[Position of Women ]    [Obstacles]   [ Challenges ]    [References ]  Challenges 1. Raising Scholars Fiqh, as we said earlier, represents the application of the Sharia within a given time and space. While the Sharia, which constitutes the principles, is immutable, fiqh is dynamic and will keep adapting to the ever new situations in life. To mistake fiqh for the Sharia is not only to chain the Sharia but actually it is to kill its spirit. The problem is not with Scholars of old, who have done their jobs and discharged their responsibility to their societies. The problem is with the contemporary scholars who under several pious pretexts fail to rise up to the challenge of their times. They thus hold the whole society hostage by their failure to apply the immutable principles of the Sharia to their contemporary context. The role of scholars as we have said earlier is essentially to guide their societies through the vagaries of time, so that new problems will not be left unattended and old solutions will not be applied to new problems. This as we have seen is not a job exclusively reserved for men. In fact going by the Quran and the various Hadith of the Prophet and the very history of Islam, women ought to be at the fore front. Indeed as we have seen they were, and this was why these societies produced the celebrated scholars they did. Given the task that lies ahead, FOMWAN and other Muslim women movements must raise scholars among their ranks. This will allow them not only to correct the gender imbalance in this very important area of human life but also to make their contributions to the regeneration of the Ummah adequately and effectively. The very needs of the Ummah today suggests that this scholarship must extend and cover all fields of human endeavour. But special efforts must be made to raise scholars in the Islamic core sciences of Qur’an, Hadith, Fiqh, etc. who should not only teach but also write books and participate at every level of the community’s educational and intellectual efforts. 2. Family No one can doubt the fact that the institution of the family, the very cradle and sanctuary of human race, and therefore humanity itself, is in a serious danger today. The ever growing hedonism of the secular liberalism is ever eroding the strong foundations of love, mercy and fear of God, while lust and materialism has been increasingly taking the centre stage of the family. Choice of spouses has become very much like choice of cars, a matter of vanity and aesthetics. A whole range of industries are sprouting around this new craze, cosmetics, soft magazines, modelling, fashion designing, and even plastic surgery. [15] All these went a long way to subvert and supplant the foundations of the human family making it increasingly vulnerable to growing pressures that excessive materialism has brought in its trail. The family has since been crumbling through divorce with yet more disastrous consequences. A recent American report [16] revealed that from 1945-1980 broken families rose from 20% to 50%. The report identified this phenomenon "as a central cause of our most vexing social problems .... poverty, crime and declining school performance."[17] "Crime in American cities" the report continues, "has increased dramatically and grown more violent over recent decades. Much of this can be attributed to the rise in disrupted families. Nationally, more than 70 percent of all juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes." As for education the report noted: "The great educational problems of our time is that many American children are failing in school not because they are intellectually or physically impaired but because they are emotionally incapacitated.The discipline problems in today’s suburban schools - assaults on teachers, unprovoked attacks on other students, screaming outbursts in class - outstrip the problems that were evident in the toughest city schools a generation ago." Consequently, the report added, "The curriculum is becoming more therapeutic: children are taking courses in self-esteem, conflict resolution, and aggression management....." [18] As the strain increased, even where the family managed to remain intact, the peace and tranquillity that used to symbolise the home vanished and in time the home became like a hostel where members of the family come and go at different, often odd, times. The television with its increasing cable networks, the microwave oven which made the family kitchen into a fast-food joint, increased the gulf even further, family members became further estranged and fear replaced security. In a recent extensive survey carried out in the US by the Newsweek Magazine, titled ‘KIDS Growing Up SCARED’ a set of frightening statistics emerged.[19] The survey reported that kids were growing up scared not only of the streets where they can no longer walk alone or play by themselves, but even of their very homes were they are becoming victims of an increasing and dehumanising attacks not from some outsiders but the very close members of the family. Alas the home has ultimately degenerated in to a dungeon where husbands batter their wives, parents assault their children, physically as well as sexually, and rather predictably, children murder their parents. With homes like these who need prisons? But, perhaps, we may still need our prisons for they may well be safer! For as if ‘we aren’t seeing nothing yet’, came the shocking news of growing number of mothers killing their own children. When the Daily Telegraph of November 28 reported the case of a mother who killed her two daughters aged 2 and 4, it gave the figures for 1992 of such kind of murder as 1,100 and added "but experts warn that it could be more because many killings are hidden as cot deaths or accidents".[20] Now this certainly is the ultimate in the demise of the family and the destruction of the human race! one cannot imagine something worst! For what else is left if a mother can kill her own child? We are using the American experience for it represents the ultimate in progress and development in our contemporary secular liberal world. Chairman, Brothers and Sisters, we have a serious tragedy at hand which is ever coming closer home and engulfing us all as the globe shrinks under these frightening advances of science and technology. The UN from the 1985 conference in Nairobi through the Cairo 1994 conference to the forthcoming one in Beijing this year, appear to want to solemnise this tragedy. Of course, today, we know who the UN represents and who it doesn’t. There doesn’t appear to be anything more in the Western family that remains to be destroyed. So who really is the target of this clearly destructive policies? What ever is the Answer to this question, FOMWAN and other Muslim women movements have a responsibility to stem this sludge before we all get drowned and consumed. Muslim women must join hands every where to salvage the family and restore and strengthen its basis once again. They must restore that sense of balance and complementarity which the Muslim family symbolises.   3. Methods and Approach For too long Islamic work has been unplanned and haphazard. Today, with the kind of task ahead, this is no longer tenable. For any goal to be realised, the efforts must be systematic and methods relevant to our times have to employed. This is what the Most High meant when He said "We sent not an apostle except in the Language of his people, in order to make (things) clear them". (Q. 14:4) To communicate effectively we must use the language that people understand, in other words, the means, methods and techniques of our times. In the high-tech societies of the 21st century we are having to operate, where complex social engineering and sophisticated and subtle propaganda have become the means to achieve goals, we must not allow ourselves to be outwitted in this game of wits or better still, battle of the mind. Concluding Remarks Chairman, sir, distinguished guests, brothers and sisters, there is so much to be said and so little time and space to say it, so we should be concluding now. Islam as we have seen has long liberated women but it seems Muslims are not always willing to grant them that liberty. In other words there is a big gap between what Islam has allowed Muslim women and expects of them on the one hand and what they are actually granted. It is largely the result of ignorance, but it must be appreciated that Muslim women have cause to be angry. On their part Muslim women must realise that not much can change until they can transform this anger into power, until they can stop agonising and start organising and until they can grow from the local to the global arena. The starting point as they must now realise is knowledge, not that piece of knowledge that scholars call fard ain, but knowledge whose limits are only the sky; there must be women scholars of repute who can stand shoulder to shoulder with their brothers and together pull the Ummah out of the abyss. But perhaps their most urgent assignment is to save humanity from extinction, by saving the human family from the impending catastrophe. The role of women has to be clearly defined in the increasingly confused contemporary society. Complementarity must replace the unnecessary competition raging between the two genders. The fear of God and genuine love must replace the raging lust and materialism as the foundations of the family. That divine balance must be restored, for only then can we get our bearings back and our vision clear. Once the family is saved and intact, the rest should be easier. Finally let me seize this opportunity to congratulate FOMWAN, undoubtedly the most organised Islamic organisation in the country, for a decade of wonderful performance. Success, it has been said, is measured not only by goals attained but also by the obstacles surmounted in attaining them. We eagerly look forward to another decade of more success, and pray to the Most High to continue to guide, assist and bless these efforts in His noble cause.