The correspondent of "The Woman's Voice" spoke with a distinguished company of our ladies and our literary young ladies about their feelings on the anniversary of the noble Prophet's Birthday, about woman's influence in the life of the noble Arab Messenger, and about the message they draw from this blessed anniversary; and they favored us with the following precious words:
1 — In the anniversary of every momentous world event there is a majesty, and there are moral powers that take command of the souls of the living and stir in them every kind of feeling. A man falls silent at its whisperings, with yearning in the heart and wonder in the eye at its strange light. How much more, then, with the greatest event of all: the birth of a great messenger and a noble prophet, who brought a religion — and religion is spirit, and therefore life — who turned his people toward the way of good, and changed their creed from idolatry to the oneness of God and to faith — and faith is power, and therefore greatness and immortality. My feeling at this glorious anniversary, ringed about with a halo of heavenly lights, is a feeling of reverence and peace, of elevation, of nobility, and of righteousness.
2 — As for woman's influence in the life of the Prophet (may God bless him and grant him peace), it was great, and it shows what effect she has in the shaping of humanity. It was the Lady Khadija who steadied him and gave him heart to bear the torments of his people in the cause of delivering his lofty message. And the Lady Aisha carried to her people, after him, much of his practice and his sayings. Of the Lady Aisha he said, addressing his people: "Take half of your religion from this little rosy one," and he said: "Paradise lies beneath the feet of mothers." And his law was a constitution that gave woman her rights, after she had stood, before his day, upon the lowest rungs of all.
3 — The message which the noble Mawlid addresses to us is a message of love — and love is peace and safety — and a message of truth, and in truth are brotherhood, justice, and righteousness. He (upon him be peace) said: "None of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself." It is fitting, then, that we take from this blessed day a beacon for ourselves, and from its lights guidance and mercy.
1 — Feasts hold a great place in my soul, and for this feast I have a special feeling; for I feel that it is not an Islamic feast only, but the feast of humanity. How should it not be, when with the birth of the Messenger humanity came of age in mind, and bade farewell to its childhood and its bondage to sickly superstitions. Before the birth of Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) the world tossed in the slavery of matter and the dominion of force, and dragged its chains in a mentality that killed thought. The family had no order, and the tribe no law. But when the noble Messenger was born, he set minds free from their captivity, and made rivalry a rivalry in good, cooperation a cooperation in righteousness, and precedence a precedence in piety, as in the words of the Most High: "O mankind, We have created you from male and female, and made you peoples and tribes, that you may know one another. Truly the noblest of you in God's sight is the most pious of you. Truly God is All-Knowing, All-Aware."
2 — The Prophet led the way in caring for woman and her welfare, in providing the means of her happiness, and in destroying the causes of weakness in her life. He valued what woman is worth in the founding and tending of the family and in the betterment of society, so he granted her her rights entire, and charged her with her obligations entire ("And they have rights like those held over them, according to what is right").
Before the birth of Muhammad, woman in East and West alike was crushed under men's injustice — no difference between the unlettered and the learned — bought and sold, and forced into marriage. He did her justice, gave her her freedom, and set her standing at man's side, shoulder to shoulder, and said: "The best of you is he who is best to his family."
And how should he not give women their rights, when woman held over him a claim not to be denied? Was it not Khadija, daughter of Khuwaylid, Mother of the Believers, who heartened him and helped him to spread the call? Was it not she who said to him, when the revelation had descended upon him and she saw him trembling: "God will never shame you nor harm you! You keep the bonds of kinship, you speak the truth, you earn, and you give help against the blows of fortune"?
And was not Aisha, Mother of the Believers, a help to him in lightening the blows of fortune? She preserved his sayings from his lips, and of her he said: "Take your religion from this little rosy one."
3 — In the Messenger of God we have had a goodly example. He stood upon the highest summit and the loftiest station of tolerance, forbearance, and compassion. He met from men's harm and from the hardships of the call what cannot be described, yet he bore patiently the struggle in God's way, and endured toil and pain for the happiness of the world and of humanity.
1 — I feel this great feast — the birthday of our master Muhammad, son of Abdullah, the Meccan, the Qurayshite, upon whom God sent down the wise Quran — as an impulse driving me toward reform and toward raising the level of my nation, as our Prophet did; for by his law he put an end to the worship of idols and raised the level of society, and it bears witness to the Arab love of freedom and self-rule. The proof of this is the saying of Sédillot: "While Europe saw the light only through the eye of a needle, there burst upon her, and upon all the rest of the world, a light from the Arabian Peninsula."
2 — In the Prophet's lifetime woman was respected with the fullest respect, honored, and guarded with the best of care, after having been, in the Jahiliyya, despised and abased, of no worth whatever. By her entry into Islam she attained a strong measure of learning, and became the best of mothers and grandmothers, of aunts, sisters, and daughters, and she gained her rights entire, on an equal footing with man — so much so that in the wars of Islam she was the best of members, the best helper and heartener.
3 — After all that has been set forth of the
high aspiration of the bearer of the Message, I cannot stand with folded hands before the daughters of my