Naturally, parents are responsible for their children's health and medical care. However, in cases where parents cannot, or will not, provide for their children, then the community has the responsibility to step in.

The choice to have children engenders the responsibility to take adequate care of them. But we have to acknowledge that there are parents who can not do so, whether because of poverty, illness, disability, death, etc. Even worse, there are parents who will not, again for a multitude of reasons including alcoholism or other addictions, religious convictions, or sheer negligence.

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In the weeks before the Pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj), which is coming up the end of next month, Muslims who are planning to make the journey will visit friends, family, neighbors and acquaintances to ask forgiveness for any wrongs they may have done to them. This simple request for forgiveness has always touched me as a great act of humility and a beautiful expression of a core Islamic value. That of humility.

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The Qur'an is quite clear that engaging in consensual sexual relations outside of marriage is a grave sin. That, however, does not mean that what two people do in privacy is a criminal act, as we see in certain Muslim countries, nor is it a matter for public gossip. And the Prophet was quite clear that there is no sin so grave that it is unforgivable, with the sole exception of idolatry.

With public officials and people in positions of authority, however, there is always concern about coercion. Complicating the matter, is the fact that public officials are role models for the public -- while we can accept that they, like us, are flawed human beings with weaknesses and short comings, we would hope that they live lives worthy of emulation.

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