God's Messenger and Children

He was an extraordinary husband, a perfect father, and a unique grandfather. He was unique in every way. He treated his children and grandchildren with great compassion, and never neglected to direct them to the Hereafter and good deeds. He smiled at them, caressed and loved them, but did not allow them to neglect matters related to the afterlife. In worldly matters he was extremely open; but when it came to maintaining their relationship with God, he was very serious and dignified. He showed them how to lead a humane life, and never allowed them to neglect their religious duties and become spoiled. His ultimate goal was to prepare them for the Hereafter. His perfect balance in such matters is another dimension of his Divinely inspired intellect.

In a hadith narrated by Muslim, Anas bin Malik, honored as the Messenger's servant for 10 continuous years, says: "I've never seen a man who was more compassionate to his family members than Muhammad." [1] If this admission were made just by us, it could be dismissed as unimportant. However, millions of people, so benign and compassionate that they would not even offend an ant, declare that he embraced everything with compassion. He was a human like us, but God inspired in him such an intimate affection for every living thing that he could establish a connection with all of them. As a result, he was full of extraordinary affection toward his family members and others.

All of the Prophet's sons had died. Ibrahim, his last son born to his Coptic wife Mary, also died in infancy. The Messenger often visited his son before the latter's death, although he was very busy. Ibrahim was looked after by a nurse. The Prophet would embrace, kiss, and caress him before returning home. [2] When Ibrahim died, the Prophet took him on his lap again, embraced him, and described his sorrow while on the brink of tears. Some were surprised. He gave them this answer: "Eyes may water and hearts may be broken, but we do not say anything except what God will be pleased with." He pointed to his tongue and said: "God will ask us about this." [3]

He carried his grandsons Hasan and Husayn on his back. Despite his unique status, he did this without hesitation to herald the honor that they would attain later. One time when they were on his back, 'Umar came into the Prophet's house and, seeing them, exclaimed: "What a beautiful mount you have!" The Messenger added immediately: "What beautiful riders they are!" [4] They may not have been aware that the Messenger had honored them. This special compliment was due to their future status as leaders and family heads of the Prophet's household. Among their descendants would be the greatest and most respected saints. His compliment was not only for his grandsons, but for all his offspring. For this reason, 'Abd al-Qadir Jilani, a well-known descendant of the Prophet's household, said: "The Messenger's blessed feet are on my shoulders, and mine are on the shoulders of all saints." This statement will probably stand for all saints to come.

The Messenger was completely balanced in the way he brought up his children. He loved his children and grandchildren very much, and instilled love in them. However, he never let his love for them be abused. None of them deliberately dared to do anything wrong. If they made an unintentional mistake, the Messenger's protection prevented them from going even slightly astray. He did this by wrapping them in love and an aura of dignity. For example, once Hasan or Husayn wanted to eat a date that had been given to distribute among the poor as alms. The Messenger immediately took it from his hand, and said: "Anything given as alms is forbidden to us." [5] In teaching them while they were young to be sensitive to forbidden acts, he established an important principle of education.

Whenever he returned to Madina, he would carry children on his mount. On such occasions, the Messenger embraced not only his grandchildren but also those in his house and those nearby. He conquered their hearts through his compassion. He loved all children.

He loved his granddaughter Umama as much as he loved Hasan and Husayn. He often went out with her on his shoulders, and even placed her on his back while praying. When he prostrated, he put her down; when he had finished, he placed her on his back again. [6] He showed this degree of love to Umama to teach his male followers how to treat girls. This was a vital necessity, for only a decade earlier it had been the social norm to bury infant or young girls alive. Such public paternal affection for a granddaughter had never been seen before in Arabia.

The Messenger proclaimed that Islam allows no discrimination between son and daughter. How could there be? One is Muhammad, the other is Khadija; one is Adam, the other is Eve; one is 'Ali, the other is Fatima. For every great man there is a great woman.

Fatima, the daughter of the Messenger, is the mother of all members of his household. She is our mother, too. As soon as Fatima entered, the Messenger would stand, take her hands and make her sit where he had been sitting. He would ask about her health and family, show his paternal love for her, and compliment her.

He loved her like his own self, and Fatima, knowing how fond he was of her, loved him more than her own self. Her great mission was to be the seed for saints and godly people. She always watched her father and how he called people to Islam. She wept and groaned when the Messenger told her that he would die soon, and rejoiced when he told her that she would be the first family member to follow him. [7] Her father loved her, and she loved her father. The Messenger was totally balanced even in his love for Fatima. He trained her for the heights to which the human soul should rise.

The Messenger raised her, as well as all of his other family members and Companions, in a way to prepare them for the Hereafter. All of us were created for eternity, and so cannot be satisfied except through eternity and the Eternal Being. Therefore, we only want Him and long for Him, either consciously or unconsciously. The essence of all religions and the message of every Prophet was about the Hereafter. For this reason, the Messenger always sought to prepare his followers for the eternal peace and permanent bliss; meanwhile, his very existence among them was a sample of that peace and bliss they would taste in His presence.

He loved them and directed them toward the Hereafter, to the otherworldly and eternal beauty, and to God. For example, He once saw Fatima wearing a necklace (a bracelet, according to another version), and asked her: "Do you want the inhabitants of the Earth and the Heavens to say that my daughter is holding (or wearing) a chain from Hell?" These few words, coming from a man whose throne was established in her heart and who had conquered all her faculties, caused her to report, in her own words: "I immediately sold the necklace, bought and freed a slave, and then went to the Messenger. When I told him what I had done, he rejoiced. He opened his hands and thanked God: 'All thanks to God, Who protected Fatima from Hell.'" [8]

Fatima did not commit any sin by wearing this necklace. However, the Messenger wanted to keep her in the circle of the muqarrabin (those made near to God). His warning to her was based on taqwa (righteousness and devotion to God) and qurb (nearness to God). This was, in a sense, a neglect of worldly things. It is also an example of the sensitivity befitting the mother of the Prophet's household, which represents the Muslim community until the Last Day. To be a mother of such godly men like Hasan, Husayn, and Zayn al-'Abidin was certainly no ordinary task. The Messenger was preparing her to be the mother first of his own household (Ahl al-Bayt), and then of those who would descend from them, such great spiritual leaders as 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Muhammad Baha' al-Din al-Naqshband, Ahmad Rifai', Ahmad Badawi, al-Shadhili, and the like.

It was as if he were telling her: "Fatima, you will marry a man ('Ali) and go to a house from which many golden 'rings' will emerge in the future. Forget the golden chain on your neck and concentrate on becoming the mother for the 'golden chains' of saints who will appear in the spiritual orders of Naqshbandiya, Rifa'iya, Shadhiliyya, and the like." It was difficult to fulfill such a role while wearing a golden necklace. For this reason, the Messenger was more severe with his own household than with others. He reminded them of the straight path by turning their faces toward the other world, closing all the windows opening on this world, and telling them that what they need is God.

They were to lead their whole lives looking to the other world. For this reason, as a sign of his love, the Messenger purified his own household from all worldly rubbish and allowed no worldly dust to contaminate them. He turned their faces toward the exalted realms and prepared them for being together there.

[1] Muslim, "Fada'il," 63.
[2] Muslim, "Fada'il," 62.
[3] Bukhari, "Jana'iz," 44; Muslim, "Fada'il," 62; Ibn Ma'ja, "Jana'iz," 53.
[4] Hindi, Kanz al-'Ummal, 13:650.
[5] Ibn Hanbal, 2:279; Muslim, "Zakat," 161.
[6] Bukhari, "Adab," 18; Ibn Sa'd, Tabaqat, 8:39.
[7] Muslim, "Fada'il," 98, 99; Bukhari, "Manaqib, " 25.
[8] Nasa'i, "Zinat," 39.

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Be grateful for the time you have with your children insha Allah

One of 400 Expelled Palestinians with his daughter after His Return Home, Deir El-Balah Camp, Gaza, Palestine, 1995. 

Taken by Samer Mohdad.

Birds of Paradise

 

A man came to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) saying two of his children had died, and asked whether the Prophet could tell him anything that would soothe his heart. The Prophet said: "Small children are the birds of Paradise. If one of them meets his father (or his parents) he will take hold of his clothing ... And he (the child) will not let go until God causes his father to enter Paradise." Sahih Muslim

Teaching Islam to our Children - Nouman Ali Khan - 2012

French woman in custody fight with Saudi Prince dies in fall

Suspicions have been raised about the apparently accidental death of a French mother who was gaining ground in a lengthy child custody battle with a Saudi prince.

French authorities insisted yesterday that the death of Candice Cohen-Ahnine, 35, in a fall from her fourth floor apartment in Paris, bore all the signs of an accident. However, friends and her lawyer say she had spoken of a feeling of being under threat in recent days. Despite a previous suicide attempt, they are convinced that she would not have killed herself just weeks before she was due to travel to Saudi Arabia to visit her 10 year old daughter for the first time in four years.

"She was in a state of exaltation, very determined, delighted," said her lawyer, Laurence Tarquiny-Charpentier. "There was a great deal of progress in her case in recent times."

Ms Cohen-Ahnine published a book last year on her struggle to recover her daughter, Haya, who has been held – allegedly in captivity – by her father, Prince Sattam al-Saud of the Saudi royal family, since September 2008.

She fell from the window of her fourth-floor apartment in the eighth arrondissement of Paris, apparently while trying to clamber into the flat next door. Although there was no obvious sign that she had been attacked, friends have suggested to the French media that she might have been trying to flee an assailant. The results of a post-mortem examination released yesterday failed to clear up the mystery. Officials said the autopsy showed that she died as a result of injuries from the fall. "The accident theory appears to have firmed up," one official said.

A French court ruled in January that Haya be restored to her mother's full custody and ordered Prince Sattam to pay child support of €10,000 (£7,800) a month. The prince rejected the ruling but agreed recently that Ms Cohen-Ahnine, who was of French-Jewish origin, could travel to Saudi Arabia to see her daughter next month.

The couple met in London in 1997. After an on-off love affair, Haya was born in November 2001. The prince allegedly refused to marry Ms Cohen-Ahnine because she was Jewish but asked her to remain as his mistress after he married his cousin.

In her book Rendez-moi ma fille ("Give me back my daughter"), she claimed that she was held captive in a palace in Riyadh after taking Haya to visit her father in 2008. She refused to leave without the little girl but, according to her account, the prince's family threatened to bring charges that she was a Muslim who had converted to Judaism – an offence punishable by death under Saudi law. She took fright and, with the help of the French embassy, escaped and returned to France.

Her lawyer said: "This was no suicide. The pain of her separation from her daughter had left its traces but she was also a great fighter, convinced that she would see her daughter again."

The journalist and author Jean-Claude Elfassi, who co-wrote Ms Cohen-Ahnine's book, criticised the French authorities for not fighting her case more strenuously. "Fate was against her," he said. "She promised her daughter the day that she left her: 'I will never abandon you'. And to her last breath, she fought for Haya."

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Maher Zain - My Little Girl | Official Lyrics Video

Treat her like a lady, not a baby-making machine

Kaneez* has five young children with a small age difference between them. She works full-time as a domestic maid and takes short, rushed breaks in order to nurse her youngest child, a five-month-old infant. If her break becomes longer than the expected five minutes, she is severely rebuked by her employer. 

Life is hard for Kaneez. Not only does her husband expect her to make ends meet, but also wants her to keep adding more children to the brood. Her children fight all the time, demand clothes and toys when she takes them grocery shopping and throw tantrums when their wishes are not fulfilled.

The over-worked mother says that her health is deteriorating by the day. She realises that she may be suffering from a number of complications, but does not have time to get herself checked by a doctor.

According to Kaneez, it was her husband’s aunt who kept making snide remarks about other relatives having more male progeny than her that made her want to have more babies. So Kaneez ended up having more children than she wanted as a retort to the aunt. Now, as those who provoked her go about their daily business, life for Kaneez just keeps getting tougher. When thoroughly exhausted, she releases her stress by physically abusing her children.

There is no doubt that children are God’s blessing. But in many societies, including ours, most women are forced to have one child after an another. They do not have the freedom to choose how many children they have nor do they get to decide the age difference between them.

Faiza* is 35 and has six children. She also works full time as a domestic servant. When she returns home, she must perform all the household duties. After six children, Faiza thought her family was complete, and she had a tubal ligation surgery in order to prevent any more pregnancies. But, when her husband and mother-in-law learned about this, they were furious. Faiza shares her sorrow saying:

I have given them six children out of which two are male. I am also the major breadwinner of the family. What else do they want?

Another sad case is Asifa*, who at the very young age of 20, has five children and is expecting yet again. She does all the housework and her young boys keep her on her toes all day long. She has no time for herself and often gets tired and angry. Asifa was also forced to conceive repeatedly on one pretext or the other.

Sultana* has eight children. When she gets run-down, she screams and hits her children and tells them they are ‘unwanted’. She has left most of her young daughters as live-in servants at bungalows in different parts of the city. She does care about her children, but she doesn’t have the time or energy to inquire about their well-being on a frequent basis. Recently, one of her daughters got pregnant out of wedlock.

“What can I do? I work full time and look after four young children after work hours. How can I keep track of what’s going on in their lives?,” says a perplexed Sultana.

“My husband said he would leave me if I didn’t have more children,” she added

According to her, he was provoked by his relatives to give her this threat. Even today, women are desperate to safeguard their marriages. This is because a divorced woman is looked down upon and her character is misjudged. Scared of such consequences, even if women can financially support themselves without a husband, they stay in the marriage.

Another way of psychologically blackmailing women to have more children is by accusing them of having a low character, having liaisons outside of marriage or not loving their husbands.

Sadaf*, a young professional,  recently got married into an educated family. When she told her husband that she wanted to work a little more (before having a child) because she had time (referring to her biological clock), her in-laws accused her of having a secret boyfriend. So this behaviour is not only limited to the lower class.

Many women I have spoken to explained that their relatives compel them to have more children because they love kids and and want to be surrounded by them. They do this because they feel it is a means of keeping women “under control”; to keep them so burdened with responsibilities that they have no time to think about their own desires.

Family planning is a matter that should remain between the husband and wife. Unfortunately, most men in our poverty ridden society have a rigid mindset. Many men living in rural Pakistan have not received any guidance and are egged on by uncaring relatives to have unrealistic expectations from their partners.

If anyone is to argue that it is recommended in our religion to have more children, I would like to say that our religion also says that men should provide for the family. When it comes to the second obligation, why do such men turn a deaf ear?

A woman has a natural instinct to care for each of her children. But when she is abused, this instinct becomes ugly. Juggling work with the upbringing of several young children, a woman not only becomes frustrated but ends up neglecting her own kids. This could lead to serious issues, like the case with Sultana’s pregnant daughter.

Why should children be subject to neglect, physical and mental abuse?

Our men and women need to be educated. Women need to be understood and treated like human beings instead of machines. Children need to be seen as individuals that need exclusive affection and care. ‘Caring and well-meaning’ relatives must stop interfering beyond a certain point.

I think women should have the choice. I hope the majority will agree.

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Is this Britain's first white honour killing victim? The happy but headstrong girl, 17, whose love across the racial divide had a tragic end

Laura Wilson was just 17 years old — a happy but headstrong girl whose love story across the racial divide would have a tragic ending.
‘She was feisty — if she had anything to say she would speak out,’ her mother Margaret says, as she showed me a picture of a smiling, mischievous teenager.
Laura’s Asian boyfriend, Ashtiaq Ashgar, also 17, was born in Britain but when Laura challenged his family’s traditional cultural values by confronting them with details of their relationship, she had to be silenced.
One night in October 2010, Laura was lured to the banks of a canal in Rotherham in South Yorkshire, where Ashtiaq attacked her before throwing her into the water.
He was subsequently arrested and found guilty of Laura’s murder last June and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
So does this mean that Laura was the first white victim of an honour killing in Britain?

Margaret Wilson has never spoken publicly before, but she told me she is convinced her daughter was murdered because she challenged the code of honour which some ethnic communities still follow in the UK.
‘I honestly think it was an honour killing for putting shame on the family. They needed to shut Laura up and they did,’ she says.
In today’s multi-cultural Britain, the majority of young people from immigrant communities are well-integrated. Yet in many households, old traditions are still a powerful force.
In south Asian and Middle Eastern communities, controlling the behaviour of women is seen as key to the family’s honour.

Refusing to consent to marry the husband chosen for you or leaving an abusive marriage is often seen as dishonouring the family.
As I found when investigating the issue of ‘honour killings’ for BBC1’s Panorama, women are suffering in silence.
Behind closed doors, beatings, kidnap, forced imprisonment, rape and even murder are being committed in the name of honour.
The Government admits it does not know the true scale of the abuse. The latest survey of police statistics show that 2,823 honour crimes were reported in 2010.
But a quarter of police forces could not provide the figures and many crimes go unreported, meaning that the real tally is much higher.

Laura Wilson’s murder had the brutal hallmarks of an honour killing.
She lived in Ferham Park, an Asian and white community in Rotherham.
Although only a teenager, Laura already had a baby by an Asian man, Ishaq ‘Zac’ Hussein, a 20-year-old.
However, he refused to recognise the child and Laura was really in love with his friend, Ashtiaq Ashgar.

Her mother says: ‘Ashtiaq was her first love, she adored him.’
But stung by Zac’s rejection of her and their child, Laura decided to confront the men’s families and told them she’d had sexual relations with both men.
Sheffield police believe this was the trigger for a plan to kill Laura.
Detective Superintendent Mick Mason told me that Laura’s decision to go round to the families and to confront them was not welcomed in the Pakistani community.
He says: ‘An argument broke out — one of the mothers tried to hit Laura with a shoe.
Police know from analysing records of the two men’s phones that after the heated exchange they held several meetings. There were even text messages about buying a gun.

DS Mason, now retired, took me through the desolate industrial area where Laura took her last walk after Ashtiaq texted her three days after she confronted the families. He had asked her to meet him by the canal.
Police believe Ashtiaq began a frenzied knife attack on the girl before throwing her, badly wounded, into the canal.
‘I have seen many murders in my time,’ said DS Mason, ‘but this was the worst.’
The two men were arrested and tried for her murder. The pathologist in court revealed that Laura had been stabbed in the top of the head repeatedly as she tried to struggle out of the water.

Ashtiaq was found guilty and sentenced to 17 years in prison and Zac was acquitted.
‘I think it was all about shame,’ DS Mason told me. ‘In their eyes, Laura had brought shame on the family by coming round. Their son had also brought shame on the family.’
As Laura’s mother lays flowers on her daughter’s grave, she cannot forget the face of the accused in court: ‘He never showed remorse.’
Laura’s tragic case is made unusual by the colour of her skin — but her experiences are mirrored by those of young south Asian women who fall foul of their families’ sense of honour.

The suicide rate among women of south Asian descent is three times the national average as many women take what they see as the only way out of abusive family situations — by killing themselves.
Jasvinder Sanghera, a British-born Sikh, took me round the streets of Derby, where she was brought up and where her parents tried to force her to marry a man she had never met.

She was only 14 at the time but she was imprisoned in her room and when she ran away she was disowned by her family.
‘Girls are taught from a young age that cutting your hair, wearing make-up and having a boyfriend are all dishonourable acts,’ she says. ‘You understand that if you engage in this behaviour, you put yourself at risk. It can be a trigger for a forced marriage or even murder.’
Following her experience, Jasvinder decided to campaign against honour crime and set up Karma Nirvana, which runs the UK’s helpline for victims. Calls have doubled in the last four years.
‘The 500 calls we receive every month are just a drop in ocean,’ says Jasvinder.
‘There are hundreds of thousands of women out there we have yet to reach.’
At the helpline centre I met Neina, a British-Asian volunteer who was a victim of honour crime.
She was beaten by her husband and her own father and mother took his side, blaming her and refusing to help her. Neina fled to a refuge and her family cut all ties with her.
Nationally, the police response to honour crime has been patchy and serious mistakes have been made because of a failure to understand the risks women and girls face.
Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Goode, of the Metropolitan Police, is involved in training other officers about honour crimes.
She says: ‘Every single one of these cases involve extreme violence because the murders are committed to send a message to the wider community.
'Often there is a high degree of organisation often precipitated by a family meeting.’
DCI Goode spent four years investigating and bringing to justice four men, all relatives, who were involved in the case of Banaz Mahmoud, a 19-year-old Kurdish girl who was murdered at her family home in South London in 2006.
DCI Goode pursued two of the suspects to Iraq and they were extradited back to Britain and tried in court. Banaz’s fate was sealed when she was spotted kissing her boyfriend outside Morden Tube Station in South London.
She had been allowed by her family to leave her violent husband but when she started seeing someone else, it was too much for their honour.


Her father first tried to kill her after her murder had been sanctioned at a meeting of the extended family. That attempt was unsuccessful and Banaz ended up in hospital.
DCI Goode said Banaz recounted her terrible ordeal to the police.
She said: ‘The officer simply did not understand or believe what she was being told and had no knowledge of honour-based violence.

The detective showed me a letter Banaz wrote and sent to the police in which she named the relatives she believed were out to kill her. But Banaz was terrified and refused to press charges. With no where else to turn to she went home.
Less than a month later, Banaz was killed on the floor of her own living room in the most shocking and violent way involving rape and strangulation.
Two of her relatives were arrested and taken into custody where they were secretly recorded boasting that they had hidden her body more than 100 miles away.
‘Banaz’s body was buried six feet under a house,’ DCI Goode.

‘They had gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure we did not find her.’
A ccording to Nazir Afzal, of the Crown Prosecution Service and who is the lead prosecutor on honour crime, there are between ten and 12 honour killings a year in Britain.
‘But we don’t know the true figure, how many unmarked graves there are,’ Mr Afzal admitted.
He described a conversation he had recently had with a 20-year-old man.
‘He told me that in his society, a man is like a piece of gold, a woman is like a piece of silk. If you drop gold in the mud, you can clean it. But a piece of silk is ruined.’
At the national helpline for honour crime victims, many of the calls involve Asian girls afraid of being forced into marriage.
I listened as staff tried to arrange protection for a frightened 15-year-old taken out of school by her parents and beaten after they found a text on her mobile they believed was from a boy. She was terrified she was about to be taken to Pakistan and married off.
The Coalition government is now considering making forced marriage a criminal offence on the basis that many experts say it is the root cause of honour crime.
Many believe that the key to preventing honour abuse in the long term lies in education.
Yet Jasvinder Sanghera approached more than 100 schools before finding one that was prepared to let her talk to pupils about forced marriage and honour-based abuse.
She says: ‘The schools all say the same old thing — we don’t want to offend communities.’


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Baby Girls Seen As Mixed Blessing In Afghanistan

At the age of 29, childbirth is nothing new to Rukhsar, yet the expectant mother can't help being apprehensive about her fifth child.

Her first four children, aged between 2 and 12, are all girls, and she feels pressure to deliver a boy to please her husband. If she gives birth to another daughter, Rukhsar says, she fears he will seek a second wife.

"I would have to organize for him to get a second wife," she says. "I don't want him to get another wife, but I would have no other choice [in order to avoid divorce]."

Not having a son has placed enormous strain on the couple's marriage, says Rukhsar, a native of the eastern Afghan district of Surkhrud who gave only her first name.

In Afghanistan, tradition among many families dictates a strong preference for boys, and blame is often placed on the mother if she gives birth to a girl.

This is for a variety of reasons: sons are seen as future breadwinners; the continuation of a family's lineage; the inheritors of the estate.

Ehsanullah, a 33-year-old Kabul resident and father of two girls and a boy, explains that sons are expected to take care of their parents in old age. For many Pashtuns, he says, it's virtually unacceptable for elderly parents to live with a son-in-law.

On the other hand, says Ehsanullah, who gave only his first name, daughters can be a financial burden, and then they grow up and marry into somebody else's family. He says that before the birth of his third child, a son, he was embarrassed to tell relatives he had daughters.

'Sorry, It's A Girl'

"It doesn't mean that I don't love my daughters," he stresses, but there is another very real extreme that reveals itself in violence against mothers who "fail" to give birth to a son.


Women's rights activists in Afghanistan say that bullying and ostracizing women over the gender of their babies is not uncommon.
​​Earlier this month, the issue made headlines when a man in Konduz Province allegedly strangled his wife after she gave birth to the couple's third girl, rather than his much-desired boy.

Women's rights activists in Afghanistan say that such extreme cases are highly unusual, but bullying and ostracizing women over the gender of their babies is not uncommon.

Ironically, most of the pressure does not come from the father of the baby girl, but from the mother-in-law and other family members. This is according to Anisa Imrani, who was recently put in charge of women's affairs in the eastern Nangarhar Province.

"A woman who gives birth to a boy gets completely different treatment after the delivery. Her husband's family feeds her with the best possible food available; they usually slaughter a chicken for her," Imrani says.

"The birth of a boy is celebrated with lavish parties. But when a girl is born, the mother feels ashamed and she has to deal with harassment by her in-laws."

Conservative Society

Imrani says that while no reliable statistics are available, the phenomenon is more widespread among less-educated families.

Farida Hoad, an Afghan obstetrician who has worked in Kabul's Malalai maternity hospital, places the blame on "ignorance."

"They don't understand and do not accept, that it's the father's chromosome that determines the gender of the child," says Hoad, a native of Nangarhar.

Parents' preference of sons over daughters is strongly connected to men's and women's primary roles in the deeply religious society, in which men are traditionally the bread-winners and women are the homemakers.

In more conservative families, girls and boys are treated much differently by their parents while growing up. "My sister and I are allowed to eat only after my brothers finish their food," explains Nuriya, a teenage girl from the eastern Paktia Province.

Sons As Insurance Policy

As the heads of their families, men not only look after their elderly parents but they are also expected to take care of their younger siblings if called upon. Therefore, Afghan parents see their sons as a kind of insurance policy for old age.

Gulghotai Mahmadzai, a 55-year-old housewife from the southern city of Kandahar, says the fact that she never bore a son means she now faces an uncertain future.

Mahmadzai and her husband separated after she gave birth to 10 daughters, and her husband went on to marry a 26-year-old woman in an effort to get a son. He now has two more daughters.

Moving in with one of her daughters is not an option for Mahmadzai, and she lives alone. But Mahmadzai says that if she had had a son, her life would have been completely different.

Afghan women's rights activists say education and raising awareness is key to changing the situation. They call on religious leaders and mullahs, who enjoy great respect in Afghan society, to take part in campaigns to end gender discrimination in families.

"Our religion forbade discrimination over the gender of the child, which was prevalent before the arrival of Islam," says Afghan religious scholar Mawlana Mustafa. "It's anti-Islamic and is a sign of ignorance and faithlessness."

In Surkhrud, Rukhsar's marriage hangs in the balance as she waits to find out her baby's gender. If the ultrasound determines that she isn't carrying a boy, Rukhsar says, divorce or the prospect of having to share her husband with a second wife is imminent.

"Nothing else can change my situation," Rukhsar says.
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