Role Model

I was speaking to Niyas today when he told me," Our actions are the role models for the future generations." Niyas a devout Muslim, belongs to a small town in Malapuram District of Kerala. In their place, girls are married off very early in life and education beyond tenth grade is frowned on because they fear the lose of filial relations and possiblity of the girls developing independent views about life.

Niyas was speaking of one such situation where a certain girl, her education was pushed by her father despite her unlces opposing it. Result she got a good job, her salary was good enough to help her family a little and it also gave her a happiness that she did make something out of her life. Alas things as per him turned out sour...

His point was that this girl now decided to like a modern day girl focus on career and decided to delay her marriage. To follow it up, she got married and then said her independent living meant that she could not accept the marriage she got into because she felt she was not at all compatible with the guy(not because the guy did anything wrong or the girl realized she made a mistake!). Her family was low and he felt that instead of her education being a role model, she was the thing not to be for the rest of their village elders. It was saddening cause my thoughts went back a little...

When Islam as a religion came out into this world, it was accepted not by the uneducated people, but by scholars. Islam grew to where it has reached today only because of that! Did the parents of those scholars say, they were wrong models to the society and so other parents shouldnt educate their kids?

Just because you decided to accept others whims and black mail and swim with the current, what makes you feel that the next upcoming girl will not take a path of her choosing? You have to respect individuality and their wishes but at same time no one would ask a person to kill someone and say its your choice. Crime is crime, but is saying that you made a mistake and wanting to correct it, a wrong example of education ruining the person? Some feel so, some like Niyas do so...

Also, a woman came to the Prophet Muhammad seeking the dissolution of her marriage, she told the Prophet that she did not have any complaints against her husband's character or manners. Her only problem was that she honestly did not like him to the extent of not being able to live with him any longer. The Prophet asked her: "Would you give him his garden (the marriage gift he had given her) back?" she said: "Yes". The Prophet then instructed the man to take back his garden and accept the dissolution of the marriage (Bukhari).

If the revered Prophet Mohammed instructs like this, then why would a follower of Islam take it to be the result of education ruining the person !

If you know you have tried to solve it initially atleast but realize you are just asking a person to sacrifice her life happiness and replace it with adjustment, would you want to do so?

Its all a conjecture of the human mind that one is responsible for the well being of the entire society. Its like what Nasra said in her blog ,

"On no soul doth Allah Place a burden greater than it can bear.
It gets every good that it earns,
and it suffers every ill that it earns."

When we decide our burden is the entire society, our actions start revolving around it. What we do as an individual no longer matters then. And these "sacrifices" or like Niyas says, adjustment becomes our way of repenting for ruffling known norms and ways.

If everyone had decided not to ruffle any of the norms or ways, even today we would have had only say Judaism and Hinduism as religions. A Jesus, Buddha or a Prophet Mohammed would not have had been heard and understood by people We still would have had Sati, Dowry Deaths and so on.

Education I feel with its way of generalizing and trying to build one India has made people more tolerant today. Whether, like Niyas said, that girl, would be the cause why future girls in her society wont get a chance for higher education is a justification or not; I disagree. My personal opinion is that, society changes with the masses. A person does not stop doing business because he sees someone else fail. He tries instead to learn from the mistake and then continue on to iron out the faults and do it better. With the IT revolution and the increase in standards of education and its results, I do not think people will look at one incident and put the whole blame on that individual and escape from their responsibilties but instead they will educate their children for the better life it offers albeit some different thoughts that individuals will normally have!

The changes cannot be stopped, it can be stalled temporarily. I know of atleast one Muslim guy who has married a Philipine's lady from Gulf. Does this mean, no one is sending their sons to Gulf after it? They all do. The money is too good to prevent it. Its just a state of mind, where, we all feel we do not want to be setting questionable examples for others. The truth is actually no one cares what we do. If we do something out of the ordinary, we become the talk of the town. After sometime, it will be some other news and society will keep on gossiping. Thats the best they can do.

Such suggestions that one becomes a Role Model is just a good will thought to put control over one self or else a technique used to subdue people into submitting to what our elders think is right !!

If the burden gets too high, even Allah cant prevent the individual from dropping it.....