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Social Deterioration
A serious problem today is the disintegration
of many societies' social fabric. This collapse
is discernable in such phenomena as broken
families, increased divorce and illegitimate
birth rates, which naturally injure and
even destroy the institution of the family.
Stress, anxiety, unhappiness, worry, and
chaos turn the lives of many people into
nightmares. People living in a spiritual
void, looking for a way out of their depression,
fall into a bleak mire of alcohol or drugs.
Some who think that there is no solution
even consider suicide as a way out.
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(1)
Murder
that Comes with Lyrics (Aksam,
July 15, 2003)
(2) 298 percent increase in
Drug Crimes
(3) In Holland, one kid dies
a week out of brutality (Sok,
June 6, 2002)
(4) Youth
Goes to Extremes |
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One striking mark of social decline is
the huge increase in crime, which has now
reached substantial proportions. The report
"Universal Crime and Justice" prepared by
the United Nations' International Crime
Prevention Center, contains a general appraisal
of crime throughout the world:
Basically, as in the
1980s, the crime rate continued to rise
in the 1990s. Everywhere in the world, in
a five-year period, two-thirds of the people
living in large cities have been the target
at least once of a criminal action. All
over the world, the odds of being the target
of a serious crime (robbery, sexual crimes,
assault) are one in five. Regardless of
the area, crimes against property, and crimes
of violence committed by youth, have both
had economic ramifications. The number of
types of illicit drugs has increased and
their nature has diversified in recent years.33
Actually, this is not surprising, for
the causes of such a societal phenomenon
are clearly related in the Qur'an's accounts
of past societies. Social deterioration
and its related problems are the inevitable
results of human beings' forgetting God,
why they were created, and their abandoning
of religion and its spiritual values.
Such social deterioration was predicted
by the Prophet (may God bless him and grant
him peace), who described the End Times
as "When people suffer strife and social
upheaval." (Ahmad Diya'al-Din al-Kamushkhanawi,
Ramuz al-Ahadith, vol. 7, p. 7)
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33. "Global Report on Crime and Justice"
(United Nations Office for Drug Control
and Crime Prevention: 1999). Online at:
www.uncjin.org/Special/GlobalReport.html.
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