Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (28 page)

the means for implementing Islamic law have been variously constructed.
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The effect of these new configurations on women and the family is another part of the backdrop for my considerations. The ideas of family underlying these new configurations are often severely detrimental to present com- plexity in real family circumstances up against the globalization of gross consumption and the emphasis given in Enlightenment articulations that what it means to be human is primarily a notion of discrete individualism.

Furthermore, the phenomenon of the new global economy bears heavily upon considerations of family in local contexts under the umbrella of build- ing pluralist nation-states. Despite the fact that Muslims have applied some of the most advanced modern research to debates over modern economic

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systems, the primacy of capitalism – with its bastard child, consumerism – has never been challenged. Select Muslim nation-states have benefited from the precious oil resources that the Creator just happened to put under their feet and have rushed to benefit in global economic terms. Economic reforms did not address economics as an ethical issue, resulting in greater consum- erism. Muslims and other ethical thinkers need to debate the politics of economic power within the context of the gross disparities of consumption. A critical look at the global economy shows the many ways in which large populations of the world continue to be victimized and sustained in poverty, especially affecting women and children within existing notions of family. According to statistics
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from the United Nations Development Program (U.N.D.P.), 86% of the world’s consumable goods are consumed by 20% of the world’s population, while the remaining population – four times the number of the wealthy top 20% – must divide the remaining 14% of the world’s consumable goods. The lowest 20% of the population consumes a paltry 1.3%. We live in a world where the massive existence of poverty is accepted simultaneously with gross consumption and waste by a small portion of the world’s population. Meanwhile, what is viewed as normative is based solely on the consumer gluttons whose lifestyles and perspectives are advertised the world over as the goal toward which all people aspire. The moral implications of this are fundamental to the family in the future of an Islamic ethos that claims universal social justice and

human dignity as a goal.

THE NUCLEAR FAMILY MOVES INTO DOMINATION OVER THE EXTENDED FAMILY

“With the industrial revolution the men departed to the factories and the offices and women’s sphere of power shrank, but her role of responsibility for domestic piety and family morality became almost complete.”
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There is evidence that the idea of the nuclear family, one man cohabiting with one woman and living with their offspring, had some history in medi- eval times in Europe. However, for our purposes, the most significant factor impacting on the construction of the nuclear family
–
fast becom-

ing
the
basic family structure in modern society
–
was the industrial revolution.

In cottage industries long preceding the industrial revolution, production was centered around the home, and was part of the family structure. All family members had roles to play in production, and the absorption of

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other members was directly related to maintaining the family as the center of productivity. Whether a son brought his wife, or a daughter brought her husband into the family or married out of it, depended on the nature of the family business that needed to be maintained and the resources that prospective and actual conjugal relatives could provide.

The industrial revolution changed the face of modern society, promoting an exploitation of human resources in an unprecedented manner. Human labor was needed for the smooth running of systems of mass production in huge factories away from the home. Slavery was no longer an option. The nuclear family structure provided the most expendable arrangement for supplying the human resources needed in the factories and industries. The nuclear family is still the most popular familial construction in modern civil society today. In modern Muslim society much lip service is still given to the “extended family,” but a cursory look at various consequences of global- ization and shrinking village-life resources leading to mass urbanization shows a new culture of nuclear families with different configurations of connections to extended family members – even if only limited to visits on holidays. The effects of this lip service and of the spread of the nuclear family are part of my concern here.

In cottage industry (where productivity centered around the home), men, women, and children all had vital roles to play. How were these roles altered under the pressures of survival in the new labor force of modern industry? For example, cottage industry observed a natural clock, with most work starting at or just before dawn and ending after dusk. The in- vention of electricity both facilitated the running of factories and provided lights, allowing them to run all night long. In such cases, how is it decided when a worker has worked enough? What if that worker is a child, a single mother, or person with disabilities? New questions and concerns like this led to new labor laws, like child labor laws to help build better conditions against exploiting minors. That is, civil society constructed codes to maintain that which is deemed to be “civil” about society.

In the nuclear family construct, a number of tasks once fulfilled by an extended membership of the predominant family units would come to fall squarely on the shoulders of the more isolated conjugal pair – though of course, not equally. The domestic space became the irrefutable respon- sibility of the woman.This included all forms of childcare such as skills development, moral upbringing, education, and nurturance, as well as all domestic services like cooking and cleaning for the physical and psycho- logical well-being of all members. While not evaluating the value of these

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tasks intrinsically, their utility and necessity merits acknowledgment of their good. Successfully completing these tasks constitutes success of the family.

A cursory look at family arrangements today will demonstrate how the larger percentages of these tasks still fall upon the woman–wife–mother. She was considered the primary care-taker, a role presumably determined by the absence of out-of-home responsibilities. This was a convenient arrangement when men performed tasks outside the home to acquire the means for providing material support for the family. This arrangement still remains and is considered ideal or natural vis-à-vis various understandings of gender and gender relations in the “family.” This arrangement associates certain menial tasks with the female member of a nuclear pair, and relegates her to a role that is defined by services that are barely recognized and rarely warrant praise in the larger social and political system. Nevertheless, when these tasks fail to produce the kind of offspring deemed desirable, she – and in many cases she alone – can be castigated for this failure.

If these tasks – moral upbringing, child care, domestic services – are indeed intrinsically significant, then their significance should become an essential component integrated in public policy no matter who performs them. As a result of their significance, civil society should construct ways to assist in maintaining them when actual families evolve as a consequence of diverse forces affecting the function and understanding of family, as we have seen increase after colonialism.

Remember, family is a construction of gender relations. It is the socially determined structures of conjugal relations that decide who constitutes an eligible partner, especially – though not exclusively – for the continuity of the

species,

through

procreation.

It involves not only how children are

procreated, but also what kind of environment is created for the basic care of all members and for the upbringing of children.This explains why considerations of “family” are essential to discussions about procreation or reproduction. It is the society that determines reproductive rights and responsibilities. If the goal to continually recreate ourselves as the human species is to be understood fully, then it entails detailed consideration of how we construct family or what we consider to be appropriate gender relations. In a variety of social settings this necessarily extends to include the “roles” of males and females, since children are potential adults who will contribute to forming new “families” into patterns of procreation and productivity. Children within any one social setting are raised to become appropriate adults intended to fulfill appropriate roles for males

A New Hajar Paradigm
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and females. This bears heavily on the development patterns for children in their upbringing.

Thus the word family is also a word for gender relations. What construc- tions of gender roles will best serve particular social structures as conceived in various contexts? As Muslims, the ethos of the Qur’an and traditions of the Prophet lead toward a social order that facilitates the surrender of both individuals and the collective to the will of Allah. At one level this basically means following the rules of Islam, or obeying Allah’s commandments. At a more fundamental or existential level, however, this is more than rules alone. It means individual and collective development of a mindset that places remembrance of Allah uppermost. For when a rule does not exist, only a mindset in surrender can formulate such a rule or make a morally conscientious decision that is commensurate with the ultimate goal of surrender. As Audre Lorde puts it, to provide “the power to seek new

systems of being in the world . . . as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.”
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THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMY, OR, YOUR WORTH IN PAPER MONEY

The new global economy is singularly the most significant factor since the industrial revolution to impact upon family life and its meaning. This impact needs to be sufficiently examined in the Islamic context and in Islamic constructions of gender relations or family. Instead we are falling headlong into its effects and the unexamined conceptions of family are left to fend for themselves – just like the industrial revolution left the nuclear family couple to fend for themselves.

For example, salaried income
–
the bastard child of the industrial revolution

–
has become the single basis for determining individual and collective worth and dignity. The notion of an upstanding moral individual or institution no longer exists without an economic base. Those institutions that we support and develop, including non-government organizations, community-based organ- izations, Islamic associations, educational facilities, and other constructions for learning and research are all salaried or capital-dependent. Likewise, wage earning affects the construction of the family, which once operated around a non-wage-earning primary caretaker. This is one fact that Islamic resurgent romanticism consistently overlooks in the promotion of the ideal Islamic family. Either the family suffers economically from the absence of the female’s neces- sary financial contributions, or it is deluded into pretending that she is in all

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respects an at-home mom, since working in the salaried sector does not relieve her from any of the chores attributed to her when she was at home. Increasingly, salaried income has come to be the evaluative measure for worth of the individual. At one time in history the goal of university education was the development of the learned person. Now, universities are increasingly becoming corporate bureaucracies with the goal of producing competitive wage earners. Professional positions and jobs are evaluated on the basis of the salaries they offer. While both wage-earning and the evaluative measure of wage-earning are increasingly extended to the female, the consideration of the tasks heretofore exclusively performed by her as primary care-taker who was not obligated outside of the familial home

environment burden.

has

gone

unchanged.

Instead,

she

suffers

from a double

The “family” as the basic unit of care in society cannot survive with dignity in a world where one’s sole measure of worth and the basis of one’s dignity is a paper money system. Yet the well-being of the home is also dependent upon the nurturing and care-taking once considered in and of itself a “role” that was identified with the mother/wife. She is still expected to fulfill this role, but she must likewise go into the public sector and compete in terms sufficient to secure her increasingly necessary wage contri- butions to that family. The only way to resolve this dilemma is by more egalitarian family structures and ideals.

We are living in a time of unprecedented change and development in human civilization in light of new technologies and globalization, especially of the economy. These changes bear heavily upon the moral attitudes of humankind. Extensive discussion is warranted about the ethical implica- tions of these technological and economic developments and the global economy. These discussions should include analysis of gender roles. This nuclear family is not only the family of the male–female couple as stewards only over their biological offspring; it is also decidedly male-dominated. Despite the disruption of the extended family networks of all traditional societies, including Muslim societies, this focus on male dominance appears to be a compensation for all the other negative consequences that result from the loss of the extended family network with immeasurable value to women, wives, and mothers who have become exclusively responsible for the care of all members. The care-taking role of the woman has suffered the most negative consequences in the demise of the extended family since her role within the family has been severely stretched.