Middle_East,_Culture.

The family is the oldest social institution in the world. Throughout history, the family has been the foundation of society, caring for its members during their lifetimes in the same way that modem nations care for their citizens. In fact, a nation or a state is often described as a large family, and a family is often described as a society in miniature. When the family is thriving, society supposedly thrives; when the family is declining, the society supposedly is also on the decline. But what does "family" mean' We tend to forget that it is a general term which means different things in different societies. In the West, "family" has come to be defined simply as "parents and their children" or a single parent and a child. In the Middle East, the Arabic word for family, ahl or ahila, is a more inclusive term and can be used to mean "relatives, family, wife, inhabitants; people, especially persons of a special group or place; members, followers; possessors." At its ultimate level, it is the urnrna, the family of believers in Islam. But however and wherever defined, the family is a human invention dealing with human needs, and its basic functions concern the survival and reproduction of the group. The Middle East is an area of great diversity, from Morocco on the Atlantic, across the southern Mediterranean to Turkey and south and east to Arabia and Pakistan. Ecology, dialect and language, economic position from rich to poor, divide the area, but its constants are the majority religion of Islam and the institution of the larger extended family unit. In the Middle East today, therefore, the issue of the family is not a narrow "people’s “issue, divorced from economic and political matters, as it tends to be in Western society. The issue of the family is a political and economic issue of fundamental importance, for the extended family remains not only the basic unit of social organization, but the focus of the social change currently in progress throughout the area, from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco. Khurshid Ahmad, Director-General of the Islamic Foundation at the University of Pakistan, says, "We are living in a period of cultural crisis...the very foundations of contemporary society are being threatened from within and without. The family, as a basic and most sensitive institution of culture, is being undermined by powerful and destructive forces."President Muammar Qadhafi of Libya sees the family as a kind of organic growth which provides, along with the Qur'an, a basis for the improvement of the human condition in modem times. "Societies," he writes in the Green Book, "in which the existence and unity of the family are threatened, in any circumstances, are similar to fields whose plants are in danger of being swept away or threatened by drought or fire, or of withering away..." Modern critics such as Hisham Sharabi, Palestinian political scientist, attribute the plight of the Arab world to "repressive socialization and childrearing practices," and Fatima Mernissi, Moroccan feminist, sees the family as an ultimate effort by Islamic thinkers to limit women's freedom. Most politicians in the Middle East have seen it to their advantage to support the ideal of the family, just as Western politicians do, but in the Middle East family issues are acknowledged as being of greater political, economic and ideological importance. One might well ask, why all the fuss' In America, "family" problems seem peripheral, and issues such as family violence, child abuse, the care of the elderly and teenage pregnancies are relegated to the bottom of politicians' lists of priorities, below highways, redistricting, and interest rates. The view that the family is of basic economic and political importance seems rather unbelievable to us, despite our pervasive ideal of the family as a mirror of society. But the difference in political priorities and rhetoric between the West and the Middle East has to do, as was stated earlier, with the functions and powers of the family group. In traditional Middle Eastern society, the family as a basic unit perfomms many of the functions now expected of the state. For thousands of years, in most societies around the world including Middle Eastern society, the family group, in the words of Arab sociologist Halim Barakat, "has constituted the basic socio-economic unit of production and (has been) at the center of social organization in all three Arab patterns of living (bedouin, rural and urban) and particularly among tribesmen, peasants, and urban poor. As such the family also constituted the dominant social institution through which persons and groups inherited their religious, social class and cultural identities." In the past, and to a great extent today, the family provided economic and emotional support to its members, which might consist of groups as small as twenty or as large as 200, for not only mother, father, and children were included in the definition of the group, but also grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, to several degrees on both sides of the marital connection. An individual, as Barakat points out, “inherited" his or her religious, class, and cultural identity, which was reinforced by the customs and mores of the group. In exchange for the allegiance of its members, the group served as an employment bureau, insurance agency, child and family counseling service, old people's home, bank, teacher, home for the handicapped and insane, and hostel in time of economic need. Men and women both remained members of their natal families for all of their lives, even after marriage. A divorced woman returned to her natal family, which was responsible for her support until remarriage. A divorced man returned to his natal family, and his parents cared for his children. In exchange for these services, the individual members were expected to place the group's survival above their personal desires, especially at the time of marriage, and to uphold the reputation of the family, by behaving properly, "maintaining the family honor." This, of course, was the ideal. In everyday life, ideals do not always work out. Some members always rebelled and refused to marry the person chosen for them by their family. Some groups did not take in the divorced members after the divorce, sometimes out of poverty, sometimes out of spite. Vengeful fathers did not always pass on authority over land or shops to their sons. Maintaining the family honor sometimes resulted in tragedy. And the care of handicapped and elderly members often put undue stress upon younger members of the family.