The Sunday Guardian | February 16, 2025

The Quran says:

We have enjoined man to show kindness to his parents—for his mother bears him, in hardship upon hardship, and his weaning takes two years. [We said] Give thanks to Me and to your parents; all will return to Me. But if they press you to associate something with Me about which you have no knowledge, do not obey them. Yet be kind to them in this world and follow the path of those who turn to Me. You will all return to Me in the end, and I will tell you everything that you have done. (31:14-15).

After God, a man’s parents are the ones to whom he is most indebted. But where there is a clash between what his parents desire from him and God’s will, he must disregard the former in favour of the latter. However, even then it is incumbent on him to continue to serve his parents.

Man’s responsibility to his parents is to pay their dues, to respect them, always to speak gently to them, to fulfill their needs and to be of service to them in the fullest sense of the word.

Man’s obligation to God is to thank Him from the deepest recesses of his heart. He must acknowledge the godhead of God. All his feelings and emotions must be in acknowledgement of God’s blessings until at every moment he comes to remember God, his very existence becomes an expression of God Almighty and he is overwhelmed with thoughts of God.

Source: Simple Wisdom