Re: bringing your kids up in Britain
my 2 cents on this(not meant to diss anyones opinion)
look, no matter how much anyone feels that moving to a muslim country is gonna help them raise their children in a good atmosphere..it aint gonna happen. the reality of life is that the number of evils that you'll probably have to face in a muslim country are gonna be much more multiplied that what you face in some place like UK or the US. the main problem i see with most immigrants living in these countries(us/uk) is the aversion to mix freely with the natives. unless this inter-mingling happens more openly, one will always feel secluded or ignored or out of place. for instance in england, you have all these pockets where people of desi ethnicity live(esp. paki and bangla) they dont seem to wanna mix freely enough with the others for some reason. unless you start lettin go of some of the stuff that your community "clerics" tell you about "preserving" your "culture" one will always have feelings of alienation and the "them" V/s "us" mentality. this is what leads to this whole thought process of moving to the middle east and all that,IMO. i personally have lived in the middle east(although for a short time) as well as in england and US and believe me the greatest power you have of living in the west is freedom. a lot of hardliners might say that in the middle east too you will find freedom but its more religion oreiented. and THAT my dears bro's and sis' is one of the biggest lies that is passing around. take my word...its not true!
coming to the question of vulgarity and moral degradation in the UK, it'd like to put it this way.
society as a whole is changing at a very fast pace and the education(or awareness) or ability to cope with it unfortunately hasnt moved along at quite the same pace. this is why we feel that the society is degrading.
the society is not degrading, it is CHANGING.
sooner rather than later, one needs to accept this fact of life and begin to devise methods to educate the young ones as to how exactly to cope with this changing reality and still have a normal growing up or "parvarish" . the secret does not lie in immersing yourself in spirituality or religion(though thats not a bad thing by any means), it is in opening up and being more accepting of different kinds of people in society.
another reason for this feeling of moving to some other country(like middle east) to have a more morally "correct" life is out of the oldest of human emotions : F-E-A-R.
the fear that somehow this "epidemic" of vulgarity or immorality might infect someone of your own community or family. for all of those people ,let me say one thing : "whatever you focus on(postively or negatively) will become part of you and whatever you ignore will cease to affect you" in other words, what you focus on thrives and what you ignore dies!
if by immorality you mean homosexuality then worry not. because homosexuality is NOT a trend or a fashion...its a biological characteristic. it has existed since man made his first steps on earth and probably will be there till the end. there needn't be any fear of "catching" the epidemic cos i repeat- ITS A BIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTIC, nothing more, nothing less.
as far as other things such as teenage sex or drugs that might be causing some to fret, all you can do about it is to give your kids a good education, make them have a great childhood, develop their talents and have a good open family atmosphere. innumerous studies have stated this fact about drugs and teenage sex: it seems to be prevelant mainly in communities where the child has not had a proper upbringing in terms utilization of his/her time and family atmosphere.
i hope my post made sense to the readers, thanks :)