Woman in Islamic Shari‘ah
10. Hijab in Islam
~ 237 ~
Divorce was not so common in former times. Then
how has it reached such proportions now? The sole
reason for this is traceable to the promiscuity of what
in religious terminology is called unrestricted society.
This life style devoid of moral constraints has made it
possible for men and women to live together like the
fish in the sea. With such a life style, permissiveness is
unavoidable. One’s loyalties keep changing. In a
segregated society, where interaction between men
and women is almost non-existent, a man associates
only with his spouse, which keeps him from forming
new loyalties, while in a free society he comes upon
new faces every day, one better than the other. He
then feels like abandoning the old face in preference
to the new and more attractive one. What is
happening in the West is that the couple lives
together for some time after marriage and when they
come across a better face, they go in for divorce to
start a new life. This fact has been plainly stated by
the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Commenting on the
increasing rate of divorce in western society, it says:
Actors, authors and other groups that have
many contacts with the opposite sex tend to
have a high divorce frequency.
205