam.

Modem research has shown that woman is sensitive by nature and is more emotional than man. This discovery makes it clear that it is not proper to have women enter those areas where cool and objective decision-making is required, irrespective of the circum-stances, and where “manliness” rather than “femininity” is a basic prerequisite.

In the departments of politics, war, international relations, large-scale industrial planning and, not the least important, in the law-courts, mental discipline and dispassionate decision-making are of the utmost importance. In such fields, the decision-makers have to be able to rise above the pressures of the immediate environment. Women, because of their inborn emotionalism, are unsuited to such tasks. Men, on the other hand, being relatively less emotional, are better able to deal with, the contingencies of their position.

It is because of this biological difference between men and women that Islam has assigned them separate spheres of influence. This is not a matter of gradation, but of a difference of workplace or field of action. This difference is supported in every way by scientific research. The truth is that it is the champions of feminism who are unscientific by the standards of today, and not the upholders of traditional Islamic attitudes.

DEGRADATION INSTEAD OF PROGRESS

The 29th December 1986 publication of Time was a special number which was titled, “A Letter to the year 2086.” This issue covered the happenings in the following century in the U.S. One part of it related to the state of the family as could be foreseen for the next century. A part of it is reproduced here: “The American family, not 50 years ago the rock on which the country built its church, has fractured into atoms with separate orbits. The American woman, having shunned motherhood and house-wifehood 15 years ago to establish herself in the labor market, now seeks to balance all three lives like dinner plates on sticks. The American man finds himself in new and scary territory and scrambles for adjustment. When the American man and woman part company, as half the newly married couples are expected to do these days, the American child is suddenly stranded, growing taller without a structure.”⁴⁶

As they near the close of the twentieth century the American intellectual class are acknowledging that what they thought of as the ladder of progress, at the beginning of the 20th century, has turned out to be the ladder of destruction. Taking women out of their homes has only resulted in the total disruption of the American family system. The rosy plan of liberating woman has, in practice, resulted in so many social evils.

Now new thinking is emerging from a revision of past errors, but modem woman is not ready to go back to her former role as a housewife, even if the life adopted by her of necessity involves her bearing the burdens of both the home and the workplace. What kind of progress is it which culminates in destruction? How strange is this freedom which, in practice, has turned into a new kind of bondage!

Notes

1.  Time, January 26, 1987.

2.  Indian Express (New Delhi), January 14, 1987.

3.  The Hindustan Times (New Delhi), January 12, 1987.

4.  Indian Express (New Delhi), January 14, 1987.

5.  Plain Truth, September 1986.

6.  Ibid.

7.  Indian Express (New Delhi), January 14, 1987.

8.  The Times of India (New Delhi), February 19, 1987.

9.  Time, February 2, 1987.

10. Ibid.

11. The Quran, 5:5.

12. The Times of India (New Delhi), March 19, 1987.

13. Reader’s Digest, March 1987.

14. Ibid., p. 135.

15. Ibid., p. 142.

16. Ibid., p. 140.

17. Ibid., p. 137.

18. Time, March 23, 1987.

19. Ibid., p. 35.

20. Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Masnad, 3/446.

21. The Times of India, March 18, 1987.

22. The Hindustan Times, March 19, 1987.

23. Time, March 20, 1972.

24. Ibid., p. 30.

25. Ibid., August 10, 1987, p. 25.

26. Plain Truth, June 1987.

27. This information has been derived from Span, an American magazine, in its issue of September 1987. The article is titled: “Putting Kids First. The New generation of American fathers is balancing the demands of careers and children.”

28. Ben J. Wattenberg, The Birth Dearth (1987), p. 48.

29. Time, March 23, 1987, pp. 18-19.

30. Ibid., April 13, 1987.

31. The Times of India (New Delhi), March 30, 1987.

32. Evening News (New Delhi), June 27, 1984.

33. Newsweek, January 21, 1985.

34. The word “Pyrrhic” has come from a Greek king, Pyrrhus (295-272 B.C.) who invaded Italy in the third century B.C. to aid Tarentun against Rome. After a protracted battle, in which he sustained heavy losses, Pyrrhus won a victory over Rome, finally to be defeated at Beneventum in 275. Hence “Pyrrhic victory” has come to be associated with a victory which brings disaster in its wake.

35. The Times of India (New Delhi), April 30, 1987.

36. Ibid., May 5, 1987.

37. Time, May 11, 1987.

38. Ibid., May 25, 1987.

39. Miami Herald, May 3, 1987.

40. Time, May 18, 1987.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid., January 19, 1987.

44. Ibid.

45. S. Alexiyerich, War’s Unwomanly Face, Progress Publishers, Moscow.

46. Time, December 29, 1986.