Someone brought the issue to my attention of this young woman who became an unwed mother in Egypt. I remember in my own lifetime when it was highly controversial in the US for a woman to have a child out of wedlock, though of course, it happened frequently. In the 1980s there was a serious effort in the media to remove any stigma from this, and it succeeded. The danger with this case, of course, is that the same thing will happen in Egypt, and then spread elsewhere.
On a social level, this is extremely deceitful. When you frame the discussion as one of “supporting” single mothers, and relieving them of the stigma of being unwed mothers, etc, you are, in fact, emasculating the men of the society. It is not, in my mind, a discussion of whether or not it is acceptable for women to be single mothers; it is a discussion of whether or not it is acceptable for men to abandon their children, to disappear from family life, to abdicate their role as husbands and fathers.
Aside from the cultural and religious impact of this, on a practical level, the effect is greater poverty, insecurity, and disadvantage for the children. My parents divorced when I was very young, so I was raised by my mother, and yes, it is a continuous and often desperate financial struggle If you “support” the “right” of women to be unwed mothers, you are supporting the idea of sentencing children to a great deal of suffering, anxiety, instability, and hardship. And, of course, this has a tremendously negative impact on society as a whole over time.
Men are supposed to be “Qwwaam” over their families; responsible, protective, stabilizing. When they abdicate this role, frankly, society falls apart. If you normalize sex outside of marriage, you are trivializing the appropriate role of men. Obviously, zina is consequently an extremely grave matter in the Shari’ah.
This issue should not become a polarization between whether you support this girl or despise her. Many of the people condemning her are, no doubt, engaging in the same thing she and her boyfriend were engaging in. People succumb to temptation, and neither men nor women have a temptation in life greater than each other. But we are commanded to help one another in righteousness; we are supposed to reinforce our collective aspirational religious and moral values; to help each other be as good as we hope to be. We have to resist the normalization of zina in society; there is perhaps no mistake we can make that has greater, more profound, or more far-reaching, epidemic consequences.
#single_mother