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Quran
considers chastity as a permanent value and lays a great emphasis
on restricting the sexual activities within the bounds of marriage.
The question is why this is so much important. This article
reviews briefly the western independent research in this regards.
Richard
Wilkins is a professor of law at Brigham Young University.
He writes in his book "Marriage on the brink" that
viewed from any historical, anthropological or sociological
perspective, marriage is not just an emotional and sexual
attachment but it is much more than an intimate association
between two people. It civilizes men. It protects children.
It generates social energy. It fosters individual and collective
growth. It teaches norms. It creates culture.
According to Giambattista Vico, marriage is the "seedbed"
of society. In 1725, after completing an exhaustive study
of ancient history, he concluded that marriage between a man
and a woman is an essential characteristic of civilization.
Without strong social norms that encourage a man to direct
his sexual attentions to a single woman and thereafter care
for his offspring, Vico concluded that chaos ensued. John
Locke referred to marriage as mankind's 'first society'. The
married family is profoundly important for a stable society.
British
anthropologist J. D. Unwin reached the same conclusion.
In his 1934 book, Sex and Culture, Unwin chronicled
the historical decline of 86 different cultures. His exhaustive
survey revealed that "strict marital monogamy" was
central to social energy and growth. Indeed, no society flourished
for more than three generations without it. Unwin stated it
this way, "In human records there is no instance of a
society retaining its energy after a complete new generation
has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial
and postnuptial continence."
Unwin
confessed that he began his investigation "with carefree
open-mindedness" and "in all innocence". With
no axe to grind, and no idea where his researches might lead
him, he wanted to test the conjecture that civilization and
sexual self-control were related to each other. He studied
eighty primitive and sixteen civilized societies, and found
that a society's cultural energy (art, science, technology,
etc.) increases as its sexual energy is controlled.
Professor V.A.Demant's writes in his book "An
Exposition of Christian Sex Ethic" about the Unwin's
research as follows:
"His
[Unwin's] conclusion, reached after a review of many societies
and civilizations, is that when social regulations forbid
indiscriminate satisfaction of the sexual impulses, the emotional
conflict is expressed in another way; and that what we call
civilization has been built up by sacrifices in the gratification
of innate desires. "A greater or lesser mental development
has accompanied a limitation or extension of sexual opportunity."
Unwin correlates three types of religion with three kinds
of society described by their sexual regulations. "Societies
that permitted pre-nuptial freedom were in the zoistic condition
and produced little culture beyond tribal survival. Societies
that imposed an irregular or occasional continence were in
the manistic condition: these have a more elaborate social
system. Societies that enforced complete pre-nuptial continence
were in the deistic condition, and these have the maximum
of intellectual and creative energy. He deduces that the greatest
social energy and impulse for civilization-building is a correlate
of the strictest of sexual patterns, namely that of absolute
monogamy and extra-marital continence".
David
Holloway writes in his article "when private become
public" as follows:
"The
basic claim that sexual restraint is correlated with cultural
health stands and seems to be self-evidently true. A society
where marriage norms have been destroyed and where pure sexual
gratification is a primary value is not a society that can
motivate communal effort. Nor will many of its members want
to make sacrifices for such a society."
E.
J. Mishan once wrote:
"Can anyone care very much what happens to a society
whose members are continually and visibly obsessed with sexual
carousal - to a society where, in effect, the human animal
has been reduced to a life-style that consists in the main
activity of alternatively inflaming itself and relieving itself?"
Tony
Blair when interviewed soon after he became British Prime
Minister, said:
"Of all the behaviour which in my personal experience
has caused the greatest misery to other human beings, I would
put adultery pretty high on the list. I don't actually think
you can expect a man with the strains of public life to perform
adequately unless he has got a good home life to go back to."
Rev.
Louis p. Sheldon, Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition
says "destruction of marriage precedes death of a culture,
history shows".
In
his 1979 book, "Our Dance Has Turned To Death,"
Christian sociologist Carl W. Wilson noted that history
reveals that nations decline and eventually die when sexual
immorality becomes rampant and the traditional family is discarded
in favor of group sex, homosexuality, infidelity, and unrestrained
sexual hedonism. Carl Wilson notes that decadent cultures
display seven typical characteristics: Men reject spiritual
and moral development as the leaders of families; men begin
to neglect their families in search of material gain; men
begin to engage in adulterous relationships or homosexual
sex; women begin to devalue the role of motherhood and homemaker;
husbands and wives begin to compete with each other and families
disintegrate; selfish individualism fragments society into
warring factions; and men and women lose faith in God and
reject all authority over their lives. Soon, moral anarchy
reigns. When the family collapses, the society soon follows.
Sociologist
Pitirim Sorokin, in "The American Sex Revolution,"
found essentially the same thing when he examined sexual immorality
as it relates to cultural decline. Sorokin noted in the late
60's that America was committing "voluntary suicide"
through unrestrained sexual indulgence. He observed that as
individuals began engaging in pre-marital sex unrelated to
marriage, the birth rate would decline and our nation would
be slowly depopulated. He predicted an increase in divorce,
desertion, and an epidemic of sexual promiscuity resulting
in a rise in illegitimate children. His predictions, unfortunately,
have come true. Sorokin's study of decadent cultures convinced
him that a healthy society can only survive if strong families
exist and sexual activities are restricted to within marriage.
Sexual promiscuity leads inevitably to cultural decline and
eventual collapse.
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