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THE YOUNG MOSLEM LOOKS AT LIFE

honorable opponents did not believe this, all they had to do was to visit the moving picture shows and see with their own eyes the unthinkable and highly improper things that were taking place among the women and men of the Western countries where there is the greatest freedom of the sexes. If they wanted this sort of social condition to grow up in Moslem lands, then they would surely see it when the purdah system was abolished. On the other hand they felt that the only way for society in so-called Western Christian countries to be redeemed was for Islam to be established there, and for the purdah system to be adopted!

These remarks from the minority produced much applause, as well as hearty laughter, while the meeting adjourned with the best of feeling, and with the resulting consciousness that it is in the family life of Moslem society that some of the most vital and fundamental problems arise. In fact in this house of Sayyid Ibrahim and in the discussion held there by those young men we have the setting and the statement of the most important issues of home life found in Moslem countries everywhere.

In the first place it should be noted that Islam does not know the word "home." They use "house" instead, and as there is a difference in the words, so is there a vast difference in the meaning attached to them. And yet the home and family life, such as they are, form the basis of the Moslem social life all the way through, except where reformers are trying to work a change. Segregation of the sexes and seclusion