Every now and then, the media sheds light on the issue of social mixing between men and women and its legal limits, especially in the West, focusing on the Muslim youth generations in the immigrant countries…
In the past few years, several Islamic conferences were held in Canada and the United States of America handling the issue of the challenges that the Muslim youth encounter outside the Muslim homelands. These conferences came out with defining “mixing” as a general expression that contains both permissible and impermissible kinds. If mixing was meant as the gathering of men and women in public places to perform mutual religious or worldly work, in which the legal restraints of the Hijab, lowering the gaze and the like are observed, then mixing does not constitute any problem. This kind of mixing includes the gathering of men and women to perform the two prayers of the two Eids and the duties of pilgrimage, as well as their gathering in public instructive meetings, whether in the mosque or elsewhere. This kind also includes the act of women going out to run their errands in public places, although separation between the two sexes in the educational institutions should be observed…
The recommendations of one of these conferences implied that employing females as program presenters, guest hosts, or the like is not included as a justified need and interest, if there are males who can occupy these positions with the same professionalism and proficiency. Moreover, not included are gathering families in mixed occasions to attend certain social events, such as gathering donations, weddings or the like…
Social mixing in Islam is subjected to certain limits and restraints, so that the issue would not get out of control, and consequently, undermine the individual and social safety and lead to committing mistakes and sins, which would lead to the collapse of the society and its moral and ethical dissolution. It must be noted that Islam did not confine the woman; but rather, it aims at immunizing and strengthening her humanity and enables her to play her human and civilized role away from any form of exploitation…
His Eminence, the late Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah (ra), says: "We have come to recognize from the legal limits that govern the relation between the man and the woman according to the Islamic legislation that they do not encourage any relations between the man and the woman outside the scale of the marital life."
Yet, this understanding does not mean that mixing and gathering are all evil, for we might experience the need for certain mixed meetings whether in the social, Islamic or cultural field. However, we ought to immunize these atmospheres with many restraints and limits that preserve them from turning into tools of moral dissolution…
On another level, neither the man nor the woman were religiously forbidden from looking to each other, as long as this look is restricted to the Halal limits of looking, especially if this issue has to do with the necessities of the public life or the political, Jihadi or cultural life in which the woman, armed with the restrictions of the Islamic Hijab, faces situations where she has to speak with men about general missionary affairs that demand the participation of the woman in many cases…
[Extracted from the book “Islamic contemplations regarding women”, p: 56-57]
In his answer to a question regarding the legal limits of social mixing, His Eminence (ra) says: “The woman, just as man, is free, and the issue of social mixing as being a helping factor for deviation or committing mistakes is not restricted to the woman only; but rather, it includes both men and women. Just as the woman is forbidden from mixing with men in a way that leads to committing sins, no matter how small they were, the man too is forbidden from mixing with women… Social mixing should be founded on a serious and solemn basis, away from any form of wagging, playfulness and the like."
[Extracted from “Jurisprudential issues, Fikr Wa Thaqafa (Thought and Culture), issue No 542]
Translated by: Manal Samhat
Every now and then, the media sheds light on the issue of social mixing between men and women and its legal limits, especially in the West, focusing on the Muslim youth generations in the immigrant countries…
In the past few years, several Islamic conferences were held in Canada and the United States of America handling the issue of the challenges that the Muslim youth encounter outside the Muslim homelands. These conferences came out with defining “mixing” as a general expression that contains both permissible and impermissible kinds. If mixing was meant as the gathering of men and women in public places to perform mutual religious or worldly work, in which the legal restraints of the Hijab, lowering the gaze and the like are observed, then mixing does not constitute any problem. This kind of mixing includes the gathering of men and women to perform the two prayers of the two Eids and the duties of pilgrimage, as well as their gathering in public instructive meetings, whether in the mosque or elsewhere. This kind also includes the act of women going out to run their errands in public places, although separation between the two sexes in the educational institutions should be observed…
The recommendations of one of these conferences implied that employing females as program presenters, guest hosts, or the like is not included as a justified need and interest, if there are males who can occupy these positions with the same professionalism and proficiency. Moreover, not included are gathering families in mixed occasions to attend certain social events, such as gathering donations, weddings or the like…
Social mixing in Islam is subjected to certain limits and restraints, so that the issue would not get out of control, and consequently, undermine the individual and social safety and lead to committing mistakes and sins, which would lead to the collapse of the society and its moral and ethical dissolution. It must be noted that Islam did not confine the woman; but rather, it aims at immunizing and strengthening her humanity and enables her to play her human and civilized role away from any form of exploitation…
His Eminence, the late Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah (ra), says: "We have come to recognize from the legal limits that govern the relation between the man and the woman according to the Islamic legislation that they do not encourage any relations between the man and the woman outside the scale of the marital life."
Yet, this understanding does not mean that mixing and gathering are all evil, for we might experience the need for certain mixed meetings whether in the social, Islamic or cultural field. However, we ought to immunize these atmospheres with many restraints and limits that preserve them from turning into tools of moral dissolution…
On another level, neither the man nor the woman were religiously forbidden from looking to each other, as long as this look is restricted to the Halal limits of looking, especially if this issue has to do with the necessities of the public life or the political, Jihadi or cultural life in which the woman, armed with the restrictions of the Islamic Hijab, faces situations where she has to speak with men about general missionary affairs that demand the participation of the woman in many cases…
[Extracted from the book “Islamic contemplations regarding women”, p: 56-57]
In his answer to a question regarding the legal limits of social mixing, His Eminence (ra) says: “The woman, just as man, is free, and the issue of social mixing as being a helping factor for deviation or committing mistakes is not restricted to the woman only; but rather, it includes both men and women. Just as the woman is forbidden from mixing with men in a way that leads to committing sins, no matter how small they were, the man too is forbidden from mixing with women… Social mixing should be founded on a serious and solemn basis, away from any form of wagging, playfulness and the like."
[Extracted from “Jurisprudential issues, Fikr Wa Thaqafa (Thought and Culture), issue No 542]
Translated by: Manal Samhat