The concept of Famiy in Islam

In islam family is the cornesrtone of the social system. Family is not a casual or spontaneous organization of people but it is a divinely ordained institution. Family and marriages are regarded as noble and sacred a social contract that confers mutual rights and obligations on the couple. The progress and welfare of the society or its breakdown can be braced to the strength and unity or to the wakness of the family. The weakness is a crucial indicator of the weakness of the scoiety reflected by problems like juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, alcoholim. teenage pregrancies and divorce The concept of an extended family is comon in non western cultures, unlike the concept of a nuclear family which means a family consisting of just the parents and their children that is comon in the west. Extended family means children parents grandparents and some times inlaws share one househole islam does not specify that a muslim family should be either nuclear or extended. with regards to relations within the same family, the first and most important is that of husband and wife their children and the grandparents. Other relatives come in a second or third degree; although this is not to say that the individual has no obligation or responsibility at all towards therse other relatives whereas the first degree fo the relations has unequivocal and precise rights.
Islamic Family Laws
Although the nature of duties and obligations among members of a family are instinctive in human nature. it is important to realize that islamic lawa exists only to the supplement and enforece therse innate feelings and not to replace them. Islam acts as a guarantee that the rights and responsibilities that each member to the family has with regards to othres will be fulfilled with justice and equality. Islam family law establishes minimum basic rights to gurarantee the interests of each family member. Thus, in islam family relations are governed by a balance between the innate sense of duty felt by family memebers and what is laid down as a minimum by the law. In the absence of law, there could be the problemes arising from the fact that the innate nature ot the father to treat all his children equally could be overridden by an attachemnt to one particular child, and so this child is especially favored, for example in inheritance leaving the other children with their rights denied. Lineage or lineal duty has an essential role in the muslim family because from it stems the duties obligations and responsibilities of family members the most important islamic teaching on this subject is that people mucst not claim a child as theirs if they adopted that child, and that children must not falsely claim to be the real son or daughter of a particular person if they r not and that adopted children cannot be given the family name of their foster parents because doing that would mask the adopted children's true identity . and of course natural children have more claim to any inheritance than adopted children.