ENGLISH-DEVELOPING AN UNDERSTANDING OF GENDER BASED SOCIAL INTERACTION PRINCIPLES IN ISLAMIC TEACHINGS

Keywords: Gender Interaction, Principles, Islamic Teachings, legitimize, intermixing

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to explore principles of gender interaction in Islamic teachings. Now-a-days Muslims find themselves asking what the guidelines are for men & women to interact and socialize with each other if they need to, except such texts do not exist. In-short, the scholars of the past dealt with the academic aspect of gender intermixing, but did not shed light on the practical side of it. Our society cannot flourish without professional and healthy interactions between men and women. Pretending that such is possible simply does not make sense. In our global society we have to interact with the opposite gender whether we live in a Muslim-majority country, or a Non-Muslim-majority country. Rather than just saying that men-women interactions are not permissible except when needed, the focus should be to provide guidelines and protocols to follow and abide by for when the time of ‘need’ arises. In this way, we can work on making every interaction professional and permissible in the sight of Allah. Since none of the classical fiqh scholars dealt with this topic in the way we intend to, it has made my job very difficult in coming up with the guidelines and protocols of permissible interactions between men and women. To do so, we have begun by analyzing all the classical Islamic texts. The study is qualitative in nature and thematic content analysis is used to achieve the objectives of study. Conclusion of the study is significant in understanding the true picture of Islamic teachings for gender based social interaction.

Published
2020-05-31