South Valley Islamic Community Blog

Our Obligation to God and Society – Shaykh Ilyas Anwar

A well known hadith has it that a time will come when the Muslim ummah would face so many tribulations that we would be overwhelmed and be paralyzed by them and not know what to do or how to proceed.  The Prophet’s companions and followers were reported to have asked the Prophet s.a.w. what they should do when such a time comes.

The Prophet referred to the Quran where Allah exhorts that we should not worry about what others should or should not under those circumstances but instead focused on what we should do on our own to resolve the issues and be part of the solution.

In striving to be part of the solution and not be part of the problem, we must remember two things:  One, our obligations to Allah, and the other, our obligation to our society and fellow human beings.

With regards to our obligations to Allah, we must be mindful that Allah is All Forgiving and All Merciful.  Meaning, if we failed to meet His obligations or transgress His commands in any way, we still could ask for and hope to receive His Mercy and Forgiveness.  Our fellow human beings on the other hand are less forgiving or merciful.  Thus we have a greater obligation and must put greater emphasis on our obligations to society and fellow human beings.

Our relations and obligations to our fellow human beings must be guided by the golden rule:  we should treat them as we would wish to be treated by them.  We should not speak ill of them, engage in back biting, and the other things that we do not like others to do unto us.

We have the Quran and the teachings of our Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. to guide us.  The members of society most immediate to us are our family, thus we must begin with them.  One of the items emphasized in the Quran is the rights and obligations of parents and the reciprocal rights and obligations of our children to us.

As parents we have three obligations:  to give our children good and worthy names, give them good education and guidance, and when they reach marriageable age, to encourage them to get married.  Children in turn have to be respectful of their parents, especially their mothers as we discussed last week.

In the Quran, Allah says that our wealth and our children would test us.  Meaning, our wealth and children could either be our savior and a blessing to us, or they could easily be a burden upon us, the cause of our misery.

To ensure that our children would be our savior or be a blessing to society and us, we have to groom them right from the very beginning, starting at the moment of birth.  It is a good tradition that when a baby is born to call the Adhan, an acknowledgement of God’s gift, and asking for His Blessings.  We should recite the Azzan in the infant’s right ear and the aqimah in the left.  On the seventh day or later, we should ceremoniously shave its hair and give a donation in silver equal in weight to the shaved hair (Aqiqah).

Likewise, we should be selective and careful in picking names for our children.  If we choose one of the 99 beautiful names or attributes of Allah, we should precede it with “Abd” (a servant of).  As we live in a culture different from what we have been brought up, we should choose a name that could be easily pronounceable.  If we pick too exotic a name that his peers would not be able to pronounce or if it sounds too foreign, his or her friends would end up giving the child a nickname and that would negate the whole purpose of the original name.

Another custom would be to circumcise male babies.  Fortunately, this is a common practice here and that would not impose too great burden for us to do it to our babies.

It is instructive that that when Luqman, the prophet’s companion, was advising his son, the one thing the father stressed was not the praying or the giving of zakat, rather on the more issues like to walk with humility and to talk humbly.