As a mother myself, who also currently has an infant right around the same age of 6 weeks old, my heart truly aches for this Western mother.
This is a non-Muslim American mother who only just had a baby several weeks ago. She is miserable and frantic with stress, unable to come to terms with the bleak fate that soon awaits her:
Leaving her helpless beloved tiny new baby in daycare so she can go back to work at a paid job. Mom and baby must part ways mere weeks after birth.
This mother’s words of pain and worry could make anyone feel depressed—her infant daughter has been breastfed for all six weeks of her life and does not drink from a bottle. But now, the baby must learn to either accept drinking milk from a bottle or starve. Since the mom is forced to work, the baby is forced to adapt and learn to use a bottle, no longer able to depend on her mother’s breast for sustenance. The mother is sick with anxiety, because whenever she’s tried to give her baby daughter a bottle, she has “gagged, spit up, cried and flailed” every single time. How will this baby eat without her mother?
The poor baby.
The poor mother.
My heart aches for all mothers and babies (6 weeks old!!) who are forcibly separated from one another for no good reason. Many moms and babies in modern secular societies are separated not due to true necessity (such as dire poverty) but due to the SYSTEM.
The system that exists in Western secular countries is a liberal system. It pushes and promotes liberalism, which is maximizing personal liberty, freedom and equality.
In other words, worshipping the self; being completely consumed with the individual at the expense of all else.
Everything in a secular, liberal society revolves around the individual and the individual alone. The entire system is built on a foundation of selfishness, atomization and isolation.
The system is designed to force all individuals into a specific, predetermined path: wage slavery—the dual-income family, where both husband and wife must work in order to just make ends meet. In the past, the system was structured in such a manner that a family could survive and live well on just the income of the father, while the mother stayed home with the children. The system has shifted in the direction of the two-income family, forcing both the father and the mother out of the home, for work.
But what about the children?
Mass schooling institutions.
But what about the babies that are too young to go to school?
Mass childcare institutions.
But what about the elderly who are too old to continue working as wage slaves?
Mass elder-care institutions.
Everyone is institutionalized.
Men are separated from their women, and parents are separated from their children.
The natural ties between people are severed. The organic bonds are broken. The normal relationships that are supposed to exist between human beings are destroyed.
One example of this bond-breaking is the separation of a mother and her infant child.
In nature, within the animal world and all traditional human societies across time and space, mother and infant have always remained together. Wherever the mother goes, so too goes her baby. The two cannot be separated. Without the mother’s breastmilk, the infant dies (unless another nursing mother is found). Being away from the mother is not natural, especially at such a tender age.
This separation of a mother and her baby is unbelievably harsh, and it is extremely taxing on both the mom and the baby. It conflicts starkly with the natures of both, mom and baby, and it thus disrupts the deepest needs of both, mom and baby.
Mother and child need to be together, not apart.
Especially at such a tender age, just having been in this world for a few short weeks.
At this stage, all this baby knows is their mother. Their mother is their ENTIRE universe at six weeks and for quite some time beyond that too. This is the stage of what researchers refer to as the “imprinting period,” when a human child desperately needs “orientation,” i.e., to be oriented in the world by the mother just like a lost traveler would be oriented in a foreign land by a map.
Given the full time and opportunity to receive this crucial foundation of love and trust from the mother, a child is able to grow into a psychologically sound, emotionally healthy, mentally stable human being that is capable of interacting with others well and living life in a normal way.
Being ripped apart from the loving arms of the mother prematurely; being carted off to a strange, sterile place like a daycare; being raised by complete strangers from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm, five days a week, for years on end. This causes unspeakable damage to babies.
Stripped away from Mama just six weeks after being born!
This is often neither the fault of the mother nor any specific person. The poor mother is often (though, not always) forced, by necessity, to leave her baby at a daycare with strangers while she off goes to work. She often has no choice.
Single mothers are prevalent, especially in a society in which Zina (fornication) is rampant and fornication is normalized and un-shamed and, in fact, actively encouraged (“You have to explore your sexuality! It’s healthy to gain sexual experience as a teenager!“) by society and even by parents. Individualism is pushed as something all-important.
What is the result of all of these “rights,” hyper-focused on only the individual and their own momentary pleasures?
The rights of all others are trampled underfoot.
Children suffer and are abandoned.
Marriages suffer and die.
Nuclear families suffer and break down.
Extended family suffers and dissolves.
Kinship ties break.
The community is disjointed.
Society weakens.
Civilizations collapse.
Islam has an entirely different system—an elegant, refined system that has a delicate balance between the rights of all people: the individual, the family, children, parents, kinsmen, the community and society. The most important, most fundamental rights of each party are safely secured so that no one suffers; and so that human nature is upheld and the fitrah (natural innate disposition) is maintained. The dignity of children, mothers, fathers and the elderly is assured. Their needs are respected.
Allah tells us in the Noble Qur’an:
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ ٱتَّقُوا۟ رَبَّكُمُ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَكُم مِّن نَّفْسٍۢ وَٰحِدَةٍۢ وَخَلَقَ مِنْهَا زَوْجَهَا وَبَثَّ مِنْهُمَا رِجَالًۭا كَثِيرًۭا وَنِسَآءًۭ ۚ وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ ٱلَّذِى تَسَآءَلُونَ بِهِۦ وَٱلْأَرْحَامَ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ عَلَيْكُمْ رَقِيبًۭا
O humankind! Be ever God-fearing, [conscious] of your Lord who created [all of] you from a single soul — and from it created its mate, and from them both spread [abroad] many men and women. So fear Allah, in whose name you ask [consideration] of one another. And, therefore, [be dutiful to] kindred. For, indeed, ever is Allah vigilant over [all of] you. (Surat al-Nisa’, verse 1)
Islam is the system that meets all human needs; fulfills all the natural rights of all people; and organizes society in a way that beautifully aligns with our inherent human nature and does not destroy it. Islam governs the way we interact with our children, our parents, our siblings, our neighbors, friends and even strangers. Islam deepens our intuitive love for our loved ones and nurtures our organic human relationships.
How?
With mechanisms built into our Din, such as gender roles (where the husband has financial obligations and the wife is free to be a mother at home with her children); birr al-walidayn (excellence towards parents), which ensures respect for parents from their children; silat al-rahim (maintaining the ties of kinship), which assures the safety net and support network of extended family and relatives and also maintains ancestry.
In an Islamic system, it would be exceedingly rare for a mother to be separated from her baby six weeks after she gives birth. Both the mother and tender child are saved from the agony of being an unnatural distance apart from one another.
In the Western secular system, however, this mother-baby separation is basically the norm.
Allah says in the Noble Qur’an:
فَهَلْ عَسَيْتُمْ إِن تَوَلَّيْتُمْ أَن تُفْسِدُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ وَتُقَطِّعُوا أَرْحَامَكُمْ
Then is it to be that you [hypocrites] shall turn away [from Allah] to spread corruption in the land, and [your divisiveness] tear apart [the bonds of] your kinship? These are the [faithless] ones whom Allah has cursed. And thus has He made them deaf [to guidance] and blinded their eyes [to it]. (Surah Muhammad, verses 22-23)
Turning away from Allah, from Islam and Tawhid (pure monotheism) inevitably leads to causing corruption on the earth as well as destroying family ties and natural human relationships.
Islam stands in stark contrast to the miserable liberal secular system of human isolation and wretched separation.