Limits and Scope

Limits and Scope

by Dr Mohammad Akram Nadwi
Oxford

Without limits there can be no real possibility, only theoratical and abstract possibility. All that God has given or created is real, that is to say, it has stable, secure limits, which are scope that living and long living things have to interact and produce what they produce. When the limits are refused – instead being used – the scope that God has given by those limits is reduced and made narrow. He says in His book if mankind were given governance of the creation they would corrupt and ruin it. Western civilization in its modern from is not merely refusal, but a defiant and arrogant refusal of the limits, and therefore the generous scope of what God has given to human being. So, we see more and more uniformity, less and less diversity across every continent and in every culture, more roads, bigger cities, fewer species of all forms of life.

The situation has become as bad as the tyrant who had a conversation with Ibrahim. The tyrant said: I give the life and death. In saying so he was contradicting the Messenger’s affirmation that it is God Who gives life and death. At the present time governmental and private institutions are now deliberating the question of which spices of plants and animals should be protected and preserved for the future. It is as if it has the right to give life and death.

The differentiation between male and female is given in nature, a limit whose scope or broad consequence is vast enrichment and diversification within and between species. Among human beings the differentiation between male and female is the necessary basis for the extraordinarily long period of maturation. It takes a massive investment to produce a human adult because of all the information, culture and skills, notably language, which human beings need so that they can fulfil their scope. In recent times male and female differences have been presented as cultural constructs, most specifically as construct but those with status and power (i.e. men) to take advantage and exploit the week (i. e. the women). So, we are told equality between men and women must be expressed by opening up to women the avenues to power and position. Equality for women can only be achieved according to the way of thinking, if women capture the agency enjoyed by men. For example, it is not enough if netball is given same funding, attention and prestige as football. Rather women must play football and rugby and boxing and so on. The same holds in principle for all forms employment and every other avenue to social status and power. So far as possible their physiological limits and what men and women can do should be ignored in a truly equal society. Of the physical characteristics and limits of being woman, rather than man, only one element is retained, namely femineity or sexual attractiveness. Unfortunately, for women this quality is transitional which is much worse, it is easily converted into a commodity and therefore exploited, sometime in the most degrading ways.

In reality the scope of womanhood centres upon potential for motherhood – feminity, sexual attractiveness is a means to that, not an end in itself. That is the case for almost all animals. However, in keeping with the typical western defiance of the limits natures, sexuality has been separated from motherhood and reduced to femineity. The reproduction potential of women has been put under the control of the will of individual by the means of contraception and abortion. Dependence on family relations (father, husband, brothers etc) has been replaced by dependence on the economic system and on the government welfare agencies. In older traditional societies men and women married locally in their own social economic circles. Often parents and other senior relatives could arrange for couples to meet. In contemporary times people are so disconnected that couple meet through the agency of computer algorithm i.e. dating sites. So, it seems to me people now have accepted an illusion of choice in exchange for sharing responsibility of choice with their family. Furthermore they have submitted the matter of marriage into matter of sexual companionship, so that the function of marriage is connected to a matter of personal pleasure and comfort. For obvious reasons this not a stable basis of family life. The consequences for children and parents in terms of psychological illnesses and emotional distress are increasingly widespread and increasingly expensive.

Such defiance of the limits of God and the consequent reduction in scope of what human beings desire, do and achieve in long term in best is best illustrated by the demand of women that abortion is their legal right. Some women are heard to say it is my body and it is up to me what I do with it. In reality a conceived child is the most special gift from the Creator; it is life coming from life, not as we often see life following death. Of course, the birth of new life puts limits on the parent that is the scope that God has given.