In this part of the article titled “Islamic Teachings on the family”, we shall discuss the responsibilities of the mothers.
Mothers Responsibilities
Mothers are the head most schools of structuring the children’s personalities, and supplying them with the noble traits. Polite and courteous mothers produce virtuous generation.
Decadence and lewdness are the outcome of the generations that are brought up by impolite mothers. On mother’s shoulders lie great social liabilities. They are responsible for the nation’s future, honesty, and progress.
They are the origin brick in the building of the educational entity. They also bear the most momentous aspects of the education of children since they are the builders of the bases of the children’s tendencies and moralities through guiding to virtues, ambitions, progression, action, and self-reliance.
It is very much difficult to change totally the matters that the children acquire before their eighth year of age. Therefore, those matters influence greatly the society and people lives and maturity.
It is so natural that a child -when brought up on ambition, progression, activity, and diligence- will positively add strong pillars to the nation for achieving the required deeds and structuring propitious civilization.
Mothers enjoy some motives for helping in the children’s custody and education:
1. Mothers are more tolerant than others are in the field of educating and keeping their children. This is because they enjoy natural instinctive motives. God has given deep love and affection to mothers exclusively so that they consider their children as their hearts and souls. Without this, children would not exist and live.
2. Mothers are more aware and conscious of their children’s morals and moods. They are also more enlightened with the soundest means of enjoining good and forbidding evil.
3. Naturally, children respond to their mothers according to the law of exigency. They exert all efforts for carrying out their mother’s desires and obtaining their satisfactions.
Mothers duties
Mothers, who desire to see their sons be their future pleasure and relic, should work hard for educating the sons and overseeing their behaviors by sticking in their minds the good biases and the noble idealistic:
1. Mothers should endear and encourage on every good conduct by referring to the successful outcomes.
2. Mothers should warn their children against any criminal and evil way and custom, and should warn them against the behaviors of any party that is in congruent to the religious and social habits.
They should refer to the consequences of such things that are injurious for families, societies, and the children themselves.
3. Mothers should choose chastity and morality as the courses of educating their daughters whom should be guided to the qualities of the female exemplars.
They should be warned against recklessness and being affected by the fashions of those women who are unaware of their chastity and dignity.
Tutelage of Daughters
Careful tutelage should be focused on daughters and their affairs so that they will not be polluted by the libertine conventions that, unfortunately, found their way to our Islamic societies, and invaded our people intellectual and doctrinal lives. Daughters are usually more obedient -to their mothers- than sons.
They are always in need of their mothers. Hence, mothers should maintain, manage, and train them on every necessary job included: studying while housekeeping, parenting, and how to treat the spouse well.
They should also make them perceive the lives liabilities so that they will fulfill their duties in the future and become the good mothers of other generations.
4. Mothers should not exceed in pampering their children in order to avoid the disadvantages that contribute in the retardation of education and the future unbecomingness.
5. Mothers should attract their son’s attentions to the high standards of their fathers. They should insist on reverencing and respecting them.
This will improve the father’s roles in disciplining the deviate and leading to the good behavior.
6. Mothers should never contend their husbands since this creates an aspect of mutual malice and hatred. Consequently, such matters may lead to the children’s disorder and anxiety as well as other mental complexes.
Islam has urged women on pleasing the husbands and neglecting any matter that may enrage them. The Prophet (PBUHH) is reported to say:
“Allah will not accept any dissuasion, remuneration or good deed of the wives unless they satisfy their husbands.
Wives, who mistreat and burden their husbands with arduous and unbearable things will not be rewarded for their good deeds, and Allah will come upon in ire. Wives will not fulfill Gods rights before they fulfill their husbands. (1)
Imam Muhammad Baqir (PBUH) says: The deeds of wives, who address at their husbands that they did not see any good from them, will be come to nothing (ibid).
Muslim wives are asked to satisfy, appease, and comply with their husbands in addition to avoid whatsoever may disturb them. This is the only way of saving good education for their children.
7. Mothers should inform the paterfamiliases of every aberrant deed they may notice on their son’s behaviors. Fathers turn then is disciplining and guiding the sons to the correct path.
Mothers should never cover up such deeds lest sons will have motives to keep up the incorrect manners. Mothers are also asked not to make objections to fathers disciplinary punishments lest sons rebel and corruption may increase.
8. Mothers should protect their sons from the streets that are full of seductive matters and motives of antisocial behaviors.
Nowadays, streets are including, to excess, the aberrant ones and those who are morally affected and the source of children is being polluted and dragged to junkyards of immoralities and serious offenses.
9. Mothers should deprive their sons of any cause or method that may injure chastity and purity, or collapse the morals and ethics, such as sexy books, novels and cinemas, nightclubs and the like. Such sources of seductive media draggle to the lowest levels of whoredom and insolence.
10. Mothers should conserve chastity and good behaviors. They should never display their charms and cast their screens.
They should keep up the Islamic conducts so that they would be the good exemplars of their sons in fields of chastity and noble descent.
Finally, they should elude any matter that may arouse the cravings and corrupt the moralities.
Honest matrimonial relation creates the precious emotions of the husband and incites him to believe perfectly that he should prefer his sons and wife to his own interests.
Dishonest relations, on the other hand, eradicate the husband’s jealousy to their wives and smash any cerebral motive to bring up their sons honestly or care for saving good life for them.
This grand disaster affects humankind. Moral corruption of the young is one of the consequences of that disaster.
Sons who lack familiarity with affectionate fathers who care for them will most surely opt for immorality. Indeed, death of emotions leads to death of humanity.
Children’s duties:
Islam has given a great attention to daughters and sons from different aspects. They are required to respect and obey their parents specifically fathers absolutely.
Thus, impiety to parents is one of the grand sins for which God has threatened the hell-fire. Gods Book refers to the obligation of benefaction and obedience to parents in more than one position.
God has attached the obedience of parents to worship and compliance with Him. He says:
“Your Lord has decreed that you shall not worship anyone except Him, and [He has enjoined] kindness to parents. Should any of them or both reach old age at your side, do not say to them, ‘Fie!’
And do not chide them, but speak to them noble words – Lower the wing of humility to them, mercifully, and say, ‘My Lord! Have mercy on them, just as they reared me when I was [a] small [child]!”. (2)
Muslims should treat their parents according to this straight course that represents Islam’s genuineness and constancy in education and teachings.
Muslims should also meet their parents with thorough travails of service and charity, and dedicate all of the deeds to the parents use until they are emotionally satisfied.
Besides, the spirits of contentment and acceptance should be dispersed in the parent’s mentalities.
Any single word of boredom or annoyance should not be said to the old parents who lack the ability of managing their affairs.
In such cases, it is insistently imperative to serve and superintend them. It is obligatory to use leniency with them and supplicate to Almighty Allah for their good and meet them with the best forms of dignifying and honoring since these acts leads to God’s forgiveness.
Reports of confirmations of the Prophet and the Imams (PBUTH) on the commitment to benevolence and piety in treating parents are uninterruptedly existence in the reference books of Traditions (Hadiths) and history.
Narrating from Imam Jafar As-Sadiq (PBUH) said: “O God’s messenger! a man addressed the Prophet, I have the desire to participate in jihad. Yes, said the Prophet, you should strive for God’s sake. If you are killed, you will be divinely alive and rewarded with earnings.
If you die, God will be rewarding you. If you come back safe, your sins will be totally condoned as same as the day on which your mother had given birth of you.
Said the man: “O God’s messenger! I have aged parents who claim they feel at ease with me and disagree to my departure.
Then, said the Prophet (PBUH&HP): You are to settle with your parents. By the Prevailing of my soul I swear, one-day ease you provide to your parents is more preferable to a year participation in jihad”. (3)
Hence, we notice that sons piety to their parents is more reward-full than jihad, which is one of the portals of the Paradise.
Zakaria Bin Ibrahim said: I had been Christian before I converted to Islam, performed the ritual pilgrimage and came to Imam As-Sadiq and told of my conversion to Islam.
What have you noticed in Islam distinctively? asked the Imam. I referred to Gods saying: You had not known what is the Book or the believing. However, we made it a light by which We raise whom We desire.
The Imam raised his hands upwardly supplicating to God for my good and guidance. My father and mother, who is sightless, are Christians, said I, I usually accompany them and eat from the same saucer. Do they eat the pork?
asked the Imam. Never, I answered, they do not even touch it. The Imam instructed, never mind. You should be pious to your mother. If she dies, none other than you should make her funeral ceremonies. You should manage her affairs.
As I was back hometown, I began to implement the Imams instructions of piety of my mother that she wondered the reason beyond my extraordinary supervision. O son! she pondered, when you were on my religion, you did not do this to me.
As you converted to Islam after your immigration, I noticed this fantastic piety to me, what is this? A man, who is one of our Prophets descendants, instructed me, I answered.
Is he a prophet? She asked. No, I answered, He is a prophet’s descendant. These are certainly the prophet’s instructions, she expressed, your religion is really the best. She then converted to Islam”. (4)
Islam is grounded on rewarding the well doers and piety to parents as much as possible. Islam asserts on mother’s piety specifically more than fathers. This is because mothers’ rights upon sons are more abundant than fathers are.
On the authority of Imam Jafar As-Sadiq, narrating: “a man asked the Prophet which of his parents he should treat more benevolently. Your mother is, said the Prophet. Whom next? Asked the man again. Your mother is, confirmed the Prophet again. Whom next? reasked the man.
Your mother is, said the Prophet. Who is next? reasked the man. Then comes your father, worded the Prophet”. (5)
Of course, it is important to realize the tradition that it is not true to say that the Holy Prophet (PBUH) was going to say that there is no obligatory to respect father.
No, this meaning was not true at all. He (PBUH&HP) meant that it is obligatory from the Allah on the Children to respect their parents both very much as much as they can, but mother much than father.
Sons are responsible -before Allah- for supervising and honoring their parents by saving whatever they need. It may be a part of rewarding the burdens and difficulties that they stood and exerted in educating their sons.
As a man was shouldering his mother to perform the ritual circumambulating of the precept of pilgrimage, he asked the Prophet whether he had fulfilled her duty? Not at all, asserted the Prophet, You have not met even a single sigh.
The filial piety and obeying the parents -by serving them- are fundamental constituents of the all Muslims in a way that Allah command His followers and believers to obey their parents and not to disobey or disagree with them at all. Unless it causes Almighty Allah’s anger and hard Punishment in two worlds both.
NOTES:
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- (Kanzol Favaed, Vol.1, P.159)
- The Holy Quran (17:23-24)
- (Bihar al-Anwar, Vol.74, P.52)
- (Bihar al-Anwar, Vol.47, P.374)
- (Al-Kafi, Vol.2, P.159)
