This Sunday is Mother's Day. In fact, it will be the 100th Mother's Day in the USA nation's history. The holiday began with Anna Jarvis (d.1905) as a way to remember her own mother, the wife of a Methodist minister in Grafton, West Virginia.
I remember my Islamic Studies teacher Muhammad Ismail telling us children that the Prophet advised one companion to be kind and dutiful to his mother saying: “Be dutiful to your mother, as Paradise is at her foot.”, meaning be dutiful to her, obey her, and serve her and take care of her because being kind and dutiful to the parents and pleasing them is a reason of being admitted to Paradise.
Knowing that my father had married several wives and that there were other relations as well, I raised my hand and asked my teacher, ‘Does it refer to only my own mother or also to other mothers too?’ He was little perturbed by my question but then said, ‘all of them’.
I was a little confused. Even though I was taught to honor my mother(s), my father did not necessarily do the same. On many occasions I witnessed the violent way he would speak to my mother and others of his wives to the extent he would beat them for something he would not like and would make him angry.
In my Islamic studies I learned that the Qur’an states "And revere the wombs that bore you, for God is ever watchful over you" (Sura 4:1). And also Muhammad is mentioned in the traditions, “Be at your mother’s feet and there is the Paradise.” (Ibn Majah, Sunan, Hadith no. 2771)
The Quran, when it comes to the same mother who is the wife of my father, gives permission to the husband to hit her (Sura 4:34). I was often confused.
Many Muslim claim Islam to be a complete system of law and order for all of life. They cry that Islam has freed women. But is that the real freedom? Muslim women have no right to divorce their husbands, but can themselves be divorced by three fold repetition of the formula, ‘I divorce you.’
As a young man trying to follow Muhammad to the letter, at times I wished and desired that Allah would have ordered husbands to marry one woman and honor her, respect her as he ordered Muslim youth to honor their mother.
Several years later, I would learn in the New Testament how a husband is to love and treat his wife. God had already told us even before I was born – many centuries even before Muhammad. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Wow!
As we celebrate the mothers in our lives this Sunday, let us remember to pray for the Muslim mothers, who though are honored by their children, still lack the dignity and respect in so many significant ways. Pray for Muslims, both men and women, that they will embrace the light and truth of Christ, the only answer to all that we face in this world.