By Ustadh Dr Adekunle Mikail
Man is blood and wishes, flesh and hope as well as soul and desires! He is created from a coagulated blood and grows up to wanting to make good of his life!
Except in the case of an imbecile, he, from infant, has a short and long term goals. And whether of aristocratic background or hoi polloi, he wishes for himself things that other may not wish for him – he desires to be king, warrior, champion of a sport, guru of science, merchant of conglomerate, teacher of note, and clergy of salvation!
While human wishes and hopes may not come into fruition hundred percent in the long run, it is incumbent on man to have wishes and hope. For it has been proven many a time that it is better to be hopeful and wish oneself the good of this life and hereafter than be hopeless and forlornly lead a desolate life as hope is an antidote of desolation, the father of hypertension!
At the same time, having hope, wish and desire grounded in the faith in God and determination, in the formative years, when man is growing, and before he started tasting the sweet and bitter tastes of life, has also propelled man to achieve what he cannot otherwise achieve, supposing he did not wish it earlier in life or when compared with others devoid of wish and hope when growing up!
To cite some examples of great men whose childhood ambitions or wishes have culminated in the greatness they later enjoyed as human beings, we can say that , it had been in the destination of Allah to make Muhammad Salawatu-llahi alehi a prophet and His apostle, but the prophet’s childhood quest to be different morally and socially, had also propelled him to move away from all the evils and malpractices common in his society until he was commissioned into the lofty group of Allah’s messenger and Apostle!
The same can be said of virtually all the great men of history from prophet Ibrahim ( Alehi salam), the father of faith, who was known to hate polytheism subscribed to by his people in general and his father, Ãzara in his teenage year to Alexander the great who was known to have wished to conquer the world earlier in his life until he did so at his thirties to Sheikh Tajul- Adab, the teacher of the Addabiyah scholars in Nigeria and an ascetic who had strived after knowledge since he was teen, who would tell anyone who wanted to listen that he was a Makkan scholar( Alfa Ara-Mecca), before he hardly ventured into that land as a teenager ( he was said to say that he would go to Makkah to acquire Islamic knowledge and sciences as a teenager) until he acquired it adequately, spread it like no other, had a formidable school and students and died before the age of forty, to his student, the Surprise of the Age, Al-Sheikh Muhammad Kamaludeen Al-Adaby, who was said to have acquired all the Islamic sciences before the age of fifteen despite been a non-Arab and who had started Islamic evangelism as that teenage years too, to the Star of the black people and her Scholar, Al-Sheikh Adam Abdullah Al-iloriy, who had pursued knowledge from infant till death and who had propagated it through copious writings, Friday exhortation, poetry and teaching!
Examples Of Teenagers Who Had Hoped To Be Great Earlier In The Hadith Of Prophet Muhammad (Salawatu-llahi alehim)
The ahadith of the noble prophet Salawatu-llahi alehi are full of information that cannot be garnered or found in other sources! For example, it is from the ahadith of the prophet Salawatu-llahi alehi, that we were informed of children that talked in their infancy and their actual number! It is from it too that we were informed of the fact that the believers who are admitted into the paradise will behold the Creator of the heavens and earth without hindrance on the Day of judgement, Allahu Akbar!
It’s on the basis of the above that I recount a story of the companions of prophet Muhammad salawatu-llahi alehi, who had wished that they be great in their teenage years and who had accustomed their wishes shortly before they were adults .
From Abiy Zanad who said that :”Mas’hab, Urwat, Abdullah Ibn Zubair and Abdullah Ibn Umar, gathered in a room and they encouraged one another to wish for great things of life they would want to acquire in the future; Abdullah bn Zubair said; “I wish to be a caliph”, Urwat said, I want people to acquire knowledge from me ( I want to be a Scholar of Islamic sciences); Mas’hab said; I wish to be the leader of Iraq and Abdullah Ibn Umar said; I wish to acquire Allah’s mercy and His pardon!”
It was said that Abdullah Ibn Zubair did not just become a caliph, he was also a warrior, and a beneficial leader!
As for Urwat who was his brother, he was a devoted researcher of the prophet Hadith and fiqh and had the greatest knowledge of ahadith naratted from Aisha, the wife of the prophet (May Allah be pleased with him). Not only this, he was named among the seven Fuqaha Of Medina!
The seven Fuqaha of Medina are the seven Muslim scholars who were the largest contributors as to the transmission of Hadith and the making of Fatwa in Medina. The rest are Sa’id ibn Mussayib, Salim Ibn Abdullah ibn Umar, Al-Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abubakir, Abu Salama Ibn Abd Rahman Ibn Awf, Sulaiman Ibn Yasir and Kharijah Ibn Zayd ibn Thabit!
As for Mas’hab, he later became the Iraq leader of the Muslim and lived an ascetic life.
In the case of Abdullah ibn Umar, Sawed ibn Musayab said that :” if I should testify that one person will enter paradise, I will testify for Abdullah Ibn Umar”! In another occasion, he was described to have more control of himself than any other young man of his time! He was also offered the khalifah but he turned it down. This shows that he had been given his wish to acquire God’s mercy and pardon!
An Ideal
Think and wish yourself the great things of this life and the hereafter while you hope for success of your wish .Then remember that what the heart can wish, the man can achieve it!