Guardian

“And we have enjoined upon man, to his parents, good treatment. His mother carried him with hardship and gave birth to him with hardship…”- (Q46-15)

BRETHREN, two weeks ago, I reminded you of the need to keep your duty to your Creator through the care you give your mother. I mentioned that even after their death, we still owe our parents some dues. We need to pray for them. We need to fulfill pledges they made while they were on earth. We need to keep and sustain those family ties they cherished and worked to preserve while they were alive.

When, at the time of their death, your parents owe some debt, you as their child has the duty to clear the debt. Dear brother, if your father or mother died without performing a religious duty such as that of Hajj, Islam demands that after you might have fulfilled that obligation, you could embark on another one with the intention that the reward should be put in their account.

However, dear sister, all the above is relevant only to those women who were good mothers of their children while on earth. This is germane particularly because the Children’s Day for this year will be marked and celebrated all around the globe in a couple of days. It is equally germane when we seek to retrieve exemplars among women whose history remained shinning lights for humanity today.

This is true of women such as Sarah and Hajar (a.s) and the wives of Prophet Ibrahim (a.s). It is true of the good wives of all Prophets of the Almighty who stood by their husbands in the face of trials and tribulations. It is true of bearers of those wombs from which emerged men and women whose conduct and action have advanced human civilization and progress. Brethren, the above is equally applicable to women like Aishah (wife of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w.) who, though denied the opportunity of experiencing labour pain, took care and nurtured children of her sisters like she would nurture her own children. These were women who taught a their children not only what it takes to be a success on earth but also what it takes to be successful in their hereafter.

In other words, dear brethren, the celebration of Children’s Day calls attention to the need to declaim women who have failed in the task of being good mothers. These are women who have failed a priori to be good wives; women who are engrossed in the pursuit of the transient pleasures of this world and have consequently neglected their homes. These are women who have become involuntary mothers: mothers by compulsion not by choice. As soon as the foetus is separated from their wombs, as soon as the child comes to the world, he is taken to the nannies because his mother is a corporate woman.

From the nannies, he is taken to the kindergarten school. By the time he or she is six or seven he is taken to the boarding house. There he would spend the greater part of his adolescent life. There he would learn every tricks and thought that the modern world teaches to children without mothers. From the boarding house, such children usually proceed to the University or Polytechnic and from there to the NYSC scheme.

Children who go through this type of experience often mature totally bereft of those solemn and subtle elements and cultural-natural codes which can only be transferred from women to their children- the elements of love, compassion and kindness. Having lost the opportunity of enjoying the bliss of motherhood, such children become just anything the world presents them with including street urchins. They grow up to loathe and hate the world because they were loathed, detested and uncared for by the bosom that bore them.

Brethren, is it not true that most women of today are not like women of yesterday? Is it not true that our wives are unlike our mothers? The latter saw motherhood, not only as a divinely-ordained responsibility, but equally as the measure of their personal treasures. Women of today see motherhood as a measure of patriarchal oppression of women. “Who says it is only women who should carry pregnancies”, a typical feminist would question you. Such women are those who have got tired of being women. They constantly seek an escape from their femininity.

I chanced upon a film the other day, which was produced by an icon in the nation’s film industry and one whose works are renowned for its lack of chicanery and obscenities and for its promotion and preservation of humanity’s eternal values. In that film, an elderly woman sees a young, nubile lady who ties the knot of her wrapper on the right side of her hip and points her head tie towards the right side of her body.

The elderly woman beckons on the young lady, sits her down and begins to teach her the inner meanings of each style of the woman’s dressing in our culture. She teaches the young lady what most mothers of today are ignorant of: how to talk in the private and in the open, how to walk and maintain a carriage that would not demean her femininity, how to relate to the opposite sex and how to make a success of life in the public sphere. It was from such women that the world was blessed with Efunsetan Aniwura. It was from such wombs that Nana Asmau of the Sokoto Caliphate passed through this clime. These were women who never relied on their bodies but their brain in order to affirm their subjectivities and identities. Though they lived among men, those women were sufficiently knowledgeable enough that men are men only because women made them.

Let me begin to close by asking mothers of today this question: do you want your children to be what you desire for them or what the Almighty wants them to be? Khalil Gibran, an Arab-American poet, presents a perspective I found to be highly instructive and germane. He says: “A woman held a babe against her bosom and said, “Speak to us of Children.”

And the child responded: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; for even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

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