On the passing of a grandson. Reflections of Javed Ahmed Ghamidi.
[Hassan Ilyas] In the name of Allah, most beneficent, forever merciful.
Peace be upon you
We are present before you with another Q n A session with Ghamidi Sahab,
live from Ghamidi Centre, Dallas, America.
Let us begin today's session. Thank you Ghamidi Saab, for your time.
First of all, a very unfortunate news.
Your grandson has passed away.
And people from the world over have conveyed their messages of condolence.
That child, from the moment he had come into the world, till today,
he was passed through many tests by God Almighty.
And his parents too, with great devotion, and with patience, courage, and determination
accepted the will of God, and took care of that child,
and tried to provide for that child in every possible way, as is required
for children in this kind of predicament.
What are your thoughts? What are your feelings on this occasion?
And people are conveying their laments from across the world in large numbers,
it is not possible for Ghamidi Saab to directly reply to all,
but we have tried to convey your feelings and condolences to Ghamidi Saab.
We shall try to seek Ghamidi Saab's response to your messages.
What are you thoughts, Ghamidi Saab?
[Javed Ahmed Ghamidi] He was a piece of our heart.
His life of about 8 and half years was one filled with tests.
He also soldiered through it, as did we.
He was a great blessing of God.
We used to have many occasions to witness God's favour upon him and upon us.
His life, his day to day existence would also become a reason to remember God.
What attitude must be have in this world, and toward others, if Allah puts us in a test,
what all stages might one go through, even that would become evident to us.
Therefore, I used to consider his being to be a great blessing from this perspective.
You are aware that Allah has revealed His books as reminders, has sent messengers,
in the same way, whatever events and accidents take place, behind them as well,
this same reminder, the same admonishment, is the intent.
So what can be a greater thing than this, that a service to a child,
love and affection for him, would at once create a means to Paradise for you,
and his state would also be reiterating a reminder of the hereafter,
of Allah and His laws as well.
So, from all these perspectives, he was wholly a blessing.
Till the time he stayed with us, Allah's blessing and favour stayed with us.
And his parents were given the opportunity by Allah, to practice patience and steadfastness,
in all matters related to his well-being,
and in a sense, his mother had dedicated her whole life to the child.
It is a fact that one could witness the true nature of motherhood, the emotions of a mother,
the reality of motherly love, day in and day out, while sitting in his presence.
It is possible that you or I might sometimes take it easy,
but the mother would never for a moment, in any state, at any time,
allow even a frown to appear on her forehead.
So in this way, he was, from every angle, a means to remember God,
and he would become a means to highlight the compassion of a father,
and the love of the mother, which Allah has bestowed in this world.
You are aware that the Quran makes reference to these things as reminder to us.
Anytime a big event like this occurs, then the quality of this reminder too reaches its zenith.
We would experience that reminder day in and day out, while sitting with him,
or talking to him, or how he would go about his life.
Or seeing his mother's sacrifices for him.
Still, whatever time Allah had given him, he spent it in this world,
And you are aware, that for a week, he came in and out of the pangs of death,
there is no doubt that a lot of people expressed their love for us.
They prayed for him.
And they stayed in touch with us constantly.
They asked after him.
We are all very thankful to them.
Then when he passed away, many people are sending condolences,
and are partners in our grief,
we are thankful to them many times over.
And we request them, that they may pray that Allah brings peace to his parents, and his siblings,
so that the grief that they have been through, the trauma that they have experienced,
the blessing that they have been deprived from,
after this, Allah may bestow them with that peace, calm,
that they may be able to live the rest of their days being devoted to their Lord.
Because, the attention to one's Lord, the knowledge of Him, living according to His Will, His pleasure,
this is what the deen is, this is what is Iman,
the Prophet (pbuh) said, that the person has achieved this, has tasted the sweetness of faith.
So I also pray for the same for them.
That Allah may give them this in consequence of this accident.
They are blessed with Iman from before. May they also taste the sweetness of faith.
[Hassan] Subhanallah, that was a very beautiful advice that you offered.
There is another aspect, upon which I wish that ...
These are such events, obviously, which happen only occasionally in one's life.
So on this too, I wish to seek some insight from a scholar of religion.
Please do tell us, I know that you yourself had an elder first daughter,
who left this world after spending only a few days in this world,
I also came to know that you all by yourself, at that moment, arranged for
her coffin, the shroud, and the funeral had happened thereafter.
And we know that, we saw, how the news of this child's passing was received by you.
We normally see a kind of emotional reaction on such news, which we didn't witness in you.
Like it happens, a person becomes defeated with grief.
How have you developed this courage and strength to deal with such tragedies within you?
And is there a favour of Allah, that when we go through such events, such reminders of Allah,
where the nature of sadness is personal,
how do you deal with that, and with courage, steadfastness, strength and patience,
one remains pleased with the Will of God?
How did you develop this quality?
And when such news reaches you, then, as a scholar of religion,
what are your feelings?
[Ghamidi] I feel that all human beings are made of flesh and blood only.
Whatever you go through, I go through the same.
What feelings I have, you have them too.
No human being comes straight from the heavens.
We are all born out of this clay.
We have the same feelings. There is sadness too.
There is grief as well.
We feel pain too.
At some moments, there are complaints against that Lord too.
You know what Syedna Yaqub (a.s.) had said,
'I complain of my sadness and grief only to my Lord.'
However, there is a thing which becomes absorbed in one's very being, because of
one's consciousness as a religious believer,
it is that this world is fleeting.
The blessings that we get in it, are also temporary.
The sadness is also temporary.
The pain felt is also fleeting.
When it is fleeting, then it is possible that one sheds a couple of tears.
but this is not a place of mourning and bewailing.
Here, the moment one goes through a pain, or undergoes a trauma,
then the whole attention should be towards this fact, that
the world that our Lord has made for us, it has to come after passing through
this very door of death.
It has to come to me too. To you too.
In my life of the past 50 or 60 years ...
Now I'm more than 70 years old,
I have seen many deaths.
You can imagine that when I left my place of birth to live outside,
at that time my mother had left the world,
my father had passed away, all my uncles had left the world,
on both sides of the family,
all my aunts had died, both paternal and maternal.
In fact, even from among their children, quite a lot of them had passed away,
i.e. relatives and kith and kin.
So I would often say this to my wife,
"that you should take care of me, I'm an orphan and motherless."
i.e. not a single one of my elders, relatives is left anymore.
And we have been lowering them in their graves by these very hands,
we have been praying their funeral prayers.
Therefore, this truth became evident in this very life,
that this is not a place to fix your affections.
Since we have been sent here by our Lord,
and He has commanded us,
that while you must use this in the best possible way,
be steadfast upon the high moral values, and enjoin other to do the same.
And the real life is the one that is going to begin after death (in this world).
My feeling is that if one has taken to this Iman on a conscious plane,
and in reality this Iman has become a part of your inner being,
and you have received it from the place where the knowledge of God must be found,
then these tragedies affect us only to the extent we find in the lives of the pious.
I consider myself a sinful slave of God.
But my effort is always to never deprive myself of this feeling and knowledge that
my Lord has bestowed me about the coming life.
In my life, if you see any feelings or emotions manifesting, they emerge from
this very faith and conviction,
And I pray to God, that he may take me from this world with only this.
[Hassan] Ameen, summa ameen.
And all those people who are praying, we are thankful to them as a family.
And in the end I would say that the Prophet (pbuh) himself said at one moment, that
when a father would be constant in the Prophet's gathering,
and one day when he didn't show up,
and the Prophet (pbuh) was informed that his son had passed away, because of which he is grief stricken,
that the person whose child dies like this, and he shows patience,
then Allah Almighty has the good news of paradise for him.
Ghamidi Sahab, please do say a few words about this.
That such a huge thing was said by the Prophet.
{Obviously that man must be fulfilling the other criteria for achieving paradise}.
But the fact that God's messenger is saying that as a result of showing patience on this tragedy,
God's paradise is waiting for you,
If you show a little patience, and steadfastness, then you will receive a place
in God's eternal kingdom, and the child who was meant to be with you for a little while
in this world, in paradise he would live with you for eternity.
[Ghamidi] This is because, whether it is a father or a mother,
I think that there can't be a bigger test than this.
i.e. taking one's own child in one's arms and burying him,
[you said a while ago, that I had dug the grave on the passing of my first daughter
and had buried her]
it is not an easy thing.
The compassion that God has inhered in a father,
and the feelings of motherly love that he has put in a mother's heart,
these are so strong, they are so extraordinary,
and they encompass a person's being to such an extent
then despite all this, Allah takes away that blessing,
remember the supplication that we have been taught,
'Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'oon",
we belong to God, to Him we shall return.
Or as it is said in a Hadeeth, 'Inna lillahi maa akhaza, wa lahu maa aataa',
That which we has taken back, it belonged to Him only.
That which He gave, it too belongs to Him.
And not just this. Kullu Shay'in indahu bi ajalin mussamma.
For me, and for you, for my state and yours,
for your and my stay in this world,
and for all such things in the world, an 'ajal' has been appointed,
It has to come for sure.
Not just for leaving this world, but for all our states, a time has been set.
When it is so, then we should welcome it.
So, the test which parents are passed through
because it is so extraordinary, so when the parents stay patient through it,
don't bewail, and keep their faith and trust in their Lord,
and move ahead with courage, then this is not an act of an ordinary kind,
its recompense is also paradise,
and since Allah has kept paradise as a return for patience,
my feeling is that this patience is that thing,
that in this world itself this glad tiding about it is given, that
God's company is achieved by the patient ones.
And in the hereafter it is said that,
jazaa'am bimaa sabaruu,
that Paradise in reality is the return for patience.
Hence, Patience is that extraordinary quality,
that a believer must develop in oneself.
[Hassan] Alhumdulillah.