Parental Rights and the Spiritual Path
Syed Naveed from Rawalpindi asks:
Please share your opinion on mothers, fathers and children.
These days fathers do not fulfil their responsibilities
and it is simply said that fathers are greater so one must not speak over them.
Is this something that should be practised, even if fathers carry out any form of cruelty?
No, that is not the case.
Nowadays, neither the parents nor the children are good,
neither the husband nor the wife have good terms
and the reason for that is that people nowadays are not good.
One becomes a good person when the Spiritual Heart and Carnal Self are purified.
When your Spiritual Heart and Carnal Self are purified
then you will be wonderful in every relation.
A good man becomes a good brother and a good husband.
It’s not like a good person
would become a terrible husband but is a good brother.
That’s not possible.
If someone is a good brother
then he will become a good husband as well as being a good child.
If you are a good person then you will have good relationships.
If you are a bad person then every relationship will be bad.
How can the parents nowadays rear their children
because they themselves have not been brought up well.
How can the ones who are divided into 72 different sects
and are distanced from God raise their children?
Everyone is messed up today.
Secondly,
the religious people leave no stone unturned to use and abuse the religion.
Mothers abuse the religion for her own gains
and she will say things like, ‘I will disown you!’
My own mother used this dialogue many times
but what difference does it make whether she decides to disown me or not?
Right?
What can I say?
When I know that neither was I going there to look at women
nor to drink alcohol
nor to gamble,
rather, I was going there to meet His Divine Eminence Gohar Shahi.
I am going there to do Dhikr Allah.
I would go there for the Milad programme.
I was going to the noble gatherings,
the gatherings of saints
and my mother would stop me
or else she would disown me on the Day of Judgement.
This just means that my mum was inviting the trouble.
Of course, parents have their own ranks according to the religion,
however, parents must remember
that God and his messenger are greater than the parents
therefore, they must not interfere when it comes to God and his messenger.
What do you say?
And then they give examples of the mothers of prophets.
And they will give examples of the mothers of saints.
Saying things like, this particular saint used to respect his mother so much.
But you need to understand that their mothers were on a different level than yourself.
You should look at their sublime characters and your ridiculous behaviour.
There were some mothers who would leave their children at the hands of the saints
and would not return for 12 years.
They were also mothers. Like Baba Farid’s mother,
Sabir Piya Kalyari’s mother.
People used to leave their children at the court of Abdul Qadir Jilani for training.
There was a mother in the era of Moses
One day, Moses asked God, ‘O’ God, who will be my companion in the paradise?’
God said, ‘Go to this particular area,
there is a butcher there.’
Moses went there and that butcher was busy with his job of selling meat
and Moses said, ‘I am Moses.’ The butcher said, ‘Alright, whoever you are, sit down.’
When the butcher was done with his work,
he told Moses to come along with him.
Moses went with the butcher.
The butcher went to his house and cooked food
and he fed his mother with his own hands
and then he served his mother after feeding her
and then his mother muttered something
Moses asked, ‘What is she saying?’
The butcher said, ‘She is praying to God to make her son the companion of Moses.’
Now, that dishonest butcher
who had no respect for Moses nor did he have a good character
yet, by the prayers of his mother
he became the companion of Moses.
Now, every mother wants her son to become obedient to her
but what she doesn’t want to know that the mother whose prayers
made that dishonest man the companion of Moses,
what that mother’s character was like or how close she was to God or what her level of faith was.
They don’t want to know this.
Of course, your parents do have rights over you.
It is even written in the Holy Koran:
Even if your parents are non-believers, if they scold you, do not talk back to them.
Alright, fair enough but does the Koran say that if your parents stop you from obtaining God, don’t talk back
but leave God? That’s not written in the Koran.
If it is about anything other than God then what difference does it make? It’s just a worldly matter.
People neither follow the religion nor do they have the understanding of the religion.
Every man wants to exercise his own rights.
Mothers want their rights, fathers want their rights
and the children say the parents never listen to me,
they have their own issues.
Everybody is crying for themselves. What can be done?
Everybody is crying,
‘Nobody listens to me!’
What difference does it make when neither you nor your parents are religious people.
When you adopt the religion then you will go through Purification of the Carnal Self and Spiritual Heart
and then you will understand the rights of everyone.
Every single person is burdened with fulfilling someone’s right.
It’s not like only the parents have rights on their children and the children don’t have any rights on the parents.
Parents must also fulfil the rights of their children.
Just like the rights of a wife and husband.
Everyone has rights but they all must be fulfilled, right?
It can’t just be the parents who have their own rights fulfilled and forget about the children’s rights.
For example, Raja’s father
was cruel to him his entire life
and the one his father loved dearly
deceived him, sold his properties and ran away.
If you look at it through the lens of religion,
then of course God would ask his father, ‘Did you fulfil the rights of your son?’
Therefore, it is not just the rights of the parents, children also have rights.
For example, Nasreen’s daughter has been married
but her daughter doesn’t live with her husband.
The mother keeps the daughter with her, this is unlawful.
The more she does this the more distanced she will become with the Lord.
Because the mother no longer has the right on her daughter.
When your daughter is married to someone then you have no power over her, you cannot taker her services.
You’ve married her off now.
Until she was unmarried, she stayed with you and you can take her help
but once she is married then you don’t have power over her.
You can’t do it anymore because she is married.
These are mistakes which stop the spiritual benevolence.
Once you have become an Enlightened Heart then you are under spiritual scrutiny.
Common Muslims are not under God’s radar, there is no register for them.
God has no information about who you are and where you have come from
nor does he care. Those whom God has accepted,
those whom he has made Enlightened Believers,
if they do any hanky panky then God becomes so displeased with them that nothing can appease God.
However, once the heart becomes darkened then no word of advice has any affect on them.
Everyone has rights.
Of course, your family has rights over you
but even common people have rights over you. For example, your neighbour.
Prophet Mohammad declared, ‘It is impossible
that you are my follower, an Enlightened Believer, and your neighbour sleeps with an empty stomach.’
I always remember that when we would go to His Divine Eminence’s home in Kotri,
whoever would come to meet the Lord,
His Divine Eminence would tell them to go and eat first.
His Divine Eminence would always tell people to eat before they go, nobody was allowed to leave hungry.
Let’s take a look at ourselves.
Human beings are such that, forget about the neighbours,
we would eat a McDonald’s burger in front of a hungry person.
For a neighbour, you would have to knock on their door and ask, ‘Have you eaten?’
But there is someone who has been hungry all day and you know it but you don’t even ask them.
Someone is with you day and night,
you order pizza and McDonald’s
but you sit there and make them watch you eat it.
This is what some people do.
Is this Emaan (faith)? Is this a decent character?
This is Nifaq (hypocrisy).
It’s better to become an animal than be like that.
You know this person is hungry, hasn't eaten all day because neither have you.
Don’t you ever think if I am feeling hungry, does the other person not have a stomach? Don't they get hungry?
I mean there is indifference and insolence and negligence
whereby one may not remember to be hospitable
and then there is hardness of the heart.
Someone could be dying for a single drop of water right in front of you and you are unaffected by it,
you don’t care whatsoever, this is hardness of the heart.
These are the hearts in which God’s name does not enter. What else could enter such hearts?
You must fulfil the rights of each other
whether it is parents and children or husband and wife.
Everyone has rights over each other.