Some guidelines for reforming the home.✔

Meeting At Home (ll)

14. Being strict in adhering to a schedule for meals and bedtime.

Some houses are like hotels where the people who live there hardly know one another and hardly ever meet.

Some children eat whenever they want and sleep whenever they want, which leads to them staying up late and wasting their time, or eating on full stomach.

This chaos leads to a weakening of family ties and a waste of time and energy, and exacerbates the lack of discipline among family members. You could excuse those who have legitimate reasons, because students, males and females, may have different times of leaving schools and universities, and those who are employed or who run stores do not have the same work schedules, but still there is nothing nicer than a family gathering together at a table and making the most of this opportunity to ask how everyone is and to discuss useful topics.

The head of the household has to strict in setting a time for everyone to be back home and in insisting that everyone asks permission before going out, especially those who are young whether in terms of chronological age or mental age, as it were, for whom one might have fears.

15. Re-evaluating womens work outside the home.

The laws of islam complement one another. When Allah commanded women to stay in your houses (Al-Qur'aan 33:33) He also decreed that men, their fathers and husbands etc, should be obliged to spend on them.

The basic principle is that women should not work outside the home unless they have to.

When Moosa (AS) saw the two daughters of  the righteous man keeping back their flocks and waiting to water them, he asked them, What is the matter with you? They said We cannot water (our flocks) until the shepherds take (their flocks) and our father is a very old man. (Al Qur'aan 2:23)

They were apologetic about the fact that they had come out to water their flocks, because the guardian (their father) was unable to do so due to old age. So they were keen to do away with the need to work outside the home as soon as the opportunity arose: And said one of them (the two women): O my fayher! Hire him! Verily the best of men for you to hire is the strong, the trustworthy.                                         (Al-Qur'aan 28: 26)

This women made clear her desire to go back to staying at home to protect herself from the vulgarity to which she could be exposed if she worked outside the home.

In modern times, when the kuffar needed women labour after the two world wars, to make up for the resulting lack of men in the workforce, and there was a critical need to rebuild their economies, this coincided with the jewish plots to liberate women and advocate their rights with the aim of corrupting them and consequently corrupting society as a whole. Thus, the idea of women going out to work was established.

In spite of the fact that the same motives were not present in our lands, and that Muslim men protect their womenfolk and spend on them, the womens liberation movement developed in the Muslim world too, and even reached such an extent that women are sent abroad to study then are expected to work so that these degrees will not go waste.

The muslim societies are not in need of such a thing on such a grand scale as is the case, and one of the signs of this fact that there are men who are without work whilst fields are still being opened up to women.

When we say not on such a grand scale, we mean that there is a need for women to work in some fields, such as teaching, nursing and medicine, within the conditions set out by shareeah, and when there is a need for them to do so. But we started by saying that there is no great need, because of the fact that we notice some women going out to work when there is no need and sometimes they work for a very low vages because they feel that they have to go to work even when there is no need to do so, or they work in places that are not suitable, which leads to much fitnah and trouble.