The Storm: Slander, Screens and the Children Who Drift

Fruit of the Heart, Part 3 of 4

The Storm: Slander, Screens and the Children Who Drift

A verse about a slander that went round Medina says it was received on the tongue — as though it never passed through the ear — and passed along as a light matter, while with God it was grave.

It was caught on one tongue and thrown to the next, by people who had no knowledge of it, and nobody in the chain believed he had done anything: each of them had only passed it on. Now it travels as a screenshot, a voice note, a photo with a circle drawn round somebody's daughter. Beside it the night sets the Blessed Saint Mary, peace and blessings be upon her, coming home to her people with her newborn child in her arms. Last week's guardian waited, and watched, and asked before he judged. Her people did not ask: they went from the sight of her to the verdict in one step. She had been told to keep silent, so she pointed to the child — and the child spoke. Among the first things Jesus, may our souls be his ransom, and may God hasten his return, said to the world was that God had enjoined him to be good to his mother. The guardian asked; the crowd accused.

Six centuries later, a daughter did the opposite. Sayyedah Fatimah al-Zahra, peace and blessings be upon her, was not told to keep silent, and she did not. After her father, the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, his family, and his righteous companions, had gone, and the land of Fadak was withheld from her, she walked his walk into the gathering and read the Book of God to the people who were holding it. She turned the very words the crowd had once thrown at Mary on the one who had taken what was hers, and called Zechariah, peace and blessings be upon him, to witness. She called the Helpers by the name of their mother; they were many, and armed, and they sat silent. And when her husband and her two sons stood up as her witnesses, their testimony was set aside. Mary was told to keep silent, and her child spoke for her; Sayyedah Fatimah spoke, and the crowd sat silent.

Then the night comes home, to the third seven: the years from fourteen to twenty-one, the years of companionship, when friends, screens and the crowd all compete with the home for the same child. The verse is not speaking to the one who made the story up; it is speaking to everyone who caught it and passed it on — and in our day the tongue has a button. The bad companion our parents warned us against no longer waits on the corner; he is in our children's pockets, and a child can drift from a family without ever leaving the house. The answer is not a louder crowd on our side. It is a home where a child's own account is heard first.

The question underneath it

When the crowd's account of our child reaches us first — whose account do we believe: hers, or the crowd's?
Imam Musa al-Kazim, peace and blessings be upon him, told a man to believe his brother in faith over fifty sworn witnesses. If that is what we owe a brother, what do we owe our own children?

What the evening covers

• Do not be the crowd. The slander of one raised to carry the religion; the forwarder, and the one sentence the Qur'an gives us to say instead; three questions to ask before anything is passed on; and the family of Abu Talib, who taught their sons her sermon before the crowd arrived with another account.

• Hijab begins with the men. God told the men to lower their gaze and guard their chastity before a word was said to women about covering, and the first two duties are shared — taught to son and daughter together, with the reasons.

• The man who walked ahead. Moses, peace and blessings be upon him, walking ahead at Midian so that his eyes would not follow her — and that was his trustworthiness; and Joseph, peace and blessings be upon him, refusing behind closed doors.

• She is still your daughter. Noah, peace and blessings be upon him, calling to his son by the tender name until the waves came between them; the father in the Gospel who saw his son a great way off and ran; a grown child is held only by love, and the road home is kept open, and watched.

• Make the halal easy. A father who could find no one like himself for his daughters, and the answer Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, peace and blessings be upon him, gave him in the Prophet's words; easy is not cheap; and a clarification long overdue — temporary marriage is a marriage with reasons, not a licence, and in England and Wales no marriage of any kind, permanent or temporary, is lawful for anyone under eighteen.

It ends with two daughters, and two crowds. The Blessed Saint Mary carried her child into a crowd that had already decided about her, and God cleared her in front of all of them. Sayyedah Fatimah walked into a crowd too, and it sat silent; and when she fell ill, the women of that same community came to her bedside to ask how she had woken — and she did not hide from them what that silence had cost. And the maqtal, By Night or by Day, is for Sayyedah Fatimah al-Zahra, peace and blessings be upon her: her words to the gathering, her silence, and the grief that the city which had sat silent could not bear to hear.