Tariq Mehanna
Allah said in Surat Al 'Imran, v.35: {"And when the wife of 'Imran said: "O my Lord! I have vowed to You what is in my womb to be dedicated to you…"}
A prison chaplain once told me: "A person will never sacrifice for the truth until he first loves it more than he loves himself and his comfort. Otherwise, he will never give up a thing for it." Surat Al 'Imran is all about sacrificing for the truth. The Surah is exactly 200 verses long, but contains only two stories – one in the first half, another near the end. Although the two stories took place 700 years apart, they beautifully link the entire Surah together through the common theme of dedicating one's all for the sake of the Din – even one's family.
The first story is of the household of 'Imran, after whom the Surah is named. We're talking about a family that dedicated all of its generations to the spreading and upholding of the truth: 'Imran and his wife, their daughter Maryam (the Virgin Mary), and her uncle Zakariyya and his son Yahya (John the Baptist), and her own son, 'Isa (Jesus Christ). This is a family that will be upholding the Word of Allah from the moment 'Imran's wife made the vow in this verse over 2,000 years ago until 'Isa returns at the end of time, rids the world of its final tawagit (the Dajjal and Ya'juj and Ma'juj), and rules by the Shariah.
The second story in the Surah involves another setting in which entire families gave their all to uphold the Din of Allah. On that one day of the Battle of Uhud, seventy Muslims attained Shahadah at the hands of the pagans. From these casualties were the entire male side of the family of a woman from the tribe of Bani Dinar – she had lost her husband, father, and brother on that one day. Hudhayfah bin al-Yaman went out to Uhud with his father, whom he lost before his eyes. Hamnah bint Jahsh met the Prophet (عليه الصلاة والسلام) on his way back, and he sadly informed her that her brother 'Abdullah (the one mentioned in the previous article), her uncle Hamzah bin 'Abd al-Mutallib, and her beloved husband Mus'ab bin 'Umayr had all been among the casualties that day. So, just as with the family of 'Imran, these families as a whole dedicated themselves to upholding the banner of Tawhid and Iman.
And we see instances after them of generations within the same family doing the same: Ibn Taymiyyah's father & grandfather were both renowned scholars in their own right (his grandfather's 'Muntaqa al-Akhbar' became the subject of ash-Shawkani's 'Nayl al-Awtar'); Muhammad bin 'Abd al-Wahhab's descendents continued his mission to spread Tawhid (best of which was his grandson Sulayman, who authored the first and most useful commentary on 'Kitab al-Tawhid'), and so on. You also have a whole generation of a family living for the Din in the Qutbs (Sayyid, his brother Muhammad, and sisters Hamidah and Aminah were all held behind bars at the same time).
How wonderful it would be if decades down the road, our own families and descendents can be pointed to as continuations of this service to the Din! But it starts with the individual.
