Mohammad Elshinawy – Is The Nuclear Family Model Islamic
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Brothers and sisters, the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam said in an authentic hadith,
That one of the worthiest reasons for which
a man should be honored and respected
is his daughter
or his sister.
Meaning the fact that he trusted you and
let you marry her.
It's as if he's saying
that no matter what happens after this moment,
whether you wind up liking him or not,
you still have to honor him.
And this notion of you never just proceed
on with your own little,
I will borrow the term nuclear family,
is well established in Islam.
You know, it's If this is the case
that even with marital bonds, relationships
are built that must be honored, then you
can imagine and you would be correct that
it is even more the case with blood
bonds, blood relations.
You know, for instance, when the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam said, you
and your wealth
belong to your parents.
Of course, there is a legal nuance there.
Within reasonability, there are caveats like everything else,
but it has to mean something.
It does mean something at the end of
the day.
And it is perfectly fair, you know, because
you
they will take from your wealth in certain
cases, and if they pass away, you're more
entitled to anyone to their estate, their inheritance.
So it is a two way street.
And also, if you have your own children
one day, then the favor is returned. And
so there's this constant bond, an ongoing dependency
and benefit benefit that is happening through family
relations in Islam.
Or even you think of the notion of
charity begins at home. Very Islamic concept.
Islam says your charity, your generosity,
you are to prioritize
those closest to you in terms of kin
before anyone else.
Allah
said in the Quran,
And that those nearest to you are the
most deserving of your kindness and your generosity.
And you know, you just even think of
the the plethora, the abundance
of ayat versus an ahadith
on the the subject, the the genre of
rahim, of womb relations.
You know, I'll mention to you just one
and it's enough by itself wherein Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala says,
I am ar Rahman, the most merciful.
I created the womb.
And I derived, I extracted for it a
name from my own name. He is a
rahman from the word rahma, mercy, compassion,
and he called the womb
where the baby is formed the rahim because
it is the home of compassion. Right?
And I derived for it a name from
my name, I called
it the So whomever keeps ties, meaning with
the relations that are based on the womb,
blood ties,
I will connect him, meaning to my mercy.
And whomever severs ties with family, with the
womb relations,
I will sever him, meaning cut him off
from my mercy, access to my mercy.
And so there's a lot there. There's a
lot there. And this is why we always
say we have to be careful.
Islam is timeless. And part of Islam being
timeless is that it has a built in
flexibility
where it leaves room for culture.
But Islam does not leave the room altogether
for culture.
There is a basis, there is a foundational
framework,
family included. There is a family framework that
Islam guides us to and calls us to
uphold.
And you know the reason why this is
so important
to reiterate
is because we live in a world that
proposes that there's a model for family
that has always been and will always be,
and there's no other way to imagine family,
which is the so called nuclear family model.
The nuclear family is an experiment.
Okay?
That has been going on for about a
100 years.
And it has fallen on its face. It
has threatened and sabotaged and harmed the individual
and the family.
Like even when people say nuclear family, you
know like the nucleus of something, like its
innermost core, they mean like a tighter, smaller
version of the family just like me and
my spouse, maybe a few kids, maybe a
pet.
But they don't actually even see that as
one unit. They're just describing like the head
count. It's like almost like a a logistical
arrangement.
The people who happen to live under one
roof. They don't even see the nuclear family
as a sacred union that involves rights and
responsibilities towards each other, so you can only
imagine,
you don't need to actually,
how people perceive the extended family. The extended
family is like something
that only someone mentally challenged would sign up
for. Like the extended family is the most
ridiculous thing in the world in that case.
It's so backwards. It's so outdated. It is
nothing but intrusive. It's so restrictive. It's limiting.
It's it's old news.
It just gets in the way, it's bothersome.
And you know,
there is always some truth
to every stereotype.
So yes,
larger families,
does that result in interference, like the in
law interference? Yeah. That happens for sure.
I'll one up you. I'll say there's in
law persecution
in many homes,
imposing.
I always remember doctor Adit on Tawe, great
Syrian scholar who worked as a judge in
Damascus for 50 straight years. And he says,
in his eighties he says this, I have
handled 11,000
marital dispute cases in my career.
3 out of every 4 were because of
the imposition,
imposing of the in laws, the interference of
the in laws on the couple.
And so, yeah. There definitely is
truth to some of the stereotypes.
But those truths
need to get called out, they need to
get washed away. Those toxic elements of the
extended family if you will, need to get
rinsed away by the fountain of Islam, but
you don't want to as the world already
has.
Throw out the baby with the bath water
when you're rinsing.
You don't want to overlook
and overreact
because
this idea
that a more flexible
extended family model
more flexible than the stereotype. But
extended family model, and the benefits we can
get from it, and the harms we can
avoid by benefiting from it. This should be
something
very obvious and undeniable
to any honest thinker. You just sit there
and reflect, you get so many things that
you will never get from the nuclear family.
I'll mention to you some of the benefits
since we don't see it on the ground
as much anymore nowadays.
The first of them is the generations get
to interact.
Right? You don't just garage the elder or
have him die dejected and unwanted, unappreciated,
and neglected.
Actually the the elders, the grandparents,
they find themselves more spirited, more uplifted, more,
young, feeling younger because they're interacting with the
grandchild.
Right?
And the grandchild
or the nephew or whatever it's going to
be or the niece, they also feel more
seasoned about life. They're they're sort of interacting
with the elder, they're understanding more about life,
they're also understanding even death. They're not sanitized
from reality. They see how this works. People
inching closer to the inevitable, departure.
That's just one of the benefits. I'm just
gonna share a quick list with you. I
I'm not gonna share with you studies and
statistics. I'm not gonna share with you horror
stories that I've heard about or had to
deal with myself in my job as a
community leader. The generations interact. That's number 1.
Number 2,
moral conditioning. How do you sort of accustom
someone to a certain set of values, morals?
The extended family, a wider family circle
is a golden opportunity to socialize, like effortlessly
just by being around each other. It's not
just my parents who are crazy and believe
x, y, and z. There's so many more
people who actually believe this, actually do it
this way. So you get
to socialize them effortlessly into our values.
You get to carefully transmit the faith and
wisdom. So many wisdoms
simply by virtue of being around. So that
Because you're not gonna be able to do
it alone. You're not gonna be around 247.
Right?
And so, you're either gonna choose who does
it and surround yourself with those whom you
are pleased with doing it,
or you're going to leave it to the
peers,
or to the gangs, or to the uncontrollable
screens, or otherwise. Right? But if you choose
right,
there will be an organic, like a seamless,
an effortless flow, vertical flow between the generations
of our morals.
And this is quranic.
Like do do we not read Yusuf alaihis
salaam? Say to the people,
And I am following the tradition of my
forefathers. Not blindly but because it's correct. Following
the tradition of my forefathers,
Ibrahim, and Ishaq, and Yaqub, and here I
am now Yusuf. He sees himself a part
of something greater
and an extension of that.
A third benefit is to have backup mentors.
You know, disciplinary problems whether it's crime or
like poor academic performance or whatever it's gonna
be. This is far less frequent, these disciplinary
problems when there's more adults around simply because
they're around.
You don't even need to make it a
stressful environment with more punishments and more simply
more supervision. You know the idea of neighborhood
watch? There's more people
deciding to roam the streets and they have
shifts. Less crimes happen. They don't catch more
burglars. They prevent them to begin with in
a very seamless way, in a very organic
way. Even the Arabs of old, they have
a famous wisdom wherein they say
That loose wealth teaches people to steal.
Like if it's sitting there forever,
eventually they'll be like, okay, they probably don't
want it or else they would have put
it away.
If it's just sitting there unsupervised for a
long time, it's almost asking me, telling me,
you should be taking me. Take me.
And so this is
more oversight.
Also help at home. And this is huge
because you know, there are a lot of
parents nowadays
in the nuclear family who feel like failures.
They feel sort of pathetic. They beat themselves
over the fact that they're inadequate.
They can't find enough money or if they
haven't, they cannot find enough time to be
with the kids and so then they don't
know what to do. But when there's more
help at home or around the home, for
us to sort of prevent or patch up
our marital relationship and go out a little
bit. Right? Or to be around with the
kids and allow me just to de stress
a little bit before the stress tears apart
my marriage and by consequence the kids, and
so on and so forth.
That help at home prevents the overload, prevents
the overwhelming feeling. It's extremely helpful. Helps people
pursue their jobs, pursue their careers, pursue their
marital relationships, and so on and so forth.
Help at home.
Another benefit, this is the last one I'll
mention, is simply emotional support.
You know there's more people you're connected with
that you can share in their happiness.
You know, like if it's just you, 2,
3 things make you happy.
But if it's 10 of us, each of
us has 2, 3 things that make us
happy,
right?
It's it's a multiplied force. Right? So I'll
be happy now for their happiness. They graduated,
so I'm happy for them. Right? It's more
opportunities to have collective happiness,
to
like share in each other's joy. And of
course, the other side as well, to share
in each other's pain.
When there's grief, when there's death, when there's
sickness, when there's a struggle to get married.
Right? Or the struggle with fertility. Someone can't
have children. When the family is around, your
children are my children in a sense. Right?
You know our mother Aisha, perfect example,
Radhiallahu Anha. Her nickname, everyone would know her
as umma Abdullah, the father of Abdullah.
She didn't have any children.
Why was she called the father of Abdullah?
Because of her nephew.
Her sister Isma had a child named Abdullah
ibn Zubair.
And so
your kids are My kids are your kids.
So to console her, allow her to feel
a semblance of motherhood, she was called the
mother. Almost like the second mother of Abdullah
meaning as Ibra Zubayr radiAllahu an.
And so that is the idea of some
of the benefits. I just quick fire listed
it for you just that burst that bubble,
that fantasy bubble that the extended family is
just pure inconvenience like good riddance,
old, silly, foolish people of the past did
it. No.
The extended family And I don't mean residentially.
They don't have We don't have to all
go back to the sort of the olden
times in the villages,
but functionally extended. Meaning there's some sort of
functional relationship.
There It serves the function of complementing.
Complementing, not replacing.
Complementing the nuclear family, completing it.
And that is true, and that is Islamic.
You know, in Islam for instance,
the grandparents don't have the right to make
decisions about their grandchild.
They had their chance with you if you're
the parent. And now with all due respect,
Allah is gonna ask me about them, so
I'm gonna have to make this decision.
Right? They support but they don't like superimpose
or supersede or overhaul or No.
I'll give you another example.
You are obligated to take care of your
parents. Let's say you're an adult and you
have an aging or needy parent.
It's your obligation, it is not your spouse's
obligation.
Right? It would be great of them and
a great deed of virtue to do it,
but it's not their obligation, it's yours.
So there is a framework. There is a
balance. And it is a beautiful balance if
we are to reacquaint ourself with it.
So how do we revive
the extended family model?
I'll share with you a few thoughts that
may be beneficial.
But
in simplest terms, we must change the way
we think about it
and the way we speak about it.
And those are,
two sides of the same coin.
Language reflects mentality. Right?
But mentality first.
Some people think, what do you mean? I
do keep ties with my family.
You may think it's already happening. And you
need to double check because it may not
be.
And let me say also that you keeping
ties with some of your family selectively,
those of them that you happen to like,
doesn't count.
Because the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said,
That the one who keeps ties with family
is not the one who reciprocates like tit
for tat.
You came to my, sort of
wing of the family's wedding, so I'm gonna
come to yours. Right? You gifted me, so
I'll gift you. Right? It's not the one
who reciprocates,
but the one who in Allah's eyes is
written as as someone who keeps ties to
the family is the one whom when the
bonds are broken, he restores them.
They're drifting away and you're getting closer. They're
drifting away and you're getting closer.
So this is the first thing, you keep
ties with those Allah expects you to keep
ties with. The closer, the more right they
have.
The second challenge that we may have that
we wanna work through is this notion that
it's intrusive. And I said that sometimes it
is intrusive.
Sometimes it's a little bit inconvenient.
If that exceeds bounds, you have the right
to say no.
Allah gave you certain rights.
Communicate those rights.
Create boundaries
to protect your rights,
but politely
request that those boundaries be respected. Be assertive
but polite. And immediately or shortly after you
you, you know, you set that boundary or
you remind of that boundary, make it very
clear to them that I still wanna have
a relationship with you
even if these boundaries are there.
The third thing is some people think it's
too costly.
Too costly to maintain relationships.
And this one, to be honest, is purely
from shaitan.
It will never diminish your risk, your wealth.
It actually will certainly
expand it to keep ties with your family.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said,
Whomever of you would like would be pleased
to find their risk, their provisions, their sustenance,
wealth being obviously an obvious an obvious part
of that. Whoever would like to see their
risk expanded
and their lifespan extended,
then let them keep ties with their family.
It's one of the best money makers you
can find
to spend on family.
The last thing is some people say, I
wish I could but there's like a distance.
Like they're they live far away now or
it's been a while or
And we have to really question ourself on
this one.
Because we are also the people
that say the world has become a single
global village.
So we cannot out of the both sides
of our mouth say it's a global village
and we're no longer living together in the
village. That doesn't work.
Technology has connected us all.
We can call and have our children around
once a week
to our parents that are in another place,
or the parents and their siblings like the
aunts. Right? Or the grandparents, the most immediate
of kin.
And then if there is sort of a
condolence to be made or it is a
Eid or a wedding time to make a
special call. Right? Ad hoc as needed. It's
not difficult.
It's not difficult to drop ship a gift
to another part of the world in a
few short hours, and and it doesn't have
to cost much. It's the thought that counts.
Right?
It's not difficult for us to just be
a little bit more intentional
about the vacations we take on the front
or back end or the location
we choose will also allow us to keep
ties with our family and see them for
a day or 2 or part thereof.
And that last thing I will say about
distance,
and I'm done,
is that
we we do need in person
physical
relationships.
If we can't have them with our blood,
then we could should recreate
some of the village vibe through community.
And do you know how to do that
brothers and sisters?
The secret ingredient to this is to create
a dependency
of sorts on each other.
Like everyone is satisfied with the parasocial relationship,
the social media relationship. But you know what
that can never offer?
Those friends, they're not
deep. It's very wide, the social circle,
1,000 miles wide, only an inch deep. They
can't show up when your car breaks down
and help you with your tire. They will
not visit you when you're sick. Right? They
will not congratulate you and your family members
having a good occasion, came out of the
hospital or whatever else it will be. They
will not cook for you when sort of
your your, they can't watch your kids for
you and so on and so forth. So
for there to be some interdependency,
this is the glue that brings people together
as if they are family.
Perhaps it's of the greatest wisdoms why Allah
in origin created us within families
to lean on each other.
So utilize technology and leverage community to to
recreate whatever has been severed, to reconnect whatever
has been interrupted. May Allah write us among
those that maintain their ties with their family
in a world
that does not consider that important. May
Allah make us of the truest followers of
the prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam who said, they
are not of us, those who don't revere
the elders and do not have compassion for
the youngsters.
May Allah
grant us families and relationships
that anchor our Islam for us and anchor
it for the world through us.