Family Ties
Bismillah Walhamdullilah
Assalamualaikum(May Peace Be with You)
Islamically, there are seven destroyers of a man. This means , that if a man does any of these seven sins or dies in that state, he will not enter paradise. One of these destroyers are cutting blood ties. Allah(SWT) says, “Family ties (Rahm) is from Rahmaan. Whomsoever maintains family ties, I will maintain him and whosoever breaks family ties I will break him.” So if cutting the blood ties is one of the destroyers of man, it’s only natural that maintaing blood ties is a huge part of Islam.
The issue here today that is killing communities all around the worls, especially in the U.S is the breakage of family. Rasullah (S) said, “‘Whosoever loves his wealth to be increased and his life to be increased, he should maintain ties.” Unfortunately today, forget about the last part of this hadith.
Rasullulah(S) loved maintaining the ties of family and friends. He used to travel (by foot) across mecca tomeet and greet his family and friends, even when they hadn’t accepted Islam as yet. When was the last time you picked up your ohone and called you grandma in India or Pakistan for just two minutes? When did you last go out of your way to see a family member at his/her home? Are we really that busy? We can’t take two minutes out of our busy lives to make a simple phone call? Seriously?
Have you ever experienced Family Fued in your own family? Yeah, it gets pretty nuts. Especially when they stop talking to each other. Yeah, cuz that’s really gonna help. As the youth of our families, it;s our duty to rekindle the fading lights of hours family and retie the loose knots. What people often forget is that thes familybreak ups lead to the huge community break ups. If you can break away from your own brother or parent, how hard would it be to break away from a fellow muslim who your don’t even know, but is on the opposing side in the Ramadan moonsighting argument? It should be fairly easy?
InshaAllah, I ask you all to make a conscious effort to make a small phone to call to your family members every now and then and try to reconnect with them as much as you can , especially the elderly. After they pass away (may Allah(SWT) grant them paradise) you might just regret not talking to them as much.
May Allah help tie us all together and save from the trap of cutting blood ties. Ameen.
Shabba Khair. W’salaam.
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Good post Ummu. Very true….we need to be mindful of visiting/calling our elders and relatives in general–even aside from our immediate families. Something I definitely need to work on. Thanks for the reminder.
Your welcome, thats something a lot of us (including me) need to work on bro. And you’re right, we also have to keep in touch with our non immediate families.
From time to time, I’ve had to make tough decisions that pitted work against family. When I was an undergrad, I had to choose between doing a study abroad in London and being in Chicago for my sister’s graduation. Just recently, I had to decide between spending a week working in D.C. and spending a week with my great uncle in Naperville. Both times I chose family over work. It’s not easy, but I feel that my work is there to help me support my family; my family doesn’t exist just to help me do my work.
P.S. My blog is still going strong – check it out at asad123.wordpress.com. If you’re a blogger, please add me to your links.
That’s a very valid point, Asad. May Allah make it easier on us when it comes to making the right decisions and support us when we are trying to the right thing for the sake of Allah and the illusion of falsehood succumbs the ones around us. Ameen