16/04/2024
*CONNECTING OUR CHILDREN TO THE BEST OF GENERATIONS*
The celebrities of our Ummah are of a different, pure kind. They are the outstanding elites that were chosen by Allah SWT.
“And remember Our servants, Ibraheem, Ishaq ,and Ya'quub – those of strength and [religious] vision. Indeed, We chose them for an exclusive quality: remembrance of the home [of the Hereafter]. And indeed they are, to Us, among the chosen and outstanding. And remember Ishmael, Elisha and Dhul-Kifl, and all are among the outstanding.” (Surah Sad 38, 45-48).
Yes, our heroes are the Prophets of Allah, AS the last prophet Muhammad SAW and his righteous companions, the Sahaba small (radi-allahu-anhum). Our heroes are those who followed them in goodness and piety, the tab’ieen and those that came after them, the taba’ tab’ieen, for these were declared as the best of generations by the tongue that never lied. Our heroes are those who served the religion and strove for its life in every era.
Prophet Muhammad SAW said: “The best people are those of my generation, and then those who will come after them (the next generation), and then those who will come after them (i.e. the next generation).”
A Dilemma
In a Muslim country, a professor asked the students appearing for an admission test in his medical college about the names of the first four caliphs of Islam and unbelievably many of them answered him wrong! Similarly, when asked simple questions like names of Prophet Muhammad’s SAW children or the ten given glad tidings of Paradise, they were clueless. Not that they had never heard about them, for they had all passed twelve years in educational institutions with Islamic Studies as a compulsory subject. However, they were never made to connect with them emotionally; only a few facts had been rote learned to pass the exam.
As a whole, the Muslim Ummah has been slyly cut off from it’s past. Our youth can easily relate to players, singers and actors because they are projected by the media. They not
