I was reading through proud Muslimahs thread and the issue of free mixing of genders came up.
This area is very vague in the West, where in Islamic countries they put a lot of emphasis on it. And the interpretation differs from scholars.
I am assuming many of you are students as well as working with the opposite sex, presented with continuous contact.
But there are conditions.
When we consider all of the laws governing the relationship between men and women in Islam, we are forced to come to the conclusion that Islam forbids any mixing between the sexes that might provide even the remotest possibility of temptation. Scholars of Islam throughout history have fully appreciated this fact. We can see it evidenced in the writings of the great jurists:
Al-Sarakhsî writes: “The judge should try women separately from men since people tend to crowd together in the courtroom. It is quite obvious that the mixing together of men and women under such crowded conditions is conducive to temptation and other distasteful consequences.†[al-Mabsût (16/80)]
When scholars warn against the free mixing of men and women, they are not talking about the mere presence of men and women together in the same place. This is something that is definitely not prohibited by Islamic Law. Men and women gathered in the same place at the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) in the mosque and in the marketplace. They walked down the same roads and public thoroughfares.
The mere presence of men and women in the same area is not a great cause for temptation. It would be wrong to treat this as unlawful mixing, since the reason for prohibiting free mixing does not exist in such circumstances. If someone were to prohibit men and women from frequenting the same public places under the pretext of preventing temptation, this would be taking matters to an extreme and imposing a restriction that is unduly severe. Such a policy is, moreover, unnatural and would impose great hardships on people’s lives.
I wanted to open this for discussion and see if anyone found this difficult to understand.
A friend of mine once told me it was haram to go to restaurants; I understood her point but disagreed, I think this issue is bound to the environment and intention.
