MY MOTHER—AN EXEMPLARY WOMAN

underestimate the role of woman as mother. It is perhaps her greatest role in human affairs. In Islamic history, there have been numerous examples of the strong and decisive influence of mothers upon their families. A notable example is Maryam Makani, mother of the Emperor Akbar. When Akbar was harsh in his treatment of Shaikh Abdun Nabi, a great religious scholar of his time, she convinced him of the error he was making and persuaded him to stop what amounted to persecution. I cannot but imagine that if I had been deprived of my mother in early childhood, or if I had the kind of mother who kept urging me to consider some people as foes and to fight them, my life would have taken an entirely different, and downward, course. Undeniably, it is the grace of God which has saved me from an ill-fated existence and caused me to become a medium of expression of the truth. But in this world of cause and effect, the human purveyor of God’s will was a lady, a mother, a homemaker—one who was Islamic to her very fingertips. o Maulana Wahiduddin Khan