We cannot but be anxious about social trends in the West. The survival of the Western family and classical definitions of gender is a question of immediate Muslim concern. In any battle between a genuinely sacred and a profane orthodoxy, the outcome is fairly predictable. Let us have hope and trust, and remember always that “God’s word is uppermost.”

As a mother of a teenager and a toddler, my approach in raising my two girls is vastly different. Perhaps, as the cliché goes, age and experience play a role. I became a mother first, when I was 23 years old, young, fiery, stubborn, opinionated, ready to conquer the world. One doesn’t contemplate becoming a mother. To many of us, it simply happens.