A Short Defense of the Extended Family
Living in an extended family is not easy. But most of you probably already know that. After all, growing up in the West where many of our households began as immigrant extended families but quickly transformed into strictly nuclear ones, we have always looked upon extended families with trepidation, if not with disgusted, and thanked God we were not going to repeat that misery of our foremothers and forefathers. Okay, maybe I exaggerate, but only a tad bit. I remember the pitiful looks some of my peers received when they "moved in with their in-laws after being newly married." But it was always "only for a short while, you know, until we move into our real house."
I will be honest; I would always pity my friends who moved in with their in-laws. I believed strongly that a couple should be on its own, renting an apartment for some years and then moving on slowly to something more, like a five-bedroom house, for example. The important thing was that they needed to make a life by themselves, without living with their elders or any extended family members. This, I believed, demonstrated
stability, progress, independence and all those snazzy words. Oh yes, the nuclear family
was the symbol of marital and familial success. What could be further from the truth. The
nuclear family has had profoundly negative impact on marital stability and familial
success. Just look around in your own communities, in your own mosques, in your own
nuclear-familied homes. We must reassess the modern nuclear family unit if we are to curb some of the serious dangers that threaten every notion of familial and martial bliss. My firm belief is that the extended family, when managed properly and dealt with Islamically, helps preserve and make flourish our domestic happiness and healthiness, not hinder it.
THE NUCLEAR FAMILY
The nuclear family-taken for granted as the norm, timeless, and natural-is, in fact, an invention of modern times. It is the furthest thing from natural, and was concocted, not by those seeking out the best way to foster families, but by corporate entrepreneurs questing after the best way to pile on profit. The modern workday seeks to minimize the number of people living in a household in order to make it more efficient. That is, the contemporary wage makes it far more profitable for families to have less dependents, less mouths to feed. This also makes more money for corporations because the more chopped up families are, the more people will be forced to get
themselves a wage. If they cannot get themselves a wage, like the elderly, then they had better get themselves in a position to make other people money. In this way nursing homes help families get rid of excess people who cannot themselves earn their bread and at the same times it creates a new business enterprise. It is no wonder then that this nuclear family is now falling to pieces. Why have small family units at all if we can have individuals who are "independent" and will be of greater
contribution to Corporatocracy? So, teens are told to leave their homes at eighteen (quite a magical number, I suppose) and get a job and start being of some use to the economy.
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IT HAPPENED IN the Masjid of Madinah, the Mosque of the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu alayhe wa sallam. Those who made Salatul-Maghrib there would mostly come together to listen to the weekly lecture in tafseer from well-known mufassir (commentator on the Qur’an) and major scholar of
Islam, the late Shaykh Muhammad al-Ameen Ash-Shinqiti (d.1973). He recited the verse he was going to explain, ayah 56 of Surah al-‘Araf, or The Heights. As he read “Nor shall you spread corruption in the earth after it has been set aright (by God)” the Shaykh choked up and began to sob. He tried to continue, but could not utter a word. To the astonishment of those present, for he was not one known for emotional display, he went on crying inconsolably— until it was time for the salah of isha, as a matter of fact. He was never seen experiencing anything like this before or after.
Qur’anic commentators throughout time have all stated that this verse refers to, and seeks to focus the attention on, the fact that man’s actions, in general, because of ignoring or deviating from God’s teachings which He revealed through the various prophets and messengers from Adam to Muhammad, Allah’s peace be upon them all, tend to harm and corrupt life—all its aspects and everything in it, including man himself. In their discussion of what that means in realistic terms, most commentators explain that guidance from Allah points man to his role and purpose in this life, and His commands provide him with the principles and laws that, when honored, would undoubtedly make his existence on planet Earth sensibly and comfortably livable. Further, many expound and discuss the fact that man, believers included to varying degrees, manage to ignore God’s revealed guidance and introduce mischief into all walks of life which induce damage that has proven to be, incertain situations at least, immeasurably vast and absolutely irreversible.
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O humankind! Worship your Lord,who created you and those before you, so that you may become God-fearing.
(Worship none but) the One who (alone) has made the earth a furnished habitation for you, and (who alone has made) the heaven a (sheltering) edifice, and who (alone) has sent down from the sky water, whereby He brought forth with it the (varied) fruits of (the earth) as a provision for you.Therefore, you shall not set up rivals to God when you know (well that such deities cannot exist) 2:21-22].
IN THESE TWO verses of the Qur'an, Allah Most High is directing
mankind's attention to the factors that sustain our entire existence.
Firstly, our attention is directed to Allah Himself. And we are reminded that He has created us. He is the One responsible for our very existence and those before us. In worshipping Him, we are reminded of His presence in our lives, an important cue that helps us do good deeds and avoid bad ones, even as our alarm clocks help us wake up to study for a test we cannot fail. Our attention is then shifted toward natural phenomena, such as the lands on which we walk, the sky which hovers above us, and the water and fruits we consume every day. Interestingly, each is interrelated: The sky with its protective ozone layer provides just the right atmosphere necessary for plants on the ground to grow. It also houses rain clouds, from which water-the source of life-descends and allows human life to flourish. We cannot function without water and food, and water and food cannot exist in useful fashion without the earth to pool and root in, and without the sky's protective canopy. And all cannot function together without Allah, the Creator of each and their integrative world. The linkage between Allah, Most High, and the natural phenomena mentioned in the verse remains as crucial today as it ever has been in the course of human history. Humans, especially Muslims, must realize that the environment does not exist independently from the very mercy of our Creator. The sky and its ozone layer, which we continually desecrate with our super-efficient pollutants, find themselves under attack by the very humans they protect. Our toxic waste, which we merrily dump into precious bodies of water, threatens water systems across the world with destruction. It's as if the entire human race has revolted against the mercy of Allah and attacked the very things that sustain our existence. Thinking Islamically about the environment means remembering Allah's favor and mercy upon us. It means thinking about nature as an entity in need of care, and not one we can mechanically manipulate without considering the consequences of our actions. It means using another blessing of Allah, our intelligence, to come up with creative and effective solutions to improve the ways in which societies discard their toxic waste.
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CHANGE IS THE law of the universe and life, the sole constant in creation. In fact, change is so persistent in our lives that it almost defies description and analysis. This is so true of change that some philosophers consider the constancy of it baffling:
How could something, which changes in property (due to change), remain the same thing? Some of them believe change makes sense only if it is held to be an inconsistency. Others believe it to be a case of nonidentity. These approaches take analyzing the process of change to extremes. They warrant no worthy results for us because they seek to restrict their analysis of change to an absolute frame of mind that ignores other major facts and laws of life. Most importantly, this line of thinking ignores that this life has a Creator and a Master who is the only absolute there is. He is the One who gave both life and man their transformational nature-as eloquently argued, with respect to man, in this issue's cover article. Let me give you two reasons I reject what they say about change. First, complete understanding of change as the law of life may not be possible without knowing the basic nature of God's laws or sunan as described in the Qur'an. In essence, Allah created life and the universe based on the physical laws that are responsible for the "cause-effect" phenomenon we all know and experience. The first scientist to coin this interesting phrase was Isaac Newton, who famously stated that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." This was given more meaning and relevance by Einstein who said: "Nothing happens until something moves."This is true not just materially but spiritually and emotionally also-at least metaphorically.
Consider, for example, the way we perceive things about our own attitudes and act upon them. None of this actually happens until we move something first: Our thoughts about them. Changing our minds is what changes these things in us, about us, and by us.
Yet this is only half the picture. What remains rests on the fact that Allah has decreed that He can, does, and will change things for whomever and whatever He chooses-irrespective of, and opposite to, all the laws of this life.
The best way to appreciate this is to consider what humans accept as miracles of Allah, like the Flood of Prophet Noah and the birth of Jesus, Allah's peace upon both. The Qur'an gives us yet another situation where Allah made things happen against His own laws. This is found in the story of the Patriarch Prophet, Abraham, alayhes salam. Allah decreed he would have a son, Isaac, from his barren and very old wife, Sarah. After narrating the discussion between the angels and Abraham, when she heard the news that she would give birth to Isaac and expressed her disbelief on account her and her husband's agedness, "Theysaid: So shall it be! said your Lord. Indeed, it is He who is the All-Wise,All-Knowing."
Why would God do this, break His own laws? We might say, because He can and so that we surely realize who is in control.This is true. But the Qur'an further explains that this is (1) another way that God showers whomever He chooses with mercy and blessings, (2) so that the plan and purpose of the Creator, Lord, and Master of life is completed and perfected, and (3) so that we turn to Him when we have tried everything and failed, when life stubbornly defies us, and we deliberately and wholeheartedly seek His help knowing that He can and will make the change we desire happen for us-and better than we could ever have arranged or anticipated.
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