Home! It is a very purposeful and meaningful term. In Islam, home is an institution, a system, a base, an establishment, the social genesis. Home and family are the same and one for the most part – they’re interrelated.
In order to think clearly, make decisions, function effectively, grow healthy, educate children property, all of these need peace, quietness, tranquility, serenity, and order. In Arabic, the word for the place where one lives is called ‘sakan;’ it is of the same root as ‘sakeenah’, which means serenity; the latter means also ‘tumaaneenah’ – comfort and quiet. The English expression “home sweet home!’ is powerful, too.
Islam has placed much importance not simply on the preservation of family and home, but it has elevated them to a very high status given their essential role in society and in the lives of people.
Home is that private place which should be different from the world outside, and not necessarily related to the physical space. A home could be a family living in a tent, or living in a castle. It is not the walls what make a place home, but what it gives and fulfills.
In order to achieve the true role of homes, Islam has order women to stay home, which is a general recommendation rather than a jurisdictional obligation.
Interestingly and powerfully, Allah has ordered the wives of the Prophet (peace be upon him) to stay home, “Settle in your homes, and do not display yourselves as women did in the days of pre-Islamic ignorance. Establish prayer, pay zakaah, and obey Allah and His Messenger. Allah only intends to keep the causes of evil away from you and purify you completely, O members of the Prophet’s family!” [33:33]
If the most purified and dignified women need that peace of homes, what about other women?
However, the question that begs itself is none other than: is it possible nowadays for Muslim women to stay at home?
Politically speaking, I’d say that it is almost impossible. Not only has the economy been designed by the British Secularism in a way that requires women to work – cheap labor and more human resources, but there is an important political problem that arises from the idea of staying at home.
The British political system, which controls Muslims, is designed to have access to every individual and control them politically and ideologically at an individual level; therefore, women cannot stay at home because the government would have no access to them.
If women stay at home, and our homes become places of peace and serenity, which means the access of the outside world to our families becomes limited and restricted, the modern political system would collapse in a matter of days. Modern governments need access and only access.
If we start to establish our homes the way Islam recommends, the modern British Secularist governments around the world would go to war against us because they need free access, and access means control.
Sabri Lushi
