Orphans –
Including Islam –
And Other People’s Children
Dr. Pasha
(Bringing Islam to the World One Concept at a Time!
Taking the Qur'an to Every Home and Heart that Needs It --
And which One Does Not?)
There is a fundamental difference between orphans and, well, other people’s children – such as our own for example.
When it comes to other people’s children, with their parents intact, our own children, for example, their parents worry about them – all the time.
Day and night. Sometimes, too much.
That is what our life is all about: worrying about our children all the time.
Not a day – or should I say not a minute? – passes when we are not thinking about the safety, wellbeing, success and glory of our own children.
And we never stop pushing the envelope as it were:
What else can I do to make my children healthier, wealthier, more successful, greater – and all the rest?
Muslim parents, it is fair to say, in addition – mind you, on top of all of the above – also worry about their children's Deen, and Iman, and Islam.
But orphans, that is a different story. First of all, orphans are those, mostly, about whom there is no one to worry about in this world.
One or both of their parents are gone. And they may be in the care of relatives.
Or they may be filling the dingy and at times dangerous spaces of foster homes and orphanages.
And often they are everybody’s favorite target to pick on and to beat up, and to exploit and abuse – sexually and otherwise.
What property they may have been left by their parents often gets stolen or encroached upon by others, in many cases their own relatives.
Orphans are basically people – children – without rights and without recourse.
That means basically anyone can do what they want to them and get away with it. No questions asked. No one cares. And no accountability on the part of anyone.
They are given what little could be spared, when they come knocking and begging at the door.
That too, frequently, after repeated attempts at turning them down, chasing them away, harshly shooing them off.
And not much is handed to them even then. Often, only the leftovers.
Generally, every attempt is made to get rid of them. To keep them away.
But when it comes to the Day of Judgment, these unclaimed and rejected orphans, may turn out to be the difference between heaven and hell for many of us.
It is not for no reason that Allah made the greatest human being ever to walk the earth himself an orphan.
Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi was Sallam, lost his father before he was born. And he lost his mother when he was barely six.
And when it comes to claiming Islam as our own; standing up for it; and meeting its needs and requirements, our attitude is not unlike how the world generally treats its orphans.
No one cares and no one is accountable. No one comes forward to take responsibility.
For example, in the Caribbean Communist Island of Cuba, at about June 2016, over 10,000 Spanish-speaking Muslims are struggling to learn to read the Qur’an in Arabic on their own.
These are mostly Cubans who converted to Islam from their Cuban-Catholic-Communist background.
And they are generally Spanish speaking.
But there is nobody to teach them the Qur’an – in Arabic.
Of course, the Qur’an is only in Arabic. In every other language, what we have are translations and not the Qur’an per se.
Most Muslims – good Muslims mind you – would say:
But we don’t know Spanish.
So, what can we do?
We are sort of helpless you know!
My answer – and I include myself among those in this situation:
If we had only cared, and if we had not treated Islam like an orphan, but like our own child and our own personal responsibility, we would have done something.
We would have figured out something.
Parents always do, when it comes to their own children.
Maybe we would have taught ourselves Spanish!
Or, maybe, Spanish or not, some of us would simply have shown up in Cuba, carrying in our hand a few copies of a book like Qur’an Reading Made Easy – and started helping the Cuban Muslims learn their Qur’an.
Maybe some of us still could – and should.
Oh, what a place of honor would such people have in Allah’s Book!
For those of us whose main concern in life is going to Jannat, maybe there is no quicker path to Paradise than a plane ticket to Cuba – right now.
END
