Is Democracy really able to provide eternal values that will be
conducive to human salvation? In reality, Democracy is but the rule of
the majority. Can it be really possible for the majority in a society to
develop and formulate the laws that are to be necessarily followed for
the conduct of life of a people? The majority of the people in Europe
and America have accepted the system of dating wherein young girls
and boys come to know each other intimately, to intermingle with each
other freely and even to sleep together as well before marriage. It is,
after all, this acceptance and licentious ways that has served to torment
that society with the afflictions of deadly diseases like AIDS and of
other numerous mental disorders. In fact, the increasing rate of crime
and sex related diseases in third world countries, like India, which are
passionately following the western values owes this to their dependence
on democracy to deliver the right course of conduct. Here, the fact
becomes clear that it is the Lord God Himself, who created man, Who
is to teach how man is to lead his life.
What is modern democracy? It is nothing but a new name that
has been conferred upon Capitalism. Are not man and woman equal
in the capitalist world? For those who seek to give the answer merely
by looking upon the participating presence of both the sexes at the
offices, it may be possible to give ‘yes’ as an answer. However, they
refuse to accept the fact that Capitalism prevents woman from fulfilling
the role which nature has demanded of her. Modern Democracy can
very well ask woman to work alongside man, to earn her salary and
to go forth into the market place. But who, indeed, can ask man to
undertake pregnancy, to give birth and to breast-feed like the woman.
It may, perhaps, be possible for capitalism to ask the nation to provide
for woman who gives birth to a child who knows not its own father.
But, which, indeed, is the ideology that can confer solace upon the
woman who yearns to be fondled by the father of the child within her?
It may be possible for a consumerist culture to provide baby food for
the offspring that is born without ever being able to know the identity
of its own parents. But, which television ad is it that will provide
contentment to the minds of the little ones who yearn for the love of
the mother and the protection of the father?
The equality of the sexes is a myth; a myth that has been fostered
within human minds by democracy with the aid of the media. A woman
can never become likea man nor can a man ever become likea woman.
Western democracy, which teaches woman to be like man, is, in reality,
making the life of woman unbearable. Through this, it wrecks the
family and, with it, the very moral fibre of the society as well.
Capitalism sees every thing in the world as a part of
consumerism. Man and woman are no exceptions. Their emotions or
their problems are hardly issues of its concern. For it looks only to the
market. It thinks of nothing but the objects that will serve to accelerate
the various processes therein. This is the position of woman in
capitalism. She is always the model, the call-girl, the stenographer, the
secretary, the dancer, the actress; but never is she allowed to be the
mother by capitalism. After all, her being a mother would diminish her
market value; wouldn’t it?! Then she becomes an old woman; an
inhabitant of old-age homes; one destined to live the rest of her life
counting the days to her end.
The Qur'an, however, presents a most practical, yet moral,
system. A practical system which moves forward always in harmony
with human nature. In its vision, the human being is not only the one
with rosy cheeks and unwrinkled skin, but he is also the child within its
mother’s womb as also the aged one awaiting death. Indeed, its
command encompasses even the dead body which is never to be
violated.
The Qur'an is never in conformity with the utilitarianism of
Capitalism. This is the main point of divergence where the Qur'anic
vision differs from the view of modern democracy over the subject of
woman. The Qur'an never sees woman as a source of economic gain.
It never agrees to see her as an instrument of trade either; for she is
one half of the human soul; the veritable mother of society. It is her
motherhood which Islam considers first and foremost. It emphasizes
that it is on the lap of the mother that the very bedrock of the institution
of the family, the fundamental unit of morality that is so vital in society,
is nurtured. The Lord Creator, who revealed the Qur'an, is well aware
of the difficulties and limitations faced by a woman who becomes a
mother. Indeed, these have been given due consideration by the Qur'an.
The outlook of capitalism is that it is virginity - in fact, that hypocritical
pretentious virginity - that has the most ‘market value’. This has also
been the basic difference in the professed value - frameworks of Islam
and Capitalism.
