A Simple Omission
Every week I get an update from
babycenter.com. The website helps to keep simple track of where you are, where you're going and what to expect when you get there. It also has interesting facts like, "This week, your baby is the size of an onion!"
The website says that the weekly updates are reviewed by a team of doctors for medical accuracy and whatnot, but I think they're suffering from some glaring omissions. Take, for example, the update I got this week:
How your baby's growing: This week your baby weighs almost 2 pounds and is about 14.4 inches long with his legs extended. He can now open and close his eyes, and he sleeps and wakes at regular intervals. He may suck his fingers, and although his lungs are still immature, they would be capable of functioning - with assistance - if he were to be born prematurely.
Your body is gearing up for the final lap, so you may start noticing some new symptoms. Along with an aching back, for example, you may find that your leg muscles cramp up now and then. They're carrying extra weight, after all, and your pregnancy is putting extra demands on your circulation. Your growing bulge puts pressure on the blood vessels that return blood from your legs to your heart and on the nerves leading from your trunk to your legs.
Now read the update with the necessary corrections.
This week your baby weighs almost 20 pounds because that's how much extra weight you're carrying, and is about 14.4 inches long with his legs extended. His legs are often extended, and there are times when he may not be curled into fetal position at all, but rather, standing on one leg with his arms extended above his head to maximize the appearance of your stomach as well as poke you in the ribs now and then. He can now open and close his eyes, and he sleeps and wakes at intervals directly opposite to your schedule, which means he's most feisty and kicksome from midnight to Fajr. He may suck his fingers, which is a silly habit but at least he isn't picking his nose, and although his lungs are still immature, they would be capable of functioning - with assistance - if he were to be born prematurely.
Your body is gearing up for the final lap, so you may start noticing some new symptoms. Along with an aching back, for example, you may find that your leg muscles cramp up more often than now and then. You must be careful to work the cramp out before trying to stand up, lest you lose balance and end up hopping on one leg and going 'ow ow ow!' Not that we're saying you're fat, but your pregnancy is putting extra demands on your circulation. Your growing bulge, the one that no longer fits into any of your pants, puts pressure on the blood vessels that return blood from your legs to your heart and on the nerves leading from your trunk to your legs.
SubhanAllah. I don't know if there's any way to describe how it all really feels, carrying a child. Yeah, pregnant wimminz complain, it can't be helped sometimes. You used to be one person with a waist and a fitness level of some sort. Now you're two people with no waist and indigestion.
(My theory on heartburn and pregnancy is that indigestion is God's way of keeping pregnant women from gaining too much weight.) You used to stay up late, you used to have energy enough to fly up the stairs and zip around, now you take stairs slowly and have difficulty tying your own shoes.
(My theory on pregnancy and shoelaces is that your legs must get longer when you're pregnant, which is why your shoelaces seem impossibly far away.)You used to pay as little attention to your stomach as you did to your elbows and knees, it was just another part of your body. Now, you rest your hand on your stomach and feel for the movement of the child held under just a few layers of tissue. You hold your stomach and feel amazed, content, blessed. You put your hand over your stomach protectively when you cross the street, and there are times when you wrap your arms around it as best as you can and pray that you do right by the tiny person inside.
You wonder, you worry, about when your child will be born into the world- into this world, with all its darkness, with all the forces that human malevolence directs against humanity. Your child is weeks away from being born, months away from walking, years away from temptation, but you're already worried about how the world will treat them. You can give them only so much, you can teach them only so much.
You pray desperately that God protect your child, not from
being in the world, but from
falling into the world. You pray that your child is given a character that God loves, an intelligence and a faith that will carry them through this life and save them from the consequence of deliberate sin. You hope and you pray, but you don't know what kind of person your child will be. You do, however, have faith that God is never unjust, and God loves His creations more than you do, and this insane, overpowering, indescribable love towards a small human you've never met is nothing compared to the mercy that God has promised yours and all other children.
You wonder what kind of person, what kind of Muslim lies resting inside of you.
You feel the gentle nudge of the child turning from one side to another and you are relieved, reassured for a time at least, that your child is safe.
How?
How does one explain the quiet joy of sitting in the masjid during Jummah and watching the beads on your scarf dance each time the tiny foot of the tiny human inside of you kicks?
SubhanAllah, SubhanAllah.
Labels: BebeFiles
Jabr & Qadr
A lot of very interesting questions and issues of theology have come up in the comments of my last post. I begin in the name of Allah and seek refuge in Him, and pray that the answers I give are based on truth. Anything good or correct I may write is from the Grace and Mercy of Allah, anything bad or incorrect is from my own ignorance or the influence of Shaitain, from whom I seek refuge.
Wayfarer said:See, people always say "make dua for me or pray for me" and i do but in the end i don't think it matters because Allah's plan is set right? Like one friend said "make dua for me when you are having your baby because women are most sinless at that point." She is unable to have children and madly wants one. In my head i'm thinking yeah i can make dua but perhaps this is Allah's test for you. He doesn't want you to have children. So going with your thinking...chappati's, ropes around the neck and all that jazz, how is prayer different? Hasn't Allah already decided these things for us so why supplicate except for forgiveness - and other things He hasn't decided on yet if that is the case? Same with asking for protection of our loved ones. To what degree can we ask for? If their lives will be taken when it is set as the Qur'an says, what good does it do to ask for their safety?
This has been a big question of mine since i converted to Islam and I'm glad you spoke of it because no one ever answers my inquiry with a serious thought. I'd like to hear your position on prayer as it relates though...
It was a big question of mine too, and I think it was only recently resolved for me. A few weeks ago I attended a lil Islamic mini-lecture. The topic was dua, and the woman who spoke did an amazing job, MashaAllah.
The question of
Jabr &
Qadr (free will & predetermination) has existed for as long as man has, in his free will, wondered about it. Alhamdulillah, because scholars have been writing about it for such a long time, there is a rich body of work on the subject. Most of us simply don't know that it exists and don't know that we can access it though. But yeah, as I was saying, because people with real knowledge have addressed the topic, I don't have to write my own shpiel. I can simply convey what has already been said:
The first principle which Islam lays down in regard to Taqdir is that man is neither completely the master of his fate nor is he bound to the blind law of predestination.
The idea that Allah has a foreknowledge of everything that He created and the events unfold themselves exactly according to it, does not imply that human beings have been completely deprived of the freedom of action. The foreknowledge of God is an acknowledged fact, but it should not be interpreted in the sense of predestination, for if we do so we shall have to conceive of eternity as a storehouse of ready-made events, from which they drop one by one like particles of sand in a glass hour. MSA-USC Intro to translation of Sahih Muslim, Book 33
The companions of the Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, asked him why, if their final destinations (hell vs. heavan) were written, should they bother doing good deeds? Why not just rely on what was written in their destiny? The Prophet's response was, "
Act, for everyone is facilitated what he intends to do." This hadith has been transmitted on the authority of Jabir b. Abdullah with the same wording (and includes these words): "Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said:
Every doer of deed is facilitated in his action."
(Sahih Muslim, Kitab-ul-Qadr) Other times the Prophet answered this question with the following verse from the Qur'an:
Then, who gives to the needy and guards against evil and accepts the excellent (the truth of Islam and the path of righteousness it prescribes), We shall make easy for him the easy end and who is miserly and considers himself above need, We shall make easy for him the difficult end". (XCii. 5-10).
Obviously, what we think of as Qadr is not "predestination" in the restrictive, binding sense that we have no freedom of action. Otherwise, what would be the point of giving us rules? Of giving us a test if we had no hand in our own results?
We do have a will of our own, and Allah refers to it many, many times in the Qur'an.
...So he who wills may take to his Lord a way of return by obeying his commandments. Quran: 78:39
So fear Allaah as much as you are able and listen and obey... Quran: 64:16
Allaah does not charge a soul except with that within its capacity. It will have the consequence of what good it has gained, and it will bear the consequence of what evil it has earned... Quran: 2:286 -IslamWeb
The will of man does exist, and yet the will of Allah is all-encompassing. How do we explain the co-existence of both wills simultaneously? Man's limited free will exists because Allah has allowed it, and it is limited in the sense that man's will is subject to God's. You may 'will' to sprout wings and fly, but good luck buddy. Allah wills for His creations what He wants, and since His supersedes yours, you may never get off the ground.
Or more realistically, you may 'will' to take your car from point A to point B, and you may do everything in your abilities
(your abilities also being allowed to you by the will of God) but God willed that someone else should crash into you somewhere in the middle and you never make it to your destination.
There's a difference between your will and God's. You're only judged on what you do, not what happens to you. It's the difference between poking yourself in the eye with a fork deliberately or having a fork fly at you in a freak accident. No one will call you self-destructive in the second case, because it's not like it was your fault or will.
Belief in Al-Qadr ...does not provide an excuse for mankind to sin or abandon what they are obligated to do. This excuse can be refuted by the following seven arguments...
Allaah says: "Those who associated with Allaah will say: 'If Allaah had willed, we would not have associated [anything] and neither would our fathers, nor would we have prohibited anything.' Likewise did those before deny until they tasted Our punishment. Say: 'Do you have any knowledge that you can produce for us?' You follow not except assumption, and you are not but falsifying." [Quran 6:148]
The disbelievers did not have a valid excuse when they said that what they did was according to Al-Qadr. If this excuse was valid, then why will Allaah punish them for their sins?
"The future certainly pre-exists in the organic whole of God's creative life, but it pre-exists as an open possibility, not as a fixed order of events with definite outlines."
So now that we know we're not limited by the fact that Allah already knows what we're going to do, we have the freedom to ask for things, don't we?
"And your Lord says: Pray unto me: and I will hear your prayer" -Qur'an 40:60
We can petition God, as God has told us to, for our needs and wants, for guidance, for security, for peace. For a new shoelace even. Allah has said that He hears all prayers, and even the ones we don't consider to be "answered" according to our limited knowledge of what we think is good for us are not "wasted."
The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him said: Any Muslim who supplicates to Allah in a Du'a which contains no sin breaking of kinship, Allah will give him one of three things: either his Du'a will be immediately answered or, it will be saved for him in the hereafter, or it will turn away an equivalent amount of evil (from him)" The companions said "so we will ask for more" he replied, "Allah is more [generous]."
at-Tirmidhi, AhmadSo there's always a point to making dua, and because not only does it bring you closer to Allah, it also benefits you in ways that you simply may not be able to understand or see.
...'protection' and 'predestination', both are the doings of the Almighty, as He alone does as He wills. As far as the slave of Allah is concerned, his responsibility is to make du'a, and then proceed in the direction of his choice, as that will be best for him.
Wayfarer said: btw...hope that didn't sound like i don't believe prayer and supplication duas work because i do. I'm just talking about things that are predetermined like pregnancy, death, safety etc. It also doesn't stop me from praying for the safety and health of all my loved ones and even the other stuff - just in case.
All things are 'predetermined,' not just pregnancy, death, safety, etc
if you translate predetermination as being within Qadr- as being within the will and knowledge of Allah. And yet, we make dua because
Qadr is not a limitation on man, it is simply another proof of God's magnificence and the completeness of His knowledge and power.
(It was reported that a man who was caught stealing was brought to 'Umar bin Al-Khattaab, may Allaah be pleased with him, who ordered that this man’s hand be cut off. The man said: "Wait, O leader of the believers! I only stole because this was in the Qadr of Allaah." 'Umar, may Allaah be pleased with him, replied "And we are amputating your hand because it is in the Qadr of Allaah." Ha ha.)
I hope that answers your questions
Wayfarer. As for the pregnant women being without sin or having reduced sin, I looked but was unable to find any hadith mentioning that. I could be wrong, and Allah knows best, but as a pregnant woman m'self, I don't feel too terribly holy. I slept in and missed Fajr more than once this week alone. It was my fault entirely, it had nothing to do with pregnancy. The Bebe I carry is sinless, not me, and I don't know that the act of carrying a child itself is enough to wipe my slate clean or excuse any sin I indulge in.
Although it is true that suffering, borne with patience and faith in Allah's will, serves to erase sin (by virtue of said patience), I'm not that much inconvenienced, even if I am starting to look like I've swallowed a basketball, heh. So about being 'most sinless' at this point, I'm pretty sure I had less sin when I was a Bebe m'self. Allah knows best.
Labels: Islam
Abez Is... 
