What a Shallow Society we live in...

Assalaamu alaykum all,

I am just doing my latest assignment for the Open University, OK lets just explain what that is first of all.

the OU is a higher education Establishment based in the UK where you do all your courses online and require almost no contact with tutors, fellow students etc unless you wish to do so. The plus side of this is little or no mixing, the downside is little or no support and all on your own shoulders.

So anyway, was doing my assignment and is on the subject of identity, so reading all this stuff from people, some long dead with lots of letters after their name and it is all about how others see us, how they believe our identity is made up by ourselves to give a certain impression to others and is in effect all show.

It just struck me how such an approach is totally true of non-Muslims and non-practicing brothers and sisters, it is all show, all the lesser shirk of showing off to others, the shirk which might not be as bad as major shirk but will however destroy your good deeds.

As Muslims we are different, we do things only to please Allah, our structural (society or nature determined) identity should therefore only be simply matters of sex, race, things we cannot alter.

Where as our agency (personal ideas) identity should only be shaped by ourselves to please Allah, not others.

I therefore need to try to put this across to the lecturer in the assignment, show them how for all their fancy theories and ideas, we Muslims don't fit into their secularised boxes.

I am hoping to do this in the discussion upon Gender roles in shaping identity, how the industrialised west views the male breadwinner and father as better than the female mother and wife, subhanallah how many times are we told to value our mother more than our father? three times! in Islam the wife is the one who nourishes, nurters, educates and emotionally shapes our children, how can such a role be less than simply doing a bit of physical or mental work?

Assalaamu Alaykum,
Abu Abdillah