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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| How to pay back one’s parents |
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| Abu_Atheek |
| 01/25/03 at 05:48:49 |
| [slm] [center]How to pay back one’s parents [i]By Adil Salahi[/i][/center] We mentioned that nothing a child normally does for his parents may be considered adequate repayment for the love and kindness they showed him when he was young. Indeed, parents' love, care and kindness overflow throughout their lives. We also quoted the Hadith in which the Prophet specifies the only way to pay back one's parents in full. The Prophet says: "No child repays his parent fully unless he finds him a slave, then he buys him and sets him free." It is not difficult to appreciate why the Prophet considers this as full repayment of a father's kindness. Incidentally, this applies to the mother as well. A slave is committed to obey his master, whatever he orders him. He cannot choose how or where he lives, and what job to do. He simply does what he is told. By setting him free, his son gives him back his freedom. He gives him a feeling of being reborn. Nowadays, we cannot imagine what it is like to be a slave, considering that slavery is non-existent. We can, however, imagine what it means to be committed to obey someone else every day of one's life, to the extent that one is told when to eat, sleep and wake up. It is important to note here that when a son buys his father or mother who have been slaves, the moment they come into his possession they are set free. He does not need to grant them their freedom, as it were. Even in the blackest days of slavery, the mere fact that a father comes to be owned by his son or daughter means, according to Islam, complete freedom to him. No slave can be owned by his own child. Phis is most noticeable in the case of a slave woman who gives birth to a child by her master. Once the child is born, she can no longer be sold to anyone. She remains, however, the slave of her master. When he dies, she is technically inherited by the child who is her own. That sets her free. This is one of the many ways through which Islam reduced world slavery. It is clear that nowadays no one can achieve full repayment of his parents, since slavery no longer exists, except perhaps in very remote and small areas of the world. It is possible, however, to be a dutiful child who tries hard to make his parents happy. We can achieve this better if we have a clear idea of how being dutiful compares with other Islamic duties. At the time of the Prophet emigration to Madinah was the mark of being fully committed to Islam. It signified that a Muslim who emigrated disregarded totally all his past loyalties, including his tribal loyalty which used to be the most important bond in his life. By emigrating a Muslim declared that he was fully committed to Islam, to the exclusion of every other commitment. A man came to the Prophet and said: "I have come to pledge to you my loyalty and to emigrate. I have left my parents in tears." The Prophet said to him: "Go back to them and make them smile as you have made them cry." (Related by Al-Bukhari, Muslim and others.) In other words, the Prophet gave a very clear indication to the man that if his parents would be so miserable as to cry because he was leaving them in order to emigrate, then he was better off staying with them in order to make them happy. The Prophet did not wish that sadness should be felt by parents as a result of a duty Islam required of its followers. Someone may ask how does the Prophet order someone not to emigrate, when emigration earns a great reward from God. The answer is that to be kind and dutiful to one's parents can compensate for that. Consider this Hadith reported by Ibn Abbas: "For any Muslim who has two Muslim parents and who goes to them every morning obeying their requests, God opens two doors to heaven. If he has one parent, God opens one door to heaven for him. If he displeases either of them, God will not be pleased with him until that parent of his is pleased with him." Someone asked: "Even when they are unjust to him?" He answered: "Even if they are unjust." (Related by Al-Baihaqi and Al-Bukhari in Al-Adab Al-Mufrad). This is another of the many ways by which the Prophet explains to us that one of the surest ways to be admitted into heaven is to be a dutiful child. In this Hadith we are told that we must even tolerate injustice by our parents. There are certainly occasions when a parent may be unjust. If we can tolerate that injustice, then we should do so. But we should not obey them when their injustice is inflicted on someone else. In that case, we should counsel them against it. This is because injustice is forbidden. When we help them to do something forbidden, we are their partners in that. It is more dutiful to try to dissuade them from committing that injustice. Where we must not obey our parents is when they order us to do something unlawful. If a parent commands a child of his to do something forbidden, then the child must not do it. The Prophet says: "No creature may be obeyed in what constitutes a disobedience of the Creator." If something ordered by the parents is suspiciously wrong, then we should still do what they ask us, because we are not certain that it leads to something forbidden. Sometimes parents disagree with each other. Each one of them may ask their child to do something which displeases the other. How does a child behave in this case? Muslim scholars answer that he should give priority to his father's right to be honored and respected, because he adopts his name. At the same time, he gives priority to the mother's right to be served and supported. If both of them enter his home or his room, he stands up to show his respect to his father* If both of them ask him to give them something, he begins by giving his mother. If he has to support them both financially and he can support only one of them, he gives priority to his mother, because a woman is normally supported by her relatives in Islamic society. The other reason is that one's mother takes more trouble on herself looking after her child from pregnancy to birth to breast feeding and then bringing him up through the different stages of his childhood, looking after him when he is ill and so on. This shows how Islam takes a reasonable, practical and balanced attitude in looking after parents. [i]Islam in Perspective – Arab News – 02 January 1998[/i] |
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