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From Issue: 610 [Read full issue]
The Family
The family remains the constitutive point of reference for everyone. Equally, the modern epoch is characterised by the will for independence, freedom and individualism. One must make oneself on one's own, fly with one's own wings as soon as possible, and in this sense the familial space becomes something of a prison. Yet, to listen to any mother or father, we are persuaded that what everyone wants as best for their children is a balanced, open and serene familial environment. Daily life today, however, makes things increasingly difficult: couples are separating, break-ups are multiplying and imbalances increasing. No one is pleased at this state of affairs, any reading of divorce, and single-parent family statistics can only be accompanied by bitterness and anxiety.
The Islamic point of references is, in the most clearest of fashions, opposed to this splintering process. If modernity can only be obtained at this price, then we understand why the Quran and the Sunna reject the actualisation of such modernisation. Similarly, if the whole world is caught in the rising of this vogue, being ashamed to refer to the family, then the Muslim, wherever he is, should remind others of its importance, its meaning and its finality. The family makes the human being. To ask man to be without family is tantamount to asking an orphan to give birth to his own parents. How can man do it?
Islam does not depart from the sense of this priority. It is an obligation for all Muslim societies not to spare anything in their effort to preserve those structures which allow for respect of family life. This includes work, education, taxes and allowances and even policies of urbanisation which we know today can have a huge impact on the private lives of city dwellers.
Compiled From:
"Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity" - Tariq Ramadan, pp. 36, 37