Boreal

Mothers' Day

There are no Sharia-sanctioned celebrations in Islam that have nothing to do with worshipping a god who cannot be worshipped enough. This does not mean that Muslims living in the West cannot show some extra affection on Mothers' Day for the woman who laboured to bring them into this world unless she was stingy with her breast milk.

Ya'qubi, an Arab historian and geographer, reported that Muhammad dammed his first wet nurse as the nastiest of women. He said Allah would only give her the small amount of milk she allowed him to suckle. Not only that, she will suffer the fate of all mothers who did not adequately suckle their children; she will burn in Hell for all eternity while snakes repeatedly sink their fangs in her breasts.

Mothers who fail to sufficiently praise their husbands will also be joining in Hell lactating mothers who have not sufficiently suckled their offspring; but they may not be subjected to the torture of snakes latching onto their nipples.

Narrated Ibn Abbas:

The Prophet said: "I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were ungrateful."

It was asked, "Do they disbelieve in Allah?" (or are they ungrateful to Allah?)

He replied, "They are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors and the good (charitable deeds) done to them.

Bukhari 2.28

A mother of an illegitimate child, after the child as been weaned, should be promptly and brutally dispatched to Allah's Dominion so that He can punish her some more as only He can.

Pregnant mothers and their babies will be made to suffer more than most on Judgement Day.

22:2 The Day you will witness it, every suckling mother will be distracted from the child she is suckling, and every pregnant woman will deliver her burden, and you will see people drunk, whereas they are not drunk; but the punishment of Allah is terrible.

Yes, Allah's punishment is terrible, but, if your mother is still around and deserving of your affection which includes being a believing mother, it is no sin if you show her a little extra appreciation on Mothers' Day. This is provided you honour her as a believer might honour her and you have the highly respected Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi, deputy chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research's word on it:

The Mother’s Day implies paying more attention and exerting more effort in expressing gratitude to mothers. So there is nothing wrong in that …

Thus, we may take the Mother’s Day as a chance to lay more emphasis on our duty towards our mothers, as Islam enjoins us, because dutifulness to parents is a genuine Islamic teaching. But Muslims, in doing that, should never deviate from the Islamic teachings, they should do things in Islamic manners, not in Western manners. Hence, they would not be imitating the non-Islamic habits of the West.

Hence, viewed in juristic perspective, we can say that celebrating the Mother’s day is controversial among the contemporary scholars. While a group of them consider it haram (unlawful) as a kind of blind imitation of the Western non-Islamic habits, which have no benefit for Muslims, another group see it halal (lawful) on condition that showing gratitude and dutifulness to parents should not be confined to that day only.

At one point in time, Allah instructed everyone to be kind to their parents, even of they were unbelievers, but then He changed His mind. From Let Me Rephrase That!

The business of civil wars tends to be a nasty business. The Arab civil war was no different, except that a god, a vengeful pitiless god took a personal interest in the conflict. This was to be expected, after all, the war was about Him. What was not expected was Allah dropping all pretenses of tolerance once the war His Messenger instigated and pursued on His behalf, and which morphed into a universal jihad, started in earnest.

Before the onset of the war between the so-called pagans of Mecca and the believers of Medina, Allah expected the believers to unconditionally honour their parents.

With the onset of hostilities, which would consume the entire Peninsula, Allah's intolerant nature exploded into a hatred of all generations who had not submitted to His Will. The revealed truth about honouring your parents unconditionally was replaced by another revealed truth which came with the usual strings attached.

Before:

17:23 Your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him and to be kind to your parents. If either of them or both reach old age with you, do not say to them “Fie”, nor tell them off, but say to them kind words.

17:24 And lower to them the wing of humility out of mercy and say: “Lord have mercy on them, as they took care of me when I was a child.”

After:

9:113 It is not for the Prophet and those who believe to ask for forgiveness for the polytheists even if they are near relatives, after it becomes clear to [the believers] that they are the people of the Fire.

He would have even seen the Prophet's mother Amina burn in Hell, but made an exception for His greatest spokesperson's mother when He saw Muhammad weeping over her tomb.

Fathers do not have a Fathers' Day per se but they are celebrated every day in the Muslim world through the patronymic naming nomenclature where a part of a personal name is based on the name of one's father. On Judgement Day, should Allah call your name and you used a woman's name to trace your ancestry you will be joining the unbelievers in Hell.

Bernard Payeur