Nouman Ali Khan

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a talk by brother Nourman Ali Khan. If you haven’t heard of him already he’s an extremely well spoken lecturer of Islam, an imam and the founder of the Bayyina institute, which is an Arabic studies institute in America.

If you go on youtube, you’ll see that he’s done a whole range of different lectures and talks. The one I watched was about harmony in the household.

On a radio show that I'm doing this Ramadan one of the topics I want to adress is kindness amongst the family. Brother Nouman has provided me with many points to talk about, I have a quote from one of his lectures which states,

‘We cannot talk about establishing a harmonious Islamic society, until we have harmony inside the household.’

And how do we achieve harmony, is the question I'll have to tackle. Again, here’s a quote from brother Nouman’s lecture:

‘We have to be the best to our spouses. We have to be the best to our parents. These are fundamental in relationships—all the other relationships are fixed if these two are fixed, and the only way these two will be fixed is if your relationship with Allah is fixed. So if you have marriage problems or parental problems, do you know what the real problem is? Taqwa and imaan. You’re not grateful enough. Your parents and spouses are a gift to you, and to be ungrateful to them is to be ungrateful to Allah.’

So in order to be kind to our families, we must remember that they are a gift from Allah. But realistically, we all know that creating harmony in the household can be difficult if there are huge problems with understanding each other, or, as is usually the case,a culture/religion clash. Brother Nouman addresses all of these problems in his talks, and gives very good solutions, so I definitely recommend searching for him online and listening to some of his talks if you haven't done so already.

Another problem we find with harmony amongst the family is that there’s a total lack of respect for parents. Now of course, this is a reminder to myself as well as everyone else. In surah Al Isra, verse 23, Allah tells us:

‘And do good to thy parents. Should one of them, or both, attain old age in thy care, never say “urg” to them or scold them, but always speak unto them with reverent speech, and spread over them humbly the wings of thy tenderness and say: “O my sustainer! Bestow Thy grace upon them, even as they cherished me and reared me when I was a child!”

Notice how in this verse, several commands are made by Allah regarding parents, particularly when they reach old age. As a general rule, as people get older, they become more demanding and more difficult to satisfy. Of course Allah is aware of this, and He tests us with it. Even when our parents do get old, Allah requires that we especially obey them. We should ‘never say “urg” to them,’ never ‘scold them,’ and ‘spread over them humbly the wings of tenderness,’ the way they did when we were children.

Regarding family relationships, culture divisions and the youth, Brother Nouman has said plenty. I really like his style of lectures, he has an amazing grasp of how the youth thinks- he'd be very good at family councilling I think!