A Beautiful Growth

Fruit of the Heart, Part 2 of 4

A Beautiful Growth: Love and Limits

God's own word for what He did to Mary is
that He grew her — and the man He charged with her care found something in her room he could not account for, and asked before he judged.

The verse this whole series stands under says that her Lord accepted Mary, peace and blessings be upon her, with a gracious acceptance, made her grow a beautiful growth, and charged Zechariah, peace and blessings be upon him, with her care. Whenever he came into her sanctuary he found provision with her that he could not account for. He had every right to the room — God had given him the office. And he did not ask the first time, or the second. He supposed the best, closed every other explanation with his own hands, and only then asked her; and when she answered, he was content, and went away and prayed. The guardian's first instrument is a question, not a verdict.
Then love. The Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, his family, and his righteous companions, stayed down in his prostration rather than hurry a child off his back, and a whole congregation waited. Is religion anything but love? An Imam asked it of a man in a tent at Mina, whose feet were cracked and torn from the road. In this tradition affection is not a mood but an instruction: go down to the child's level; the kiss is written down as a good deed; a promise to a child is kept because, to that child, you are where everything comes from. Affection is Sunnah, not a concession to modernity. And a heart that is forced goes blind.

Then limits. An old priest, a judge of his people, loved his sons and did not restrain them, and his house was judged for it. Ignorant love gives a child whatever he likes; rational love gives him what he needs — the injection he hates included. But a limit that breaks a child is not a limit: belief is climbed like a ladder, one step at a time, and whoever breaks a believer is answerable for setting him right. The jurisprudence bounds the guardian's right before it speaks of the child's duty. A limit is measured like a medicine, never spent like anger.

The question underneath it

What does a guardian's right actually entitle him to?
To use it — or to discharge it? And when a child gives us an answer we did not expect, do we accept it, or treat it as the beginning of an interrogation?

What the evening covers

• The guardian who asked. Zechariah, the sanctuary, and the times he did not speak — and a daughter who has stopped wearing hijab: not a case to be won, but a plant to be grown.

• Is religion anything but love? The Prophet who would not hurry a child, affection as Sunnah, a word to the father who was never kissed, and the forced heart that goes blind.

• Limits that do not break. Ignorant love and rational love, burdens a child can carry, worship that is not made hateful, and a jurisprudence that sets the boundary first.

• The example is the lesson. Protect yourselves, then your families; a child's dignity, whether or not he can feel it; the guardian's right and the child's privacy; and children created for a time other than ours.

• Ask before you judge. A boy who broke the lamp over a scholar's door and was met with kindness instead of punishment — and a word to the young adults in the room: see it, forgive it, and do not hand it on.

It ends with a name. A man came to Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, peace and blessings be upon him, downcast because a daughter had been born to him; the Imam answered his fear before he gave him any ruling, and when he heard that her name was Fatimah, he told him what he must never do to her. And the maqtal, Two Mothers, is for Sayyedah Fatimah al-Zahra, peace and blessings be upon her: the mother she lost as a little girl, and the woman who was a mother to the Prophet himself — and who, in her grave, was given her answer by him.