A Speech given for the prize-giving ceremony at Feversham Girls’ School

 by

Sr. Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood.

How pleasant, to be in an environment full of women. I have spent so much of my life in places full of men and boys, that it is a very pleasant change for me! Some of you are girls – young women at the start of your lifetimes – insha’Allah you will be full of happiness, hopes, dreams for the future, ambitions. Please don’t think I am trying to depress you when I say that soon (if you haven’t already) you will be facing all sorts of tests, sorrows, pains and suffering, and you will need to develop the important female qualities of patience, compassion, and ability to keep on working even when you are totally exhausted.

Others of us are a bit more battered – as you can see. We’ve sagged a bit and grown comfortable, we’ve seen far more of life. Some of us are worn out and hoping for a rest before being created anew in Akhirah, the Life to Come.

One thing that all of us here have in common is that at our different levels we are all at the moment on one of the main routes to Paradise.

This is what the Prophet (pbuh) said: ‘Muslims who travel the road in search of knowledge are being caused by Allah to travel on one of the roads to Paradise. The angels bow down their wings in their great pleasure with those who seek knowledge….The superiority of the learned person over someone who is devout but who has no knowledge is like the light of the full moon over that of the stars. The learned are the heirs of the prophets. The prophets did not leave any money behind them, they left only knowledge; but those who take it take a huge treasure.’ Abu Dawud 1631.

I apologise, I have no source for these next quotations – they came from an article on teacher training in Islam by Dr Ghulam Nabi Saqab.

‘The Muslim who is not a student or a teacher is valueless.’

And one specifically for parents:

‘Educate your children, for they live in a time different from yours.’

Tirmidhi 1284. Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) said, "Parents can give their children nothing better than a good education."

These four sayings all came from a man who had never been to school or learned to read and write – he was n ever lucky enough to have those opportunities – but that did not mean he was a stupid man. On the contrary, he was a brilliant man with a wonderful character, and through Allah’s inspiration he changed the world.

These days we hear an awful lot about our rights – women’s rights, children’s rights. One of the very important things about being Muslim is to realise that we have no rights to our lives – they are a gift to us. And it’s a funny sort of gift – because it is one that we are going to have to give back. Not only that, but we don’t know when that will have to be.

God has amazing knowledge – far greater than ours, of course. Let’s think about our knowledge for a moment. Do you know how many noses you’ve got on your face? How many eyes? How many fingers? Good – now, you’re all senior girls, so let’s make it a bit harder. How many teeth have you got? Hmm. How many hairs in your eyelashes? How many blood cells in your bloodstream? How many of your cells die every second? You may be thinking: ‘How am I supposed to know that?’ but it’s worth a moment to realise that some people do know the answers to these. They are probably not any cleverer than you, but they’ve had a bit more education than you, so they know more and have more skills. If you keep on going with education, from cradle to grave – as the Prophet (pbuh) asked you to – you will still never arrive at the point where you know everything. The more you know, the more you realise that there is to know – and for us, that goers on for ever.

But not for Allah. Here’s a long word for you - Allah is Omniscient. His knowledge is Complete and Supreme. So, for example, He created each one of you – and He knew exactly how many and what bits of everything you were going to have, from the moment you started your existence in the bodies of two completely different people as an egg and a sperm. Muslims believe that He knew from even before that. And once your mother’s egg and your father’s sperm came together, and you became a possible future living being, every part of your physical body, and your brain, and your characteristics and your temperament were there like a computer design – only much more intricate than anything a computer could do. Alhamdu lillah, we are now getting experts, male and female, who are beginning to understand all this sort of thing, and we will soon run into great problems of what it is right or wrong to do as regards trying to create new people, or breed bits of people for medical use – but these scientists are not inventing or creating anything new really – just discovering what is already there, things or laws of nature that Allah has already created.

Allah knows, from before your moment of conception, how many breaths you are going to take in your life. Your next breath is a gift. This is a bit alarming. I know I have come here to give you a talk and a few things to think about – and here I am, I’ve got this far – but there is one thing I do not know; I have no idea whether Allah is going to let me to reach the end of this talk or not. I actually had a nasty surprise with a serious illness in Ramadan, which brought this point home to me rather sharply. I may not reach the end of this talk.

And neither may you. You may have already seen your loved ones for the last time. That makes you think, doesn’t it. Are you ready to go? How did you leave your family? Were you in the middle of a storming row? Had you done something awful, and now you wont get the chance to put it right? Should you have said something to someone, and never did it? It could be too late now. The Prophet (pbuh) used to say something that seems a bit grim - ‘Remember death often’ – but he wasn’t trying to be morbid. He was trying to make Muslims clarify their minds, and live more intensely, as if each day was to be their last, and to make full use of it. If you had known in advance that you were going to die this evening, it would probably have totally altered how you lived and what you did today.

Conscious Muslims live like that all the time.

What is a Muslim anyway? It isn’t just a question of wearing hijab and doing the prayers and fasting and Qur’an reading, although those are all vitally important things. It starts with shahadah, and the two parts of shahadah are the basis to our whole life.

Firstly, we have to ask ourselves whether we really believe in God or not? Do we or don’t we? There are actually only these two possibilities – either Allah does exist, or He doesn’t, there is no third alternative. Either He is Real, and knows everything, and sees everything we do and is aware of everything we think, or He isn’t, and it’s all just a load of wishful thinking. If you are an atheist, and a selfish and rather foolish person who wants to do all the wrong things –believing in Allah will be the very last thing you will want to do.

When People reach the age of reason – which is just about your age now – most of them start thinking things like this through for themselves and come to their own conclusions. It is not something that anyone else can force you to do. You could choose to be an ostrich and stick your head in the sand, and no-one will probably bother to come along and pull your head out. They’ll leave you to it. You might be content to believe what other people have told you – in which case it will all depend in what culture you were born. But you cannot be an adult believer relying on someone else’s belief, experiences or reasons. You have to have your own.

So, if there is no God after all, then presumably all the things that go along with belief in Him can be dropped in the bin too. Such as what? Well, I would suppose that belief in Life after Death would come pretty near the top of the list. Is there really a life after death, or not? It’s like the question of whether God exists or not. Either there is life after death or there isn’t, there’s no third alternative. Supposing there isn’t? OK – once you really think this it still makes a difference to how you live. You have to get on with your living because it won’t last forever. The usual pursuits of people who don’t believe in life after death are money, power and happiness. I wish them very good luck.

But supposing there is life after death? Then it will most likely be true that it could make a difference how we live here, because different sorts of people might be going to different places. Maybe believers really are right – that there is a point to it all, and there will come a time of judgement when we will be called to account for everything we ever said or did, and will be made aware of all the consequences of our actions perhaps for the first time. It could come as a horrendous moment of realisation, or it might bring a great sigh of relief. It all depends.

Depends on what? On what you believe? Well, yes indeed – but supposing you genuinely believed something in all sincerity that was wrong, a mistake? This is where you will find out whether Allah truly is a God of compassion and mercy or not. Since it is all too easy to make mistakes about things which are beyond our comprehension, knowledge and understanding, very likely what will count most for us at the time of Judgement is how we lived, what we did with our talents and skills that Allah gave us from before the time of our birth, and intended us to develop. Maybe it will depend more on that – on what you did with your life? The Prophet (pbuh) left lots of clues – including the one where he said that a person would be judged on four things – your body and how you used it, your money and how you earned it, your knowledge and what you did with it, your time and how you spent it.

I know, coming from a Christian background, that Jesus (pbuh) taught that too. He said when we faced Allah it would be like a shepherd separating his animals into sheep and goats. God was the shepherd, the sheep were like the successful people, and the goats like the failed ones. How would people know which they were? It wasn’t just that the sheep were white and woolly and the goats were brown and black. God would tell them that the sheep were the people who had seen Him when he was hungry and given Him food, seen Him when He was thirsty and given Him something to drink; they had seen Him naked and clothed Him; they had seen Him sick and visited Him, they had seen Him in prison and had not just dumped and forgotten Him. The people listening were astounded - they knew they had never seen God at all, let alone in any of those conditions. Jesus told them that if they had done these kindnesses to any of the least of God’s creatures, then they had done them to God. Our Prophet (pbuh) was told a very similar thing by Allah Himself, that if they had only visited the sick or fed the hungry and so on, they would have found Allah alongside the person they had helped. (Hadith Qudsi).

Oh dear. So, we have to be active. We have to use our skills. Perhaps we were given the skill to do maths. Maybe we were top of the class when we were eight. But maybe we got big-headed, and never bothered to learn or develop maths any more. That wouldn’t matter would it? Our talent would always be there – it would stay the same? Oh, if only. We’ve forgotten all the other talents belonging to other people, and what they are doing with them. If we were top of the class at eight, and never developed any more, we would be bottom of the class by the time we were sixteen!

Maybe we had dreams of being a great teacher, or wonderful brave heroine doing amazing things for unfortunate people during a time of war or catastrophe. Maybe we will spend our lives dreaming, and doing nothing very much – until one day we suddenly realise that our lives have been and gone, and passed us by. I came across this clever saying: ‘Life is what happens to you while you are busy planning something else.’ That is just so true. Suddenly you are old, and everything becomes ‘if only…….’

Luckily, the good news is that so long as you are still here, you are still part of it all. There’s another saying; ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’ That’s true too, Alhamdu lillah. Every day is a new day – whatever we did or didn’t do yesterday has gone now, and we have to start again.

Yesterday is past and gone, tomorrow doesn’t yet exist, the only thing that’s real is TODAY. The past is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is your gift. That’s why it’s called the present.

So I’m back where I started, thinking about life as a gift.

Our lives are also tests. Let’s come back to thinking in terms of school. Tests. We don’t know why we are here, or how long we are going to be here, or why we will be tested in the ways we will be. Our time may be very short – it is vital that we don’t waste it. If bad things happen, as they do, don’t waste your time in hatred and misery and regret. Love while you can. Love your family and your friends while you can. You may hate your brother, but he is the brother Allah gave you – why – it’s a test! Your father may drive you mad, but he is the father Allah gave you. All part of the test. And what about the teacher you really can’t stand? All part of the test. It may be that the subject she teaches you is the very one you need most. You have to choose not to waste your time in personal resentments, but get on with it and get that qualification.

You are going to be a woman. All part of the test. What is a woman? Here’s an interesting little bit of good news. Science has at last proved that women are technically superior to men. Each human egg has 23 chromosomes, and the 23^rd is an XX. Each sperm has 23 chromosomes, and the 23^rd is either XX or XY. If it is XX you are born female, and if it is XY you are born male. If you look at the letters X and Y, it is pretty obvious that the Y is only an incomplete X!

What is a Muslim woman? Someone of female gender who has accepted all the items of faith, matters of ritual and strengths of character required of Muslim men. Apart from the allowances made in deference to your menstrual cycle, childbirth and female hormones, there are no differences in Islam for men and women. You do, however, get a few extra duties. You face enormous responsibilities and will need enormous courage and patience. Women are a lot stronger than men in all sorts of ways – men are weak; they are easily tempted by sex and power, and easily corrupted. If they catch a slight cold, they need nursing for a week at least. If you ever get to live with a man, you will most likely bring into your premises a large, surprisingly dirty, irritatingly lazy and possibly noisy and bad-tempered male animal. No, I don’t mean he will bring a pet with him - I mean the man.

Girls – you cannot choose your parents, brothers and sisters or the rest of your family. But you can choose your spouse. If you are Muslim, he is going to be the head of your household. Will you make me one promise? Don’t pick an idiot. Pick someone that you can respect and look up to, so that supporting him and working with him and for him will be a joy and not a nightmare.

Parents, our young women need a good education using modern methods, and tomorrow’s technology. Don’t assume that your girl is going to be ‘just’ a housewife. Most homes in the UK cannot afford that luxury any more. Have you girls thought yet about your own careers? It is a fard kifayah for each society to have enough professional people to care for its needs – tailors, bakers, librarians, chemists, plumbers, electricians, engineers, builders, cleaners, factory workers, drivers, air pilots, nurses, secretaries, farmers, teachers, police, nurses, those who work with the mentally ill, marriage counsellors, ambulance drivers, doctors, dentists, midwives, judges.

To educate each child from the age of five to the GCSE level costs around £30,000. Each. The top brains then go on to take AS and A levels, and the top 5-10% in the country get a place at university. The total cost of their education must be at least £80,000. Don’t waste it. Muslim parents need to value and treasure their brilliant and professional Muslim daughters, even if they do not take up a profession but become wives of intelligent sons. The education of females has been amazingly successful – girls are beating the boys in every field, which has now become highly noticeable at GCSE level, and has even reached the dimensions of being a problem. Don’t train up at great expense to be a doctor, teacher, lawyer, engineer, expert in any field, and then throw it all away.

I want to end by letting you think about two girls here in the UK. One was an Asian girl, of very good family, well off, intelligent. Instead of marrying her off as a teenager to a cousin from back home, she was encouraged to study and go to university. She went to the top – Oxford – where she became very involved in student affairs, and eventually became the first woman ever to be the president of the Oxford Students’ Union – did you know that? An Asian Muslim woman. She left university and went into politics, and ended up as Prime Minister of her ‘home’ nation, Pakistan. Guessed who? Benazir Bhutto.

Now the second girl – from a very different family background. She lived in Grantham where her father ran a corner shop selling groceries. She was clever too, and went to grammar school, got to university and gained a First Class honours degree in Chemistry. She was also highly interested in politics, and also went on to become a Prime Minister of a major world nation – the UK. Her name – Margaret Thatcher.

Yes, I know I cheated and made you all think she was an Asian. But here’s my final thought – maybe the next woman Prime Minister of the UK is actually sitting here in this room – an Asian Muslim girl. Allah knows best.

I have to stop here. Thank you all for listening to me, and may God bless you and guide your steps and bring you to success in whatever your future may hold for you. Wasalaam aleikum wa rahmatullah.