Joint Family System in Pakistan-An Islamic Law!

In Pakistan by and large there is a joint family system in which there are grandparents, uncles, aunties and lot of cousins. Although this family system is undergoing a drastic change with a greater influence of media and education but people do not feel this change a good one. As a joint family system has a lot of emotional attachments enhanced and they feel that by this family dispersion their relations will be weakened and damaged. In Joint family system there are defined norms and values to follow strictly by all the members. All the members have their defined tasks and responsibilities to perform. There is equal share of each and every member of the family in the available resources in the form of money, food and other requirements. If all the requirements and regulation of this organization fulfill fairly then it is the most successful system but unfortunately this not happens.

In a joint family systems now lot of crisis emerge on the issues like distribution of household tasks, allocation of financial responsibilities among different members, division of resources in the form of food and money. There are various reasons of each emerging issue in joint family system. Firstly; members of joint families have no income security. As if a person has surety that whatever he earned it is his own then he could become ready to invest and entrepreneurs for the economy of the country through proper savings. Joint family system also creates problems in children rearing. As among various loving relations mostly it becomes impossible for parents to prohibit their children from various bad habits, rude attitude and wrong behaviors. Loving relations like uncles, aunties and grandparents do not like to stop children harshly. They do not like to blame or scold their young grand children and hence they bring up in a wrong support of their loving relations which impacts their whole life badly and therefore they do the same wrong deeds in their mature life and hinder their own career and give loss to the country’s economy also. When little boys and girls groomed up in such an environment where there are people who support them for wrong deeds then become irresponsible individuals of the country who contribute to prevent developmental process.

Being an Islamic country, people of Pakistan prefer to adopt Islamic systems in their life styles so it is important to inform Pakistani people that joint family system is strictly prohibited in Islam. It does not like mix living of girls and boys in a form of family. There are limitations by Islam to control unlawful intimate relations. Some families in Pakistan are use to live in Joint family system but trying to follow this religious tradition in wrong way. This creates a lot of problems in women’s life.

Islam does not appreciate joint family system. It is a tradition that we have inherited from Hindus, male & female living & eating together. Islam does not allow this but in Pakistan when a girl gets married; she is forced to live in the joint family system. But if you want Islamic point of view then there is no such concept. Because when you live in the same house there’s bound to be loose talks between male (in-laws) and female members of the family and Islam doesn’t like that. She has no privacy. If she tries to seclude herself in her room, she is considered to be arrogant. No voices have been raised against this important issue. It is a woman’s right to live separately. She has the right to make decisions equally with her husband & to raise their children accordingly but in Pakistan this right has been taken away from the girl. When the new bride enters the house she is taken for granted. She is not allowed to make decisions nor is given her rights.

A woman is only asked to take care of her husband but unfortunately this is not the scenario in our country. If a girl asks for a separate home, she is said to be with bad moral values. It is in an Islamic culture that a girl, when she asks for a separate house, the husband should provide her. If the husband is poor & can’t afford, then at least he should give her a separate portion in the same house where no one should interfere in her privacy.  In our culture if the wife asks for a separate house, the husband gives justifications that he has to reimburse his family for what they have done. But Islam doesn’t appreciate it.  It’s the duty of every parent to give proper upbringing to the child & when he is old enough, get him married to a pious girl & let them take care of themselves. We should not expect from our children rather expect it from Allah.