Honoring the Elderly: A Universal Obligation

do not suggest suddenly jumping out of your seat, no matter how sincerely moved you are to help someone. Be wise. She smiled back. “You know, I thought all night about how I was going to get that bag up into that bin. Thank you so much.” I placed the bag in the bin and took my seat. I wrote in my notebook about how sad life must be when one becomes old and experiences stress about a matter that most young people take for granted—being able to lift a bag and place it into the overhead bin of an airplane. This elderly woman was stressed because she knew the limits of her physical strength and felt no one would help her.

The condition of older people in today’s world is a source of worry to Muslims and especially Muslim youth. While the focus of this article is on the elderly in the United States, there is little evidence to the contrary that the concerns raised in this article are an anomaly and only of relevance to the “American” scene. For some reason, seniors throughout the world – whom Allah and His messenger enjoined upon us to honor – seem to have been relegated to an inferior position, stripped of honor and dignity and worse, left to wither away in their last years. What went wrong?

A Global Dilemma: No One Should Be Surprised

With post Industrial Revolution advances in nutrition, medical care, and other measures intended to improve the overall quality of life, it is Allah’s will that people have a longer lifespan than they did in the 19th century or the early part of the 20th century. Driven largely by estimates of the imminent demographic shift towards having many more elderly in society, starting in 1982, the General Assembly of the United Nations tackled the issue of the elderly with great energy and focus. “Recognizing aging as one of the major achievements and, at the same time, challenges of the twentieth century, the United Nations convened the World Assembly on Aging in 1982, and, in the same year, the General Assembly endorsed the International Plan of Action on the International Day for the Elderly.” (New York State Office for the Ageing).

In subsequent meetings in 1990 and 1991, the General Assembly designated October 1 as International Day for the Elderly and adopted eighteen Principles for Older Persons, which were sub-divided into five major categories: Independence, Participation, Care, Self-fulfillment, and Dignity. (New York State Office for the Ageing). These eighteen principles are entirely consistent with Islamic teachings which promote the right to self-determination, justice, dignity, and honor for example. However, for some reason, until I began gathering research material for this article, I was unaware that such a day even existed. Did you know about it? What a shame indeed that we can be so aware of UN resolutions that have political implications but have little awareness of and even less participation in the celebration of events which celebrate humanity: the elderly, the children, the refugees, and the women for example. And then, to bring the issue closer to home, I also discovered that thanks to President Jimmy Carter, the United States celebrates National Grandparents Day on the Sunday following Labor Day. Did you know that? You can check out the Web site http://www.grandparents-day.com/ for more information It is easy to dismiss these celebrations as being outside the fold of Islam and being driven by consumerism, but if we stop just at that, then we have missed the entire point. Muslims should be at the forefront of celebrating humanity all year round and especially in celebrating the wisdom and contributions of the elderly. Helping to close the generation gap would be a lot easier if every day was treated as Grandparents Day or a day for the elderly.

Balanced Lives: A Hallmark of Islam

Often the hustle and bustle of everyday life seems to focus our energies inward automatically—we are focused on us, on what we want to do in life, on what will please us, on what troubles us, and so on. However, this religion of ours is designed by Allah Most High to instill in us a sense of balance, such that we are concerned about ourselves but never so much that we become selfish. Neither are we to be so concerned with everyone else that we forget ourselves and the right that our body has over us for example. We find in the life of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) an excellent example for all stages of our lives, but especially because when he passed away, he was actually a senior citizen by modern terms.

He had accomplished so much since the onset of the revelation when he was forty. At the age of fifty-three, he led the Muslim community to migrate to Madinah and soon thereafter fought valiantly alongside his companions to protect the community. His strength, his wisdom, his merciful conduct, his patience, none of these or other of his remarkable qualities diminished after he reached the age of sixty. From a perspective of achieving self-fulfillment during the senior years, books can be written of just the last three amazing years of his life. He balanced his responsibilities to his family, his companions, his community, and even to leaders of empires of his time. Among so many of his reminders of the various stages of our lives, he (peace and blessings be upon him) taught us to “take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your sickness, your wealth before your poverty, your free time before your preoccupation, and your life before your death.” (Al-Hakim and Al-Bayhaqee)

Dignity and Honor in Old Age

The demographics of Muslims in America parallel that of the larger society with regards to a marked increase in the number of elderly. The Muslim elderly are comprised of the masses of African Americans who entered Islam in the 1960s and 1970s, along with the largest cohort of Muslim immigrants who entered the United States during the late 1960s. Unfortunately, despite the clear exhortations in the Qur’an for the elderly to be treated with dignity and honor in their old age, there are signs that the Muslim community is also paralleling the negative trends in the larger society with regards to caring for our elderly. What a miserable life it is for an elderly person in America to be alone, isolated, uncared for, and pushed aside. Allah Most High, in His infinite wisdom and mercy juxtaposes the mention of His worship alone with kindness to parents. We read in the Qur’an,

[Thy Lord hath decreed that ye worship none but Him, and that ye be kind to parents. Whether one or both of them attain old age in thy life, say not to them a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honor.] (Al-Israa’ 17:23)

What a wonderful exhortation indeed! No words of contempt, no move to repel them! Address them in terms of honor! Anecdotal evidence about the state of the parent-child relationship in the Muslim community tells us that children are not internalizing Islamic values and instead are quite contemptuous and dishonor their parents regularly. And the situation seems ever worse for adult children with elderly parents because the tendency there is to say to the parents, do not interfere with my life. How shameful is our situation indeed! Did we not heed any lessons from the life of our beloved Prophet Yusuf (peace and blessings be upon him) when his brothers so mistreated their elderly father? In one incident, the Qur’an captures a dialog between the sons and their father as follows:

[When the caravan left (Egypt), their father said: “I do indeed scent the presence of Joseph: Nay, think me not a dotard.” They said: “By Allah. truly thou art in thine old wandering mind.] (Yusuf 12:94-95)

On the one hand, the father is asserting that he is of stable mind and body and on the other hand, the sons are saying of their father that he is in effect senile. Captured for all of eternity, this dialog bears profound meaning for us today in the steps that we can take to improve the condition of the elderly by restoring to them the dignity and honor which Allah has bestowed upon them.

Parting Thoughts

I have a three-year-old son on the one hand and I have parents who are in their sixties on the other hand. The thoughts I share here are not done so lightly. They represent very real concerns in my own life. As parents, our challenge is to raise children who will, in sha’ Allah, return the favor of being kind, loving, and merciful towards us. As a son, my challenge is to return the favor of kindness, love, and mercy which my parents showed me and my sisters. How well our children will do with us and how well I will do with my parents only Allah knows. The challenges are real, that is for sure.

There are some strategies that we can all pursue to improve the overall condition of the elderly. First, we have to begin to keep the elderly engaged and involved in community life. That way, even if some children do not have grandparents in their midst, they are familiar with and learn to respect the elderly in the community. We should know which of the elderly need transportation to come to the masjid or the Islamic center and then go about arranging transportation for them. Second, we should assign young people to rotate in caring for the elderly masjid attendees. Once the elderly are at the masjid, there should be one young person assigned per elderly attendee so that their stay at the masjid is pleasant. Third, there should be regular programs scheduled at the masjid in which the elderly can read stories, share their life experiences and even their educational and professional experiences. Young people would benefit greatly from knowing the challenges that the elderly faced as Muslims in a country with a predominantly non-Muslim population. Finally, there should just be a program to train young people to visit and cheer up the elderly who are unable to leave their homes. The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) enjoined upon us to visit the sick so that we can make du`aa' (supplications) for them and cheer them up. The youth can then make du`aa', cheer-up the elderly, and also be reminded of the fact that they should take advantage of their youth before their old age.

Notes

1. UN Background Material. Available at: http://aging.state.ny.us/news/yearop/unbm1.htm. Accessed: May 5, 2005.
2. UN Principles for Older Persons. Available at: http://aging.state.ny.us/news/yearop/unbm2.htm. Accessed: May 5, 2005.
3. National Grandparents Day, http://www.grandparents-day.com/. Accessed: May 5, 2005.
4. Hadith, graded Saheeh and included in al-Haakim and al-Bayhaqee.
5. Qur’an, Sura Al-Isra (17), Verse 23.
6. Qur’an, Sura Yusuf (12), Verse 94-95.

Altaf Husain is a social worker in the United States and has been a contributing writer to Islam Online since 1998. He can be contacted at youth_campaign@iolteam.com