| |
|
| Muslims
Discuss Their Views of Family |
|
| |
Thursday,
November 18, 1999 |
| |
BY
PEGGY FLETCHER STACK
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
GENEVA -- Black-veiled
women and white-turbaned men at the
podium and in the audience bespoke the
Muslim presence at the World Congress of
Families II, a four-day conference
celebrating the "natural
family."
The conference, which
concluded Wednesday, brought together
Muslim, Catholic, Mormon, Protestant and
Jewish representatives to express their
hopes and fears about the future of the
family, defined by participants as
consisting of a man, a woman and their
children.
Several Islamic
speakers said Muslims have many of the
same fears about the decline in
traditional family values and roles as
the other religious groups.
But there also are
differences in their understanding of the
family.
In Islam, the family
also includes "collateral relatives,
their brothers and sisters, their
paternal and maternal uncles and aunts
and their children," said Nafez
Nazzal, an Islamic scholar who teaches at
Brigham Young University's Jerusalem
Center. BYU's World Family Policy Center
was a conference co-sponsor.
For another, Islam's
holy book, the Koran, permits a man to
marry up to four wives. Speakers,
however, were quick to distance
themselves from polygamy, even though it
is practiced in many countries of the
Middle East and Africa.
"Polygamy is
disappearing," said Jehan Sadat,
widow of assassinated Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat. "It is rare in Egypt
and not done by educated families, but
among the rural poor."
Sadat said polygamy
was approved during the seventh century,
when Islam's Prophet Mohammed and his
followers endured religious wars that
killed many men and left women
husbandless.
"But no woman
wanted polygamy," she said.
The Koran teaches that
a husband must treat all wives fairly and
equally, she said.
Polygamy is not
customary in Iran, said Fatemah Hashemi,
daughter of ex-President Hashemi
Rafsanjani. "Sometimes people do it
in secret," she said. "But if
it happens, people denounce it."
In any case, the roles
of men and women are carefully prescribed
by Islamic scripture, Nazzal said.
The husband is to
"provide for the necessities of his
family, to discipline the children and be
loyal to his wife," he said. The
wife's obligation is "faithfulness
to her husband, the care of the children
and management of the household,
providing comfort and contentment to her
husband and children."
Some critics may
believe Muslim women are deeply
subservient to their husbands and even
subject to physical mistreatment.
"Those people are
not right," Hashemi said, adding
that such behavior would violate Islamic
teachings. If men are oppressive, it is
"because of malbehavior, not our
religion."
Both Sadat and Hashemi
acknowledge their part in pushing Egypt
and Iran to adopt laws that increase the
equality of men and women.
In 1979, Sadat worked
on civil-rights legislation that became
known as "Jehan's Law."
It gave divorced women
the right to immediate alimony, rather
than having to wait for years. It also
allowed divorced women to stay in their
homes, while their husbands move out,
rather than vice versa as had been the
custom.
"After the law,
the number of divorces decreased by 25
percent" in Egypt, Sadat said.
But in Iran, divorce
remains the biggest problem facing
families, Hashemi said. Although the
percentage of divorces is small -- only 8
percent -- women still struggle to
support themselves and their children in
the aftermath.
Meantime, the
increasing number of working women in
Iran has caused them, like their Western
sisters, to cope with balancing career
and motherhood.
"The presence of
women in social fields, although
providing them with an active and sharing
role. . . has also diminished their
contribution in the management of the
family," Hashemi said. "As a
consequence of women's absence from the
home, children of tender age are given to
the care of nurseries. This deprives them
of true love."
For centuries, Islam
has governed reproductive issues, said
Ayatollah Mohammed Ali Taskhiri, head of
Iran's Organization of Culture and
Islamic Relations, in a prepared speech
read by an associate.
"If population
growth becomes a danger to the welfare of
a region and its plans, owing to some
uncontrollable circumstances, the Supreme
Authority has the right to order the
family planning but rejects abortion and
sterilization," Taskhiri said.
In Islam, abortion is
forbidden as a means of birth control or
in the case of rape, but is allowed if
the mother's life "is surely exposed
to danger or if the fetus is afflicted
with an incurable disease," he said.
Taskhiri said Islam
occupies a middle ground between the
nations that allow abortion without
restraint and others that are "led
by a church which absolutely prohibits
abortion and any kind of birth control
and family planning by means of
contraceptive pills." |
|
|
| If you are interested in
additional information, or would like to set up a
Families Worldwide Chapter in your community,
please feel free to contact us via
e-mail. Families
Worldwide
75 East Fort Union Blvd.
Salt Lake City, UT 84047
USA
Fax us: USA 801/562-6008,
or Call us: USA 801/562-6185
Send comments and mail to Webmaster
|
|
