Birthdays and the name of my child!

This afternoon, my very kind hearted wife of over fourteen years reminded me that it was our son's twelfth birth day. I had totally forgotten. It was not that it mattered either way - to remember or forget - there usually are no celebrations of this kind in our house. But the reminder called my attention to several issues that woke me up. I momentarily went into reverse and recalled those early days of our marriage and the struggle to have the child we eventually named AbdulNasir.

For the first two years of this blissful marriage, my wife and I had wished for a child. Her first pregnancy was aborted (inevitable abortion was the first diagnosis, and indeed a malaria induced aborting resulted) and she went into a long and painful melancholy. It was traumatic, those two years. Our gynaecologist did not give us any good news. We were told that she was not likely to conceive and deliver, unaided. That increased her melancholy. I was distraught. However, she took in and eleven months after the first abortion, AbdulNasir was born, 12th September, 1996. He is twelve years old today. His immediate elder brother, AldulKarim (from a previous marriage) was fourteen years old in January.

The name AbdulNasir sounded 'funny'. A few of our friends insisted that we should call him Mohammed Nasir and not AbdulNasir. We disagreed. We were confortable calling him a servant of the owner of success (our understanding of the name 'Nasir') and made him accept and live it. You see, we so named him as a sign of the success of getting a child unaided, which was the prognosis we were given on the event of his mother's earlier aborted pregnancy. She has succeeded. It was only natural that we celebrated.

In the course of time, we came across the book, 'Ubudllah' by Ibn Taymiyya. It was a material that changed our orientation. That we have to accept our position, in total submission to the will of Allah, as His servants and act in that position in all that we did, was indeed refreshing and exhilarating. The satisfaction of receiving those insights was overwhelming ! This may be one of the reasons we have Al-Amin, AbdulSalam, Abdullah, AbdulQadir, AbdulWalid and AbdulHamid. We also have Habsatu, Hashiya and Rahima. Allah (SWT) has blessed us greatly.

Science is indisputable. Allah (SWT) is the creator of all that science studies. If Allah (SWT) gives, He could give in contradiction to human scientific evidence. The birth of Isa (AS) is more than a good example. We remember the birth day of AbdulNasir in acknowledgement of the Grace of Allah (SWT) and our total submission to His will. We are Ubudullah!