Saturday, March 02, 2013
The moral maturity of two year olds
Originally published in MuslimWakeUp.com, republished at hijabman.com.
My first thought was “Woo-Hoo!!! I never have to pray again or fast, or for that matter do any ibadaat because I've got credit for 6755 years of fasting and praying, several thousand hajjs, 24,000 freed slaves, several millions of good deeds, and I'm-not-telling how many tons worth of gold and silver in charity.”
The Moral Maturity of Two-Year Olds
(The first in a three part series)
By Pamela K. Taylor
The other day I got an email that ran something like this:
Subject: FW: Glad Tidings of
Heaven for Pious Women!!
In the Name of Allah, Most
Gracious, Most Merciful
---------------------------------
Glad tidings of Heaven for pious
women in the light of hadith
1. When a husband comes home full
of worries and the wife extends warm welcome to him and consoles him; she
receives the reward of half a jihaad.
2. When a husband comes home to
sleep and his wife gives him food to eat (not being involved in dishonesty with
regard to herself and her husband belongings), Allah Taalah gives her the
thawaab of 12 years of ibaadat.
3. When the wife presses the legs
of her husband without him asking her to do so, she gets the sawaab of giving
charity 7 ounce of gold, and if she presses his legs after he ask her to do so,
she receives the sawaab of giving 7 ounce of silver in sadaqa.
4. Every night of an expectant
mother (a woman who is carrying a baby in her womb) is counted as spent in
ibaadat and every day as spent in fasting.
5. A woman receives the sawaab of
70 years of namaaz and roza on giving birth to one child and the pain she
suffered in every vein of her body while giving birth, for that she will
receive the sawaab of one hajj.
6. A woman, who is deprived of
sleep owing to her child crying at night, receives the sawaab of freeing 20
slaves. Upon the child crying at night,
if the mother feeds the child (gives milk to the child) without cursing, she
receives the sawaab of performing namaaz for one year.
7. A breastfeeding woman gets one
good deed for each drop of milk that is fed to the child.
8. A woman who is rendered
restless owing to the illness of her baby and yet kept on striving to comfort
the baby, Allahtalaah forgives all her sins and gives her the sawaab of 12
years accepted in ibaadat.
My first thought was “Woo-Hoo!!! I never have to pray again or fast, or for that matter do any ibadaat because I've got credit for 6755 years of fasting and praying, several thousand hajjs, 24,000 freed slaves, several millions of good deeds, and I'm-not-telling how many tons worth of gold and silver in charity.”
Ok,
I guess my attitude towards these things is pretty clear. Saying "if I do x good deed, I'll get y
reward from Allah" is the moral equivalent of letting ourselves be bribed
by Allah. It's like a mother saying to
her child, “if you're good in the store, I'll give you a candy.” Is that how you want to teach your children
to behave? NO! Because the second you refuse to give the
candy, the kids think they have the right to act up. Also, if they decide they are really not in
the mood for candy today, or they have enough stockpiled home under the bed so
they don't need any more today, or they can always get more tomorrow, then
there is no motivation. Any half-way
decent mother or wife, according to this email I got, has so many good deeds to
her credit, she had no need to do any more.
Of
course, in case our thirst for rewards is not insatiable, we have a handy
repertoire of the unthinkable punishments Allah will mete out if we are less
than ideal in our behavior (to be sent in email, part two). This is, obviously, no better. If the punishments are not fearful enough, or
if we think we can cash in some of our good deeds to cancel out some of the bad
ones, or that we have enough time tomorrow to make up for today’s lapses, there
goes the motivation again. Bribery isn’t
a very effective tool.
Not
to mention that it is essentially a selfish mode of thought, a
what-can-I-get-out-of-this motive that rivals the worst CEO of Enron, Ted
Turner, or Arab oil sheikh scenario, just differing in scale. Focusing on the rewards of each and every
good thing we do (or the punishments that we will incur if we do something less
than ideal) teaches us to be self-centered, to focus on our own profit, and not
to view the intrinsic value of the good deed.
It is relating to the world at the moral level of a two year old.
Not
only does this "if you do x good deed you will get x reward"
mentality represent a morally immature point of view, but it also threatens to
destroy our relationships; in the case of this email, the mother/child
relationship or the wife/husband relationship.
In light of this email, your child is no longer a delightful gift from
God, a treasure and a trust and a miracle, who you care for because you love
him or her more than you love your own self, your husband isn’t your life
partner, friend, confidante, helpmeet, but rather a commodity, a means by which
you can make your pile of candy grow.
What a horrible thing to do to the most beautiful, the most intimate of
relationships! This is not only moral immaturity, but positive harm! How can we
raise healthy, moral children is we feed them this moral pap and if we treat
them like paths to our own spiritual fulfillment?
The
sad part is that some Muslims (Most Muslims? Please say it's not true.) seem to
take these email sheets very, very, very literally. How often have we heard a
young mother telling about her oft-interrupted night with her newborn son or
daughter saying very smugly how "I got up three times last night and never
once got angry at my baby, so it's like I made three hajjs”?
That
is so morally bankrupt, so ethically immature, it is small wonder that Muslims
are in the state we are in. We should try to do what is right because it is the
right thing to do, whether or not we receive rewards for it. We should try to teach our children to do
what is right because it is right, because it serves the greater good of
mankind in general, of the community, the family. Because doing right, makes us feel good. Because we should do for others what we would
like for others to do for us. And, not
only that, but it also pleases our Creator.
No
wonder the ummah is in the state it is in! We keep ourselves morally at the age
of two year olds and destroy relationships between one another with legalisms
and literalisms and self-centeredness. And we wonder why our rulers are so
bad? We wonder why we can't get ahead,
why Muslims don’t rule the world? We
wonder why the world doesn’t look to Islam for guidance. It should be obvious.
(Look for the second installment in this series: The Intellectual Thoroughness of Three Year
Olds!)
¶ 1:53 AM
