ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Sexual Ethics in Islam and in the Western World Chapter 5: Basic Need for Humane Conditioning of Natural Instincts And Desires The need to refine and condition the raw natural instincts and desires of individuals in a benign manner is a basic one. Harmonious personal growth is conducive to wholesome interaction with fellowmen, which in turn leads to a salutary impact on the humanity at large.

An appropriate conditioning and training of an individual's natural potentialities brings about spiritual rewards, too. These include a spiritually balanced personal outlook and intellectual composure, necessary for any sound and beneficial endeavour. Psychosomatically balanced persons are emotionally stable and competent to achieve social harmony and peace. On the other hand, any unduly inhibited or imbalanced growth of an individual personality is quite undesirable.

So are any adverse external influences or pressures and strains of a negative kind. For, negatively conditioned people become susceptible to causing excesses, untold miseries and cruelties not only to themselves, but to others. The traditional non-Islamic moralists regarded sex and love as if these were manifestations of an obnoxious evil to be shunned. In contrast, the modernistic societies tended to consider free love as not only desirable but respectable.

No doubt, the free love concept began to receive every preferential treatment and encouragement for its worldwide growth.

With regard to Islamic morals, these can be properly understood with reference to the following points: (a) Islamic morals and their compatibility with the objective requirements of natural growth of sexuality as part of inborn human instincts and potentialities; (b) Suppression of human concupiscence; (c) Modernistic sexual permissiveness as a major cause of sexual or sex-oriented aberrations or deviations of human behaviour, preventing harmonious growth of the natural instincts and potentialities of an individual; (d) Democratic attitudes towards sexual behaviour; (e) Sexual morality, as compared to general ethical conduct in the economic and political fields; (f) Love and the forlorn condition in which it remains a longing; and (g) Love and harmonious growth of human personality.

To begin with, the fact that natural human instincts should be nurtured, and not suppressed, is to be recognized.