Be a Good Mother and Serve Allah

Dr. Syed Hasanuddin Ahmad

Peoria, Illinois

Allah has created both man and woman from the same specie:

O people! Fear your Lord who created you from a single being and out of it created its mate; and out of the two spread many men and women. (An-Nisa’ 4: 1)

Men and women both are responsible for their own actions and deeds:

And their Lord has accepted their prayer, and answered them: “Never will I suffer to be lost the work of any of you, be the male or female: you are members, one of another. (Ale ‘Imran 3: 195)

Men and women have similar rights over each other:

And women shall have rights similar to the rights against them, according to what is equitable. (Al-Baqarah 2: 228)

Naturally, they should have similar rights, as they are from one another; and because of being of the same specie, they need same necessities and facilities of life to survive in this world and to perform their duties, too. But of course, they have different duties to perform; however, their duties are complementary to each other to help and strengthen each other in achieving the same mission- serving their Lord, their Creator:

Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means; therefore, the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband’s) absence what Allah would have given them guard. (An-Nisa’ 4: 34)

It is but natural that different people should be assigned different duties, in order to achieve the objective of life efficiently and in harmony, according to their physical and qualitative abilities and capacities. Is it not the same principle on which we hire and fire people in our daily life businesses, projects, governments, and schools, etc.?

Let us now go back to the verse (4: 34), as mentioned above, to ponder over it a little bit deeply. Allah says that “therefore, the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband’s) absence what Allah would have given them guard.” Here, Allah has very clearly emphasized the role of good, righteous, and obedient women- the role of guarding what Allah has given them to guard. The Messenger of Allah has also said that a righteous woman is a shepherd (guard) of her husband’s home and children (Muslim).

What have Allah and His Messenger given to the righteous women to guard in the absence of their husbands? It is not difficult to visualize, from the teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah, that the righteous women must guard the following entities:

1. Their and their husbands’ chastity
2. Their and their husbands’ honor
3. Their and their husbands’ children, and
4. Their and their husbands’ belongings, etc.

Looking at the third entity above, we at once realize that, probably, the most important role a woman has to play in the society is that of a mother. It is this role which is the subject of this brief note.

We all know that the humanity can not grow without its women playing their roles in the society, specially the role of mothers. Every man or woman owes his or her existence in this world to his or her mother. A man can never play the role of a mother; it is this inability of man which raises the status of woman far above him. Remember, when mother of Mary gave birth to a girl, she got depressed; but Allah knew best what she had given birth to, and He consoled her thus,

And no wise is the male like the female. (Ale ‘Imran 3: 36)

Later on, the same girl Mary gave birth to Jesus (peace be upon them), without having a sexual relationship with any man. Can we pinpoint a man who became a father without the help of a woman? Even in our present-day ethic-less society, the women who get man-seeds from a sperm-bank and conceive give birth to their children, they hold them in their arms, and they raise them the way they like; whereas, the men who sell their seeds to sperm-banks do not know the whereabouts of the fruits of their seeds; they are deprived of their natural part of playing the role of fathers in the society. How distressing! Is it not? An Urdu couplet rightly describes it as, “Wisdom is called madness, and madness is called wisdom!”

The safeguarding of children does not just mean to save their lives from some dangers, but it means to make them physically, and mentally healthy as well; it means to see that the children are raised up with good health and education; it means that the children acquire the basic tenets of their lives, too. Only mothers can raise their children on their nature. Only mothers can inculcate the spirit of serving their Lord in the hearts and minds of their children. Only mothers can save them from falling prey to satanic forces. The children who are raised up by their baby-sitters and or nursery schools, not only fail to learn the useful traits of purposeful life, but they fail to acquire the human traits of love, sacrifice, and discipline as well. Motherhood is the ultimate objective of a woman. A woman, no matter how happy she might be as a wife or a daughter, does not achieve the bliss of happiness, unless she becomes a mother.

It is the lap of a mother that acts as the first school for the new generation. It is for this schooling that Allah had returned the baby Moses to his mother. It was this school of Elizabeth that had taught John the Baptist to act as a Warner and to sacrifice his life in the cause of Allah. It was this school of Mary that had raised a fatherless child to become a Messiah and one of the five Messengers of High Determination. It was this school of Fatima daughter of Muhammad (S) that had taught Husain to sacrifice not only his own soul, but everything else which he had, in order to restore justice in the society. It was this school of Asma’ daughter of Abu Bakr (R) that had taught Abdullah bin Zubair to fight against the usurper. It was this school which had groomed Imam Abu Hanifah to stand up against Al-Mansoor, the most powerful ruler of the time. It was a mother who had raised up Mujaddid Alf-Thani who, then, had boldly stood against the heretic laws of the Mogul Emperor Akbar.

Islam wants its women to play the role of motherhood to strengthen it by raising exemplary men and women, such as Umar, Ali, Khalid bin Walid, Tariq bin Ziyad, Salahuddin, Aisha, Fatimah, and Rabiah, etc.