By Rashid Samnakay, New Age Islam
06 January 2016
It is a well known fact that all communities have some concept of reverence attached to motherhood, often extending into ritual worship of female figure depicting fertility, nurture and being the source of propagation of mankind. Thus the female person, the woman, is worshiped as the life source.
Among Muslims this Hadith- Apocrypha is a popular quotation when discussing the place and status of the female as the mother and her motherhood status in some communities:-
“The Messenger Muhammad said: Your Jannah lies under the feet of your mother”. This Apocryphal report is attributed to Ahmad and Nasai among others. Though for many this Hadith is classified as ‘weak’ and by some others as ‘false’.
In spite of that, it is considered as an important statement by the Apostle Muhammad in this context, and is justified from many verses in Quran, but mainly from verse 4-1 as translated differently, by different translators of the Book.
The issue is the place and status of the female species accorded in Muslim society as a whole. Traditionally, culturally and religiously though, the female falls far short of the above reverential position of a goddess. Considering that the mother, who after all is a female person and in time may acquire motherhood, her treatment in society is anything but reverential and falls far short of even decent respect that the Book calls for her!
In many Muslim communities with their religious laws, the above statement that it ‘falls far short’ may be a gross understatement as seen from their practices! The treatment meted out to the female, is nothing short of inhuman, cruel and outright humiliating! It is like Spanish matadors and picadors torturing hornless bull to death.
These practices for the treatment of female are derived from the hearsay Apocryphal books and ancient and modern one-eyed and myopic translators of Quran. The present day or the so called modern scholars have and are, merely regurgitating their ancient predecessors. With many of them, the ancient imams and scholars are the ‘unquestionable authorities’, and therefore in present days too edicts are pronounced from so called higher institutions of learning and backyard rulers, endorsing these dehumanising Fatwas; often reported in the media shaming the nation.
At the very source the mythology associated with the creation of man and a woman – Adam and Hawaa is nothing but a fairy tale, as all myths are in their nature. Following the senior religions, for example humanity’s mother Eve- was extracted by god “from the ribs” of forefather Adam. This has no reference in the Book.
Not wishing to confuse the issue with the contentious aspect of brother/sister incestuous propagation of mankind from then on; may not one ask as to why did the Creator who in the first place had created Adam, could not have similarly created Eve, as a partner and playmate for Adam when he was lonely and bored to tears in paradise? Why would He – the god, have put the poor soul Adam through the trauma of prolonged anaesthesia and the surgical operation? Based on this fairy tale therefore it should be the ‘fatherhood’ of Adam, the man which deserves the status of reverence as father god-figure since it was he who gave birth to Eve.
But Lo! The man of the mankind has latched on to this argument and established himself as the ‘god on earth’, at the immense cost to the earthly eves and mothers.
Frivolity aside, it is a serious issue. A society that believes in such Apocrypha and attributes it to a person who simultaneously is also held as an Apostle who reiterated the age-old established code for mankind not to worship any other god but God; should then propagate that paradise lies under the feet of the mother and further opine that if he the messenger of God, had been permitted, he would have asked women to worship men as god-on-earth. Alas! such ignorant communities do still exist in the world!
In the Book, it never singles out one parent against the other. Innumerable verses extol mankind to respect both parents, particularly in their old age. Unquestionable obedience to them is not part of it when the offspring is fully grown and mature to think and judge for itself. Apostle Abraham (Ibrahim) condemned his father on account of his idol worship. But in all circumstances respect, kindness, gratitude and protection to parents is a duty imposed on mankind:
31:14- And We have enjoined on mankind concerning its parents – mother bears the childbearing trauma upon trauma and the (child’s) weaning takes two years – saying: give thanks to Me (God) and to your parents. To Me is your eventual return.
The physical pain and trauma endured by the mother – the woman -- is highlighted to impress upon the child what the mother, in her motherhood suffers for it to come in the world. She being burdened by this natural handicap, the male of mankind is equitably burdened to protect and provide for her 4-34. But not to worship her as a deity.
Worship in obedience is only due to the Creator; which in religious teachings and edicts of the churches and religious professionals has lost its meaning and essence.
As one Urdu poet had begged the operatives of the ‘church’:
تُجھے مذھب مٹانا ہی پڑٰیگا رُوۓ ہستی سے
تیرے ہاتھوں بہت توہینِ آدم ہوتی جاتی ہے!
You have to eliminate religion from the face of the earth—(for) at your hands mankind is suffering gross humiliation!
The lower status of female in most communities is common, but among Muslims has deteriorated to such an extent that to elaborate on it would cause any thinking person to sweat with shame. This is despite them making ad nauseam claim that Islam via Quran has given womankind the equality, equity and status in the society that no other community has. It is a deafeningly hollow claim as is seen from their practices!
The list of contradictions to the Book by Muslim nation is miles long. Some of the items on it are common to other communities but the most shameful ones are ascribed to Muslims. One such example is …… no it is not honour killing, yet more embarrassingly one to “wash the dirty linen in public” and refer to it:-
‘Halala’ practice, as it is the one practice that engulfs the whole family. The divorced woman, who seeks to re-unite with her former husband, who is most likely a mother by then, and therefore the Garden of Eden – Jannah, is under her feet. God forbid if this goddess wishes to go through the religious edict to re-unite with her former husband she has to commit the sin of prostituting herself for one-night-stand and get divorced the next morning, at the hands of a professional or a religious Halala priest; who most piously performs his sin in the name of Allah; the exclusive deity he thinks sanctifies all such sins as holy.
All the while the children of the unfortunate mother-goddess suffer the humiliation in silence along with their father.
The noble institution of marriage that was the cause of raising the woman to the status of goddess, under whose feet lies the Jannah, that same institution is now used by their religion to grind her personality in dirt, and not only of the unfortunate mother but the honor of the whole family – the father, the children and all those associated with the sordid event.
A nation that enacts and obeys such inhuman religious laws is not fit to be included in the community of human beings. So is there any hope for recovery for such a degenerate nation? May be 4-150,151 of the Book can answer that.
One can only take solace in a poet’s lament on being humiliated in love affair:
نِکلنا خُلد سے آدم کا سُنتے آۓ ہیں لیکن
بڑے بے آبرو ہو کر تیرے کوچے سے ہم نِکلے
We hear of the expulsion of Adam from the paradise—yet it is with the greatest humiliation we depart from your neighbourhood!
----
A regular contributor to New Age Islam, Rashid Samnakay is a (Retd.) Engineer
1:25 AM
Moderate Islamist here
0 comments:
Post a Comment