All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the Al'amin. Allah blessed my wife and I with our precious sprout a wonderful baby boy and his name is... Abdus-Samad. Surprised! yes, I know you are. What happened to Mus'ab? may come as a
surprise to some as a lot of people had expected that my son would be named Musa’b
after my favorite companion, Mus’ab bn Umayr in fact a lot of people called him
Musa’b even from the comments on my Facebook wall when I announced his arrival a kunya (A kunya is a refers to a bearer's first-born son or daughter or a nickname) people had attributed to me even before I got married.
Nevertheless, when my son arrived I suggested to
superwoman
(that’s what a friend here in KFUPM called my wife when he learnt she began and
wrote her exam on the day she put to bed, I’ve decided to let the nickname
stick) that we should give my Dad the honor of naming our first child and though
I could sense
it that she was
little skeptical about it, after all, her
friends often called her Umm Mus'ab and she like it and was used to it so I understood
but then she succumbed to my suggestion since she realized the wisdom therein.
My son is really special. He is
similar to a photon in the sense that his arrival promoted a lot of people just
like the absorption of a photon promotes electron to higher energy levels. His
arrival promoted my wife and I to Mom and Dad, he promoted my parents and
in-laws to grandparents, he promoted my siblings and brothers in-law to Uncles
and my sister-in-law to aunt. He promoted my grandmother to great grandmother.
So you see he’s really special. Though some people believe that it is a custom
amongst the Yorubas that a first child is named by his grandfather, however
this is not common at least not now. I do recall when I was in Secondary school
during the so called ‘summer’ (I don’t know why they call it summer since
there’s no summer in Nigeria) coaching lessons in Regal college Sagamu. One of
the teachers who was (is) a Christian had a daughter who was named Mariam. So
one day, someone inquired why his daughter was named Mariam after all he was a
Christian. He narrated that he was from a Muslim family and so as the customs
of the Yoruba people his father had the honor of naming his first child which
was his daughter and so his wise father named her Mariam. That day, I realized
the wisdom in what my teacher’s father did. He must have still had hope that
his progeny would someday revert to Islam and so he gave his granddaughter a
special name, a name that might someday lead her to Islam her fitrah.
The thought of me giving my
father the honor of naming it just didn’t occur to me. It was something I had
thought of since last year when I asked my longtime friend Abdulkareem Bello
(now Abu Umar) why he named his son Umar after all his kuniya was Abu Abdul-A’alim.
He said he gave his father the honor of naming his son and then that moment I
realized the wisdom in what he did. Abdulkareem Bello and I have been friends
since his pre-degree days in Lautech (then I was in my first year). We were
both regular guys in the beginning and he much more than I did utilized the
advantage of being in the shelter, of becoming a stranger. He became a student
of knowledge attending Madrasah, Halaqahs and even teaching people how to read
the Qur’an though I guess the only thing
we had in common in our respective final
year was that he went on to be the
coordinator of the Muslims in his faculty(Engineering) while I held an
equivalent position in mine(Sciences). However, amongst my friends who became
better Muslims while in school, Abu Umar is one of those very few people who
applied wisdom with the Islamic knowledge he acquired (and that’s why I have a
lot of respect for him) unlike most of us that allow our youthful exuberance in
the name of ‘Agboye’ make things worse rather than make things better. We
forget that there was a time that we didn’t know anything at all and because
now we have had the opportunity to listen to a few lectures, understand some
things about the religion then we can just change things suddenly or feel we
are at a ‘higher level’, we end up cutting family ties and in the end we end up
not achieving that desired change. How soon we forget that the little we knew
or even the fact that we remained Muslims before really understanding the deen
is due to the fact that our parents were Muslims. I recall when I was really
young, I had performed ablution and later I went to urinate. My mum told me to
perform ablution again that my ablution was invalidated. That was the day I
knew that urinating invalidated ablution and my mum taught me that and so now
if I may have more Islamic knowledge than my mother wouldn’t it be foolish of
me if I did not apply wisdom in trying to correct her if she did something
wrong with respect to the deen.
So despite your ‘better’
understanding of the deen, you can still be humble to your parents and honor
them with the great responsibility of naming your child. You make your parents
feel special that you still hold them in high esteem despite the differences
you might have in the understanding of Islam. It is really a good way of
strengthening family ties as long as the name is a good name in the
requirements of the Sharia. So what happened to Abu Mus'ab?…well I am still here...is
just that we might have to wait a little while for that kunya to be official, maybe a few years and Allah knows best. For
now, Abu Abdus-Samad will do since that is confirmed. May Allah bless Abdus-Samad, keep his feet firm on the right path and grant him good in this world and the hereafter.
