by Mehrézia Labidi-Maïza

The Muslim family may look as strong and immutable as a citadel, but in reality it is a fragile citadel. It depends on the emotions and attitudes of its members.

If I had to define the Muslim family, I would say, "It is a citadel whose foundations are made of love, its walls of duties and rights, and its roof of mercy." The family is one of the main topics of the holy Qur'an, which deals with its different aspects: marriage, child rearing, divorce, heritage, and rights and duties inherent to kinship. The family is at the heart of the Islamic social vision.

Since society undergoes evolution on the moral, economic, social, cultural, and political levels, the family continuously faces new challenges and has to cope with this constant change. Therefore, the Muslim family, which looks as strong and immutable as a citadel, is in reality a fragile citadel, depending on the emotions and attitudes of its members. These latter are human beings influenced by changing times and epochs. While trying to perpetuate the traditional model of the family, they are aware that they have to comply with the requirements of modernity.

To build a family, we need a couple, a man and a woman who agree to contract marriage in the name of Allah and with his blessings and to live according to the tradition of his Messenger, Muhammad, peace be upon him. The holy Qur'an describes man and woman as created from the same essence, "Nafs wahida."1 This equality of origin engenders human and spiritual equality but gives to each of them peculiar biological and social roles in order to make them complementary to each other and not rivals of each other. Thus, marriage is depicted as "a strong rope"2 uniting husband and wife with a relationship based on "tenderness and love" and "mercy," and making each of them "serene" and "confident" in his or her partner3. To reinforce and complete the recommendations given by the Qur'an, the Messenger, peace be upon him, taught the first generation of Muslims to facilitate marriage of their youngsters in order to preserve virtue and social order. He exhorted young men to marry "pious women and you will be a winner"4 and advised fathers to accept suitors for their daughters if "they have a good morality, otherwise there would be corruption in society."5

Nowadays, many obstacles hinder the way to marriage of young people; some are of an economic nature: the cost of the wedding ceremony, the large dowries requested by families for their daughters, the desire of some families to buy very expensive furniture for the newly married couple; some are bad social traditions: choosing brides from the same social class, forcing girls to marry a man chosen by the family. Islam loathes these bad practices, which delay marriage or impose loveless marital life on men and women. Families that adopt these negative practices are betraying the spirit of Muslim principles.

The "strong rope" that ties husband and wife together has to be a rope of love and tenderness and never a rope of oppression and frustration. Indeed, the holy Qur'an describes the intimate relation between the married couple, using a very nice metaphor, as close as that we have with our own clothes: "Allowed to you on the night of the fasts, is the approach to your wives. They are your garments. And ye are their garments."6 The garment protects the body, keeps it warm, and embellishes it, and so shall the spouse.

The family becomes a reality when the married couple has children. The holy Qur'an deals with the rights and duties of fathers, mothers, and children in a very detailed and precise way in many chapters, especially chapters 2, 4, 24, and 31. It depicts the family as a network of relations based on mutual solidarity and complementary roles and shared feelings, not limited only to parents and children but extended also to uncles, aunts, grandparents, in-laws; even neighbors are considered, in way, a part of the family.

The first duty of children after that of believing in God is that of obeying their parents: "Thy Lord hath decreed that ye worship none but Him, and that ye be kind to parents. Whether one or both of them attain old age in thy life, say not to them a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honour. And, out of kindness, lower to them the wing of humility, and say: 'My Lord! Bestow on them Thy Mercy even as they cherished me in childhood.'"7

The requirements of modern life often do not allow children to live with their parents, yet Muslim young adults always keep in touch with their immediate direct relatives, provide for their financial needs, and prefer not to leave them in retirement homes when they become old. In general, Muslims believe that being good toward one's parents is rewarded by God's blessings in one's life.

In return, parents are required to provide for their children a safe environment and an adequate education. Islamic law secures for the child the following rights: to enjoy good health and be protected from disease, to grow up in a family, to have a name, to receive an education and acquire competence in life, to live in peace and security, and to enjoy human dignity. If the family fails to fulfil its duties, the society shall take care of the child. The ummah, the Muslim community, is also seen as a family. Indeed, the Messenger, peace be upon him, declared believers to be brothers and sisters and said to them, "Believers' community is like a wall built of individual stones, each of them backing and strengthening the other."8

He depicted fathers and mothers as shepherds or pastors of their families. As such, they are accountable for the path on which they lead their children. To the father, Islamic tradition gives a moral authority called qiwama. He is the head of the family but not its master; his authority is in reality a responsibility toward the other members of the family. Muslim fathers who nowadays behave as absolute chief by oppressing their children and depriving them of tenderness are ignorant of the teachings of their religion.

To the mother, Islam offers a privileged place within the family and a subtle power over her children, boys and girls. This power is based on numerous recommendations of the holy Qur'an and of the Messenger, peace be upon him, and nurtured by social traditions. The mother plays a key role in transmitting religious education to the children and in giving them the basic elements to build their identity as Muslim persons. Chawqui, a famous Arab Muslim poet, said, "Educate a mother and you will educate a whole people."

Muslim parents have to be at the same time murrabi, that is to say "trainers of the souls," and muallim, which means "instructors of the minds," since Islamic education never divorces spiritual teachings from transmitting knowledge.

I would like to end this article with a personal testimony. I was born in a Muslim family in Tunisia. As a child, I received the local family tradition from my grandmother, a peasant woman who used a very nice image advising me to be as delicate and docile as a gazelle--apparently very fragile but strong enough to withstand the harsh life of the desert--to be a "good Arab woman." At the same time, she enjoined me to be like a lioness, to be a good mother capable of protecting her children and securing her home. I must say that it is difficult to reconcile the two images, but I do my best to achieve this ideal.

My father was the imam of our city, the Islamic religious leader who teaches religion and leads collective prayers. From him I received my Muslim education. As an enlightened man, he taught my sisters and me to be proud of being Muslim women and made us aware of our rights and duties toward husbands, family, and society, in compliance with Islam's principles. He also encouraged us to study in public school and build a career, since he was convinced that a Muslim woman nowadays should be an educated and independent woman to cope with modern life.

Owing to this education, I have chosen to build my own family with my husband on common feelings and common thought. Besides tenderness uniting us, we share the same attitude toward our respective families and our religious tradition. Our families were involved in the organization of our marriage and are still tightly linked to our life as a couple, in spite of the fact that they live in Tunisia and we live in France.

While having an independent family life, we maintain moral and material links with our families. We visit them twice a year. During our stay, we start by visiting our mothers and paying tribute to them, and then we take our children to visit the tombs of our fathers, where we recite the first chapter of the holy Qur'an and give alms to honor their memories. We tell our children that we behave according to the teachings of Islam and we hope that they will do the same thing for us when we become old and after we pass away. We always meet with our uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews, for we want our children to realize that as individuals they belong to a big family and that they share with its members the same collective memory. This memory helps each of them to build his or her inner self while living in France. We want them to be deeply rooted in our home country and in our Muslim culture but also to be open to their French social environment. We are aware that they belong to the French culture, and we hope that they reconcile their Muslim faith with their French citizenship.

Together as a small family we have two common prayers extracted from the Qur'an: "Lord! May our spouses and children be a source of happiness to us" and "Lord! Bless our family and guide us on the path of virtue." We usually say these prayers after our daily devotions, which we try to accomplish together whenever the frenetic rhythm of Parisian life allows this.

Notes

1. Qur'an, chapter 4, verse 1.
2. Qur'an, chapter 4, verse 21.
3. Qur'an, chapter 30, verse 21.
4. Sahih Al-Bukhari, Book of Marriage, chapter on equity in the choice of partners, no. 3700, reported by Abu Hurayra.
5. Sunan ibn Majjah, Book of Marriage, equity of partners, no. 1957, reported by Abu Hurayra.
6. Qur'an, chapter 2, verse 187.
7. Qur'an, chapter 17, verses 23-24.
8. Hadith reported by Bukhari.