The Problems Facing Modern Civilization

workplace or field of action. This difference is supported in every way by scientific research. The truth is that it is the champions of feminism who are unscientific by the standards of today, and not the upholders of traditional Islamic attitudes. DEGRADATION INSTEAD OF PROGRESS The 29th December 1986, publication of Time was a special number which was titled, “A Letter to the year 2086.” This issue covered the happenings in the following century in the U.S. One part of it related to the state of the family as could be foreseen for the next century. A part of it is reproduced here: “The American family, not 50 years ago the rock on which the country built its church, has fractured into atoms with separate orbits. The American woman, having shunned motherhood and house-wifehood 15 years ago to establish herself in the labor market, now seeks to balance all three lives like dinner plates on sticks. The American man finds himself in new and scary territory and scrambles for adjustment. When the American man and woman part company, as half the newly married couples are expected to do these days, the American child is suddenly stranded, growing taller without a structure.”46 As they near the close of the twentieth century the American intellectual class are acknowledging that what they thought of as the ladder of progress, at the beginning of the 20th century, has turned out to be the ladder of destruction. Taking women out of their homes has only resulted in the total disruption of the American family system. The rosy plan of liberating woman has, in practice, resulted in so many social evils. Now new thinking is emerging from a revision of past errors, but modem woman is not ready to go back to her former role as a housewife, even if the life adopted by her of necessity involves her bearing the burdens of both the home and the workplace. What kind of progress is it which culminates in destruction? How strange is this freedom which, in practice, has turned into a new kind of bondage Notes 1. Time, January 26, 1987. 2. Indian Express (New Delhi), January 14, 1987. 3. The Hindustan Times (New Delhi), January 12, 1987. 4. Indian Express (New Delhi), January 14, 1987. 5. Plain Truth, September 1986. 6. Ibid. 7. Indian Express (New Delhi), January 14, 1987. 8. The Times of India (New Delhi), February 19, 1987. 9. Time, February 2, 1987.