Ali's
Regard for Fatema
Ali's regard for Fatema
was the same as was the regard of the Holy Prophet for Lady Khadija.
Until the life of Lady Khadija, the Holy Prophet did not accept the hand
of any other woman and likewise until the life of Fatema, Ali did not
marry any other woman.
The critics of Islam, in
their ignorance of the truth, betray their prejudice in their venture to
criticise saying that the Holy Prophet was extremely polygamous. Such
prejudiced critics should know that when the Holy Prophet was in the
bloom of his youth, he was not only contented but was the happiest
husband of a lady in the decline of her age and the death of the lady
who was older than himself, he observed the whole of the year following
the death, as Aamul-Huzn, i.e., the Year of Grief. It is an elementary
truth of human life that if a man be lusty in his sensual desires,
particularly matrimonial, he would be such in his youth. When the Holy
Prophet was in the fullness of his youth and when he had an aged wife,
and if he had only desired to have a young lady, there was already the
offer from the people of Mecca to give the fairest woman of his own
choice, if he only spares his condemning idolatry, but he bluntly
refused. The fact is that the attachment of the Holy Prophet to Lady
Khadija was so much that none dared to offer his daughter and no woman
had the courage of even thinking of offering herself. It was only at the
departure of Lady Khadija that Abu Bakr could offer his daughter Ayesha
who was of about nine years. History is there to vouch that when Ayesha
was offered to him, at Mecca, the Holy Prophet refused and it was only
in Madina after the migration that the Holy Prophet could not reject the
offer of Abu Bakr any longer, just to please the companion that the
offer was accepted, otherwise he would not have asked for the hand of a
girl of only nine, when he had already crossed the fiftieth year of his
age and when there were only a few years before his departure from this
world. And the alliance of Hafsa with the Holy Prophet, was only to
please his other companion Omar. Similarly, came one after another,
ladies, some of them far advanced in age imploring the Holy Prophet to
give them the honour, privilege and the pride to be the wives of the
Apostle of God. As the Mercy unto the Worlds which he was, the Holy
Prophet could not deny the grace asked for, from him.
To know how happy and
harmonious was the life of the Holy Prophet with -his aged wife Khadija
let us hear what Carlyle reports about it:-
"This young brilliant
Ayesha was, one day, questioning him: "Now am not I better than Khadija?
She was a widow; old, and had lost her looks: you love me better than
you did her ?"- "No by Allah!" answered Mahomet: "No, by Allah I She
believed in me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had
but one friend, and she was that! - Seid, his Slave, also believed in
him; these with his young Cousin Ali, Abu Taleb's son, were his first
converts". Carlyle's
Sartor Resartus.
It is unimaginable that
one who did not think of any other woman besides his wife, when he was a
full-grown youth, to have ever thought of any woman, in the age of about
55 years. The truth is that none of the ladies besides Lady Khadija, did
the Holy Prophet desire to marry. They were either offered by their
parents or the ladies themselves volunteered with prayers to accept
them. The Holy Prophet, the Mercy unto the Worlds, could say no to none.
It was perhaps a
providential plan to prove to man the weakness in women that even the
Apostle of God who never talked or acted but by the revealed will of the
Lord, having mercifully accepted the ladies in matrimony, could not
escape the miseries that these ladies inflicted on him which went to the
extent that for about a full month or even more, he discarded all of
them and the suspension of his connection with the ladies was so long,
that people even suspected him to have divorced the ladies and it was at
the revelation of verse (66:I) that he resumed his connections with
them. See the interpretation of this in any commentary of the Holy
Qur'an by any commentator of any school of thought, be he a Muslim or a
non-Muslim.
This was definitely to
show to man that when even an apostle of God who is the most balanced
head and the divinely conditioned personality, inspite of maintaining
full justice among them, could not escape the torment of the envy of the
women against each other, how can an ordinary man manage with more than
one wife at a time. Even the sanction of having four wives at a time is
only a sanction under emergencies and exigencies and not an order. The
closing clause of the verse (4:3) clearly says that if equity could not
be maintained then, man should take only one wife and the verse further
clearly asserts that man will never be able to maintain equity among the
women, which means that he can take only one at a time. If any one
misinterprets the law to suit his own fancy, law can never be
responsible nor the Law-giver.
It must also be remembered
that it was not Islam that started Polygamy in the world. Most of the
ancient prophets and even the great sages in India who are worshipped
as gods or the incarnations of gods, were polygamous. On the other
hand, Islam is the first of all the religious orders of the world,
which controlled and regulated the matrimonial life of man and woman,
protecting the rights of woman and restricted the unbridled and
unlimited polygamy in such a logical and realistic way that it made
man either naturally monogamous or got the lust in man for sexual
enjoyment, fully harnessed, loaded with heavy responsibilities to his
wives, safeguarding the rights of woman. The responsibilities or the
restrictions imposed on polygamy are such that the Holy Qur'an clearly
warns man saying it will be impossible for him to bear them. What
Islam has done for woman, no other religion in the world had even
thought of.
Source - Husain The
Saviour of Islam, by S.V. Mir Ahmad Ali. |