3 2 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 6 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 0 3 Discussion 3.1 Discovering the Background on Marriage and Progeny in Islam The problem of the infertility in Islam can be discussed only in the frame of heterosexual marriage. Nikah , “marriage”, literally “sexual intercourse”, is an ideal stemming from the creative order in the Qur’an 25:54: “ It is He Who has created man from water: then has He established relationships of lineage and marriage: for thy Lord has power (over all things) .” The Qur’anic verse 49:13 tells us that Allah created humankind from a single pair of a male and a female. They were the first married couple. In surah An-Nisa’ (“Women”), the Qur’an 4:3 allows a Muslim man to take up to four wives at any given time provided he will be able to deal justly with all of them and take care of them. Nevertheless, this conception was broadly misused in Islamic history, while the original meaning of this guideline was to take care of widows and orphans left without husbands and fathers in the time of the wars. The nature of Muslim marriage is contractual in form. Islam also permits divorce, talaq , if necessary (El Alami and Hinchcliffe 1996, 22–23). Al-Sbenaty defines Islamic marriage as follows: “ Besides the emotional involvement between the spouses, which is the most important asset in every relationship, Muslim marriage is in fact a form of an agreement or a contract by which both parties know or should know their rights and duties ” (Al-Sbenaty 2012, 22). The Prophet Muhammad once said that marriage is half of faith. That is the reason why Islam permits divorcees to remarry. The Qur’an asserts that spouses are equal, but each has competences and tasks to perform in the marriage. The husband is a provider for his wives and children. The wife is responsible for the household and upbringing of their children and satisfies her husband’s needs the same way the husband satisfies hers by providing for her. Yet, family education of children in Islam in general cannot be seen even in present time as free democratic education, which started to predominate in European culture of late 20th and early 21st century (Tůma and Holonič 2019a, 17). Nevertheless, current conclusions of Islamic educationists concur with those of Slovak researchers in education, that it is necessary to provide enough incentives in different areas of early childhood development that should be in synergy with providing enough love, acceptance, security and safety (Kostrub, Ferková, Ostradický and Tománková 2019, 148). Islam teaches that doing one’s duties and having responsibility has a positive effect on the person in bringing reward in a form of happiness and inner peace. Indeed, there is only a small number of people whose personality attained such noble heights, or such a level of personal growth (Mu - sawi and Mujtaha 1997, 215). The sexual intercourse between the same sex persons is prohibited in Islam. So are incest, rape, masturbation, and adul - tery (Stingl 2010, 96). The latter is addressed in the Qur’an, surah Al-Isra’ (“Children of Israel”), 17:32: “ Nor come nigh to adultery: for it is a shameful (deed) and an evil opening the road (to other evils) .” For the sake of their children’s health, pregnant Muslim women do not have to fast; they are also exempt from this religious duty during menstruation and breastfeeding (Mawdudi 1986, 115). In Islam, children are a precious gift from God (Atighetchi, Milani and Rabello 2013), so no harm shall befall them. This idea of human as a person with dignity, which should be protected in all aspects of its existence: material, cultural and religious is indeed common to all Abrahamic religions (Baková and Holonič 2018, 5). Parents will be held accountable to Allah for the upbringing [1], tarbiyah, of their children (Kabir and Az-Zubair 2007, 605–609), just as the children will be held accountable for the way they treated their parents as they grew old and were no longer able to care for themselves. 3.2 Diversity of Approaches: For the Situation of the Believing Patient Even to be Harder As Kostrub claims, multiplicity of opinions is a popular post - modern phenomenon and it is one of the new roles of the scientist to find and interpret the unifying features in the intersubjective thinking subjects, as co-creators of contemporary worlds (Kostrub 2016, 15). We follow up to this thought and state, that even if the faith of the infertile patient is strong, her/his experiences with the diversity of approaches to the problem makes them insecure and asking, what exactly Allah’s will in their situation is. When thinking about Islam, the impossibility of making universally valid claims follows from the diversity of approaches within:
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