[Grem] Family values in Islam, Christianity and in the totalitarian liberal state / W. Kilpatrick

[Emoke Greschik]

November 6, 2017 Islamic Family Values William Kilpatrick
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/author/william-kilpatrick>
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/islamic-family-values


*Just as it’s not a good idea* to read too much into the cross tattooed on
the bicep of the otherwise threatening biker at the bar, it’s best not to
read too much into the occasional concessions toward Christianity we find
in Islam.

For some Catholics, it seems to be enough to hear that, as *Nostra Aetate*
<http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html>
tells us, Muslims “revere” Jesus and “honor” Mary. I can’t remember the
number of times that some hopeful Catholic has pointed out to me that
there’s a whole chapter named after Mary in the Koran, or that Mary is
mentioned more than any other women in that book. Supposedly, that somehow
compensates for *all the verses in the Koran that call for crucifixions,
beheadings, and amputations, and for the fact that Christians who live in
Muslim lands generally lead a precarious existence.*

In the grasping-for-straws department, one of the items most frequently on
display is the claim that Muslims have more or less the same moral code
that governs traditional Christians. For example, in *Nostra Aetate* we
read not only that Muslims honor Jesus and Mary, but that “they value the
moral life.” Likewise, *numerous Catholic writers have made the case that
Muslims are our natural allies in the culture wars because they oppose
abortion, adultery, and pornography, and value modesty and chastity.*

To be sure, many Muslims families, especially in the U.S., don’t seem that
different from Christian families. They pray regularly, attend weekly
services, give to charities, and raise polite children. As a result it’s
easy to conclude that Islamic family values and Christian family values are
essentially the same. But *in reality,* *there is a world of difference
between the two*. To get a better picture of Islamic family values, it’s
advisable to look at Muslim countries or at those parts of the West that
are rapidly falling under Islamic influence.

Take Great Britain. A new UK website
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5010691/Website-Muslims-second-wife-100k-users.html>
designed to help Muslim men find second wives has more than 100,000 users.
And it’s estimated tha*t there are already as many as 20,000 polygamous
marriages among British Muslims. *In addition to polygamy there are* many
other practices* that one would be hard pressed to find in Christian
families: tens of thousands of cases of* female genital mutilation*, *forced
marriages to first cousins*, and *women shrouded in burqas.*

But let’s focus on* polygamy.* It’s not simply an incidental item that
happens to be found in Arab cultures, rather* it’s a central element in the
Islamic system.* The practice is completely* in accord with sharia law and
with the Koran.* *In the Koran, Muslim men are allowed up to four wives at
one time. **Muhammad, however, received a special revelation from Allah
permitting him to have as many wives as he wanted. *Since Muhammad is
considered the perfect man, and the model of proper conduct, there is no
theological ground for opposing polygamy. Of course, a great many Muslim
men don’t practice polygamy, but that’s not because the practice is
considered improper, it’s because many men can’t afford to support more
than one wife. But it’s always a possibility. The standard Egyptian
marriage contract contains spaces for the husband to fill in the names of
wives number one, two, and three, just in case.

*Christianity introduced a revolution in the relationship between men and
women.* It erased the inequality between the sexes that practices such as
polygamy reinforced.* And it raised marriage between one man and one woman
to the level of a sacrament. **Under the influence of Christianity,*
*polygamy* *became unlawfu**l *in the West and in many other parts of the
world as well. On the other hand, the faith that Muhammad introduced
retained and reinforced the practice by giving it a religious sanction.
Moreover, polygamy is no mere relic of the past. With the modern day
resurgence of Islam, the practice is spreading. A Western convert to Islam
can be suddenly transported back to a time when a man could rule his
household much as a caliph ruled his harem.

*Why did Muhammad reject* *the Christian vision of marriage?* A theologian
might trace it back to his rejection of the Trinity. Just as the
Incarnation elevates our understanding of man, the doctrine of the Trinity
elevates our understanding of marriage and family. *The shared love between
the three persons of the Trinity becomes the model for marriage and family.
*But *there is no* *such heavenly model* *in Islam*. *In Muhammad’s book,
Allah is a solitary God and must remain so. *Thus:

So believe in God and His apostles and do not say “three”… God is but one
God. God forbid that He should have a Son!” (4: 171)

The Koran provides no theological basis for understanding marriage as a
one-man-one-woman proposition. But theology may not have been the deciding
factor. Muhammad may also have had personal motives for preferring polygamy
to monogamy. It is very possible that he simply did not want to limit
himself to one wife. Scholars of Islam designate *a number of Muhammad’s
revelations as “revelations of convenience”—that is, revelations that
worked to his personal advantage *or helped him to resolve a family
conflict. *The revelation that allowed him to marry his own daughter-in-law
falls into that category,* and so does the revelation that permitted him to
have an unlimited number of wives (and sex slaves).

But there is yet* a third motive that needs to be considered.* As numerous
scholars have noted,* totalitarian systems look upon the traditional
two-parent family as a rival. *The fear is that family loyalty may take
precedence over the “higher” loyalty that one owes to the state. Tyrants
know that the bonds of affection that develop in a family may prove
stronger than one’s allegiance to the ruling ideology, or to Big Brother,
or to Dear Leader.

This was certainly the case with Nazism. Through organizations such as the
Hitler Youth, the Nazis sought to transfer a child’s loyalty from his
parents to the state. Likewise, communists looked upon the traditional
family as nothing more than a reactionary holdover from the days of
bourgeois morality. Communists had no qualms about urging children to act
as informants on their parents, and in Stalinist Russia one such
informant—thirteen-year-old Pavlik Morozov—was elevated to the status of a
national hero.

*As the modern secular state becomes increasingly totalitarian, it also
begins to look upon the family as a rival to its aim of achieving complete
control over citizens. *Thus the state seeks through various means to
undermine the purpose of marriage (e.g., by promoting abortions), and to
disrupt the relationship between husband and wife (e.g., by making women
financially dependent on the state). Meanwhile, the media—which often acts
as an agent of the state– can be counted on to extol unorthodox family
arrangements. These days, sitcoms about traditional families are as
verboten as cigarette commercials.

It shouldn’t be surprising then that* Islam, which is a totalitarian system
par excellence, favors the polygamous family structure. **Through sharia
law, Islam seeks to control every aspect of an individual’s life*. As its
advocates insist,* Islam is not just a religion, it is a complete way of
life.* Moreover,* it’s a purpose-driven life. It’s meant to be lived in
service to the ideology of jihad for the sake of Allah.* As Nonie Darwish
puts it in *Wholly Different*
<https://www.amazon.com/Wholly-Different-Biblical-Values-Islamic-ebook/dp/B01N9XEWPH/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1509605926&sr=8-1>,
“In Islam, after believing in Allah,* the number one priority for a Muslim
believer is not family; it is jihad.”* Consequently, “a man who is devoted
to his wife and children in a monogamous marriage is a threat to jihad.”

Darwish argues that the Christian ideal of exclusive and permanent loyalty
between man and wife is at odds with the aims of Islam. Marriage so
conceived is a rival to the single-minded pursuit of jihad. But a
polygamous marriage is not. For one thing, *the husband has no obligation
to remain loyal to one wife. *Just as important, a polygamous family by its
very nature is riven with internal rivalries. It lacks the organic unity
which might allow it to stand as a rival to the ideology of jihad.

According to Darwish and other former Muslims, the structure of polygamous
families (combined with the knowledge that one’s monogamous marriage can be
suddenly transformed into a multiple one) makes for divided loyalties and
dysfunctional families. It pits wife against wife, step-brother against
step-brother, and mother-in-law, against daughter-in-law.

In addition, *Islamic theology creates rivalries between a husband’s
current wife/wives and his brides-to-be in paradise.* In order to insure
that Muslim men will never be satisfied with their current wife or wives,
they are promised more polygamy with more desirable partners in the next
world. Of course*, the only sure fire way of securing brides in paradise is
by committing jihad for the sake of Allah*. Thus, as Darwish
<https://www.amazon.com/Wholly-Different-Biblical-Values-Islamic-ebook/dp/B01N9XEWPH/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1509605926&sr=8-1>puts
it, “Islam has substituted love of jihad and martyrdom for love of family.”

A recent example of Darwish’s observation is provided by Sayfulla Saipov,*
the jihadist who killed eight people on a New York City bike path by
running them down with a truck. Saipov is a family man, but only in the
most limited sense of the term. He has a wife and three children, but he
also had jihad on his mind. Unlike the ordinary soldier who hopes to return
from the battlefield to rejoin his wife and children, this “soldier of
ISIS” was intent on joining his brides in paradise instead. **The promise
of perfect wives in paradise tends to weaken the ties to one’s family here
on earth.* Moreover, as Muhammad understood, such a promise is an efficient
mechanism for insuring that there will always be an abundant supply of
recruits for the jihad.

*Not all Muslims are **so minded,* of course.* They are not interested** in
polygamy or jihad,* *and they may have their doubts about **the existence
of the 72 virgins.* Some Muslim marriages, as Darwish readily admits, “are
happy and successful.” *Some Muslims manage to rise above* *ideology and to
ignore the misogynistic teachings of Islam.*

Still, on the whole, Islamic family relation are far more dysfunctional
than Western citizens realize. *Polygamy is not the only problem.* *Child
marriage is common, and so are forced marriages*. In Iran and other Shia
Muslim societies, temporary marriage (a form of prostitution) is legal. And *91
percent of all honor violence
<http://www.meforum.org/2646/worldwide-trends-in-honor-killings> worldwide
is committed by Muslims.*

On that subject, Islamic law states that *there is no penalty for a mother
or father who kills their child, and no penalty for a grandmother or
grandfather who kills their children’s children *(*Reliance of the
Traveller*, o1.4). *Conversely, a child may kill a parent for the sake of
honor. Sons often take part in killing their mothers (or sisters) who have
jeopardized family honor in some way or other.* In *The Stoning of Soraya M*.—a
film based on a true story—the father and the son of an accused wife and
mother are the ones who throw the first stones. In the West Bank, parents
deliberately raise their children to become suicide bombers. This also is
for the sake of honor, because, as one might expect in a system that
revolves around jihad, great honor redounds to the parents of martyrs.

If the Soviets and the Nazis encouraged children to betray their parents, *the
Islamic system teaches that any family member may be sacrificed by any
other family member for the sake of Allah and the jihad.* Child against
parent, parent against child, husband against wife, brother against sister,
wife against wife:* it’s a sinister system. And it should not be compared
to the Christian family ideal.*

It’s true, of course, that families in Western societies are often troubled
and destructive. But in the Christian and post-Christian world, family
dysfunction is not a function of Christian values. It’s a departure from
them. The troubles that afflict modern families are largely the result of
acting out the anti-Christian and anti-family values of the secular society.

*Christians are far from* *perfect*. *They are not* *immune to* *folly or
to sin*. But Christian family values are no more like Islamic values than
they are like Nazi family values or Soviet family values. *Catholics who
draw a false equivalence between the two decidedly different visions of
family life represented by Islam and Christianity *ought to know better.
And they *ought to stop* *doing it.*

*(Photo credit: Channel 4 television, UK)*
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