The roles of men & women
 

The West has not defined clear roles for men and women in society. Their family laws are shambolic and their morality laws hypocritical. Sexuality has been transferred from private to public in order to sell commodities. Clinton's impeachment trial has exposed how deeply debauched everyday life has become. Countless ills stem from the fundamental denial that there should be a specific code governing the interactions between the genders - a social system.

Gender roles in the West

Gender roles apparently are no longer an issue in the West. All are now equal. All now compete on an equal footing. Women run financial institutions, keep order in the House of Commons, negotiate peace in Northern Ireland, mediate in the Middle East and more important wear the same designer labelled; scents, running shoes and walking boots as men. Calvin Klein, Nike and Timberland don't discriminate so why should anyone else. Men and women can pursue happiness without hindrance from discrimination. It is politically incorrect to even mention differences between the sexes. The West has shed those shackles and chains imposed by stereotyped gender roles and is now free to progress in life unimpeded by retrograde traditions. Women are liberated, slavery is abolished, everyone has a say and every one has clearly defined rights. Which are enshrined in universal charters. Pluralistic society has ripened to maturity and is living comfortably with itself and with the ghosts of its misogynistic past.

Evading the role of genders

Has the West really exorcised sexual stereotype or merely swept them under the rug. Are the man/woman differences still there? Anyone with a half-decent brain can see that they have been reincarnated in different forms. Until the seventies, the word gender was confined to the discussion of grammar, then only nouns and adjectives were up for debate. However, today bookshops are stocked full, Web sites abound and university courses run and run discussing the 'meltdown' or the 're-defining' or the 're-building' or even the 'collapsing' of masculinity and femininity. There are books that discuss queer politics, that try to demolish the whole idea of men and women. Books on how the differences are merely arbitrary rules that society imposes, books on gender re-assignment or the popular press that goes into the realm of the bizarre. Like the recent best seller, Men Are from Mars Women Are from Venus, by John Gray.

Gender differences are a fact

So why does the subject of gender still haunt the West? Because gender differences are an inevitable part of human existence. Any form of communal organisation must take into account the differences between men and women as part of the system. The West refuses to address or even acknowledge the issue of gender at the legislative and governmental level. The West's refusal to explicitly acknowledge gender differences has led to problems in various aspects of public and private life. The conventions concerning acceptable behaviour between employee and employer have shifted. The laws concerning sexually harassment at work have shifted. More importantly the manipulation of these norms, laws and conventions have shifted. The whole of the Starr report highlighted how deeply sordid the work place has become in Western societies. This was also seen with the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill case and countless others that do not reach the headlines. The thin line drawn between harmless flirting and harassment has become blurred. In fact that thin line never really existed. The only way in which it can be drawn is following clearly defined gender roles and job descriptions encompassing rules concerning gender. One of the main things that really riled the liberal Democrats on Capital Hill about Clinton's impeachment trial was the hypocrisy of the Republican prosecutors. They all knew that it was normal acceptable behaviour to have relations with secretaries and interns. Few were shocked at Clinton's sexual behaviour. It was the covering of his tracks that he was on trial for and not his flagrant abuse of the employer/ employee relationship. So who was to blame; the testosterone drenched president, or the young opportunist golddigger, or her publicity seeking friend with a tape machine, or perhaps the obsessed right wing do-gooders. The answer is none of the above. It is Western society's insistence on burying its head in the sand over gender roles.

Family law thrown into chaos

Political events are not the only casualty of the vague lines drawn between decency and indecency. Family law has been thrown into chaos. Fathers are scared to kiss or hug their own children through fear of accusations of child abuse. A whole industry has grown out of 'therapists' implanting thoughts of abuse in people's minds and calling it recovered memory. Real domestic violence is going on without a trace, whilst accusations are traded left right and centre.

In Canada today police have adopted a policy of placing male partners under mandatory arrest for any such accusation of domestic violence. Men are effectively found guilty until proven innocent. This is similar to the British Prevention of Terrorism Act where people can be held without trial, only this time the reason is not for having an Irish / Arab accent but for kissing your daughter good night in a funny way.

There is currently much discussion about harassment laws and their implications for the art of flirting. This is surely a fine art requiring effort, quick-wittidness and dexterity. It is the skill of turning normal actions into sexual semaphores in the same way that peacocks fan their tails. Serious scientists profligate flirting as an evolutionary mechanism by which nature has enabled us to select a mate without risking pregnancy with every potential candidate. A selected partner should be fertile, genetically different, healthy enough to promise viable offspring, and also help with parenting.

Over 30 years ago Eibl-Eibesfeld drew parallels between mate-seeking animals and flirting humans. By swaying her hips, or emphasising them in tight clothing a woman may draw attention to her good child bearing hips and her bilateral symmetry which indicates her post natal lactation capacity. On the other hand the man may flex his pectorals, flash his Am-Ex gold card and laugh loudly, all supposedly indicating his ability to reproduce, protect his brood and also stay around for full term fatherhood.

Defining a criterion

These theories may or may not be astute observations of the reality of the matter. However, who cares? If Western boffins say this is natural, it makes no difference to Muslims. Islam forbade this type of behaviour. More importantly Islam offers a whole system for regulating male/female relations. This system is based on Allah's law (swt) and not the thoughts of German scientists, studying African Monkeys in Massachusetts' institutes. We take our actions from Allah's (swt) law. Westerners base their behaviour on that of animals. This may not be that surprising. Many don't need the approval of science to act like animals.

Attacking Islam is a diversion

The West has created countless problems for itself by ignoring the sexual differences. However to come to terms with its problems it has employed the technique of criticising others in order to divert attention from the sea of debauchery that it is now drowning in. Muslims know that the Western media's portrayal of Islam is totally inaccurate. However in the field of male/female relations it reaches dizzy heights of venomous vitriol.

In an Observer article (7/2/99) Carol Sarler described her encounters with three Muslim girls; one aged 15 was forced into marriage, another, aged 14, was beaten to within an inch of her life by her family and the last, her neighbour aged 16, was driven to hanging herself by her husband. ''For his part she was there to work and breed.'' She goes on to say ''Heads (of schools) who know perfectly well that a planned 'holiday' in a distant land might mean vanishing off the face of the earth...'' Perhaps they don't depart from the face of the earth, merely off the planet which Ms Sarler inhabits. The reader may wonder which suburb of planet bigot, Fantasy Island or Disney World she lives in but her whole description bares little relation to reality.

A couple of weeks before this article appeared BBC Radio 4 broadcast (23/1/99) a report from Pakistan by Olenka Frenkiel describing atrocities against women performed in the name of Islam. She reported how she ''...found women incarcerated, tortured, and murdered in numbers so alarming that if it were happening to a racial minority the world would see it as a violation of human rights.'' She carried quotes like ''If our women are unfaithful we kill them'' and ''women are despicable creatures, they have a flaw. They can not stick to one man.'' She concluded, ''this is the closest my generation has seen to living fascism.'' Spiced up televised highlights of this report were also broadcast. One could assume viewing numbers were low as most sensible people would have been watching that bastion of civilised Western culture, ''Cilla Black's Blind Date'' that was showing on the other channel.

Twentieth Century Orientalism

This attack from the West is not a novel phenomenon. Indeed it was one of the main weapons in the armoury of the Orientalists of the last century. They attempted an intellectual assault on Muslims directed at several of our beliefs and practices. The status of women, the family structure and the principle of divorce were their pet hates. At that time Christian opinions on marriage and divorce dominated in Europe. Divorce was considered a grave sin. How things have changed. Around 320,000 couples marry in Britain each year and about 167,000 couples divorce over the same period, according to Government statistics (1998).

According to a BMA report (Radford and Richardson June 1998) one in four British women are subjected to physical abuse at the hands of her husband or boyfriend. Another survey found that one in five children subjected to abuse at home, is living in a household where their mother is also attacked. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children claimed that out of 1,767 child abuse cases on its books, 357 involved domestic violence (NSPCC May 1998). British TV and newspaper journalists would be better off sorting out their own problems.

Islam accounts for gender differences

Islam unashamedly takes into account the differences between the genders. There are laws governing the relationship of men and women in all realms of social, private and communal life. Moreover Islam teaches us certain attitudes toward the genders. Honour and respect for the female and for family structures are part of our psyche. These laws, attitudes and mechanisms for bringing these laws into existence are encapsulated in the Islamic social system. This system is a clear and well defined code that is wholly compatible with the very needs and desires of the community and individual.

Allah (swt) created man and woman with a different nature which gives them different roles to play. There are some attributes that are exclusive to men and some that are exclusive to women. Women bear children and wet-nurse babies. Men are physically stronger and are more capable in certain respects. The normal natural differences between men and women are explicitly and implicitly acknowledged in Islam. We Muslims should be aware of the correct system and adopt it in our lives and not be fooled by the sanctimonious political correctness of the West. We have no respect for the trends and fads of Western political correctness and have neither the energy nor inclination to refute the ignorant opinions of Sunday newspaper journalists.

Salim Fredericks