We were honored to receive a reply regarding our posting about the turban tradition in Islam from Shaykh Gibril F. Haddad. In his generosity, he shared with us an article he recently authored about filial piety and the role of mothers in our Islamic tradition.
Update 1: MereIslam has posted a pdf file of this article.
Update 2: This article also appears on SunniPath.
Motherhood and the ideal of filial piety - Gabriel Haddad - 13-May-07
“Who deserves my love and care most in the world?” A man asked the Prophet Muhammad, upon him blessings and peace. “Your mother,” the Prophet replied on the spot. “And who else?” “Your mother,” the Prophet repeated. “And then who?” insisted the man. “Your mother,” the Prophet said a third time. “And then??” “Then your father.” Al-Bukhari and Muslim narrated it.
The Quran in several places commands filial piety but its focus is on the mother: “We have enjoined goodness upon man concerning his parents. His mother bears him in weakness upon weakness …” (Surah Luqman, verse 14), “We have commended unto man kindness toward parents. His mother bears him with reluctance …” (Surah al-Ahqaf, 46). The Quranic archetype of the pious son has no father but only a most distinguished mother the Prophet ‘Isa (Jesus), upon him peace, who describes himself as “dutiful toward her who bore me and not arrogant, unblessed” (Surah Maryam, verse 32).
It is in light of the above emphases in the Quran and hadith that we better understand the generic “parents” in other verses, such as “Worship none save Allah, and be good to parents” (Surah al-Baqarah 83) – the first two Commandments of the Decalogue, also common to Christians and Jews – and that we can say Islam, second to its theocentrism, is matricentric as well.
In the hadith, the archetype of the pious son is the Yemeni herdsman Uways al-Qarani, who sought permission from his mother before visiting Madinah to see the Prophet Muhammad, only to find the latter away on a trip, whereupon Uways, broken-hearted but bound to filial duty with hoops of steel, returned without further delay to Yemen and resumed caring for his mother. Later, the Prophet told his Companions of Uways’ superlative rank among the Just and told them he would be a major intercessor on the Day of Judgment. Indeed, filial piety comes before even Jihad in importance, as shown in the many hadiths translated and listed by Aliah Schleifer in her 1986 book Motherhood in Islam.
The Prophet himself never got to enjoy the company of his parents, having lost his father just before birth and his mother a few months after. One of the most touching scenes of the Sira or Prophetic Biography shows him standing wordless at her grave, weeping profusely, surrounded by a large group of hushed riding-companions, all of them weeping at his sight.
Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi – the most un-Taliban Afghan imaginable – coined the rich conceit of worldly loss and change as the pains of mutually unaware, multiple motherhoods in all things created: “Everything in this world is a mother, each unaware of the birthpangs of the other.” It is a measure of the Prophet’s consciousness that when he saw (more…)
