Seminar on Love within Family

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We were happy to host Mr. Vehbi Vakkasoglu as guest speaker on May 3rd. He made a speech on Love. Mr. Vakkasoglu is a famous educator and writer. He is known with his approach based on love to today’s problems.

He especially addressed the issues like love between spouses, love in family relations and raising children. He also emphasized developing good relations with people.

Below is the summary of his speech.

Those who lack sense of love also lack humanity and moral values. Such human beings have made our world a place of violence. Then, duty on believers is to help humanity, who is orphan of love and compassion, taste love – pure and sincere love, love with no expectation –.

We need to rebuild humanity and it starts in the family. Wife is the pillar of family as she mother and first educator of new generation. If wife has not decided to maintain family, man cannot continue marriage. That’s why we have to bring up well-educated daughters as they are mothers of future.

Choosing one’s wife is the first step of raising well-mannered and well-educated children.

Our Prophet once said, “Love your sons”. His companions asked: Should we not love our daughters, O Prophet of God? He answered, “Love your sons, your daughters let themselves be loved”.

Human beings love to be loved. Also animals love to be loved. Even water loves love. Japanese scientists made an experiment. They put water from the same source into two glasses. One person always told good words to first glass, and another person told bad words to second glass. Second glass of water, which was told bad words, lost %25 from its minerals. This clearly shows that even lifeless things want love.

Vehbi VakkasogluHumanity today is orphan of love and compassion. I was in Germany for a long time. They were thinking of offering a new course, “Smiling”. People forgot smiling.

Love for Spouse
We learn how to love our spouses from our Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). One day an old woman came to Prophet’s room. As soon as He saw her, he stood up and rushed to the door to welcome her. He let her sat in his place. Further, he laid down his cardigan to prepare a more comfortable place for her. He asked about her health, asked whether she needed something, etc. Aisha Siddiqa, Prophet’s wife, was so surprised to see His honoring this old woman. She asked, Why? He answered, “But Aisha, she was my wife Khadijah’s companion”. If He respected his wife’s friend this much, can you imagine how He loved and respected his wife.

His wife Khadijah also loved Him so much. One day, she was sitting under the sun. There was shadow near however. People asked her why she did not go to shadow. She answered, “My Muhammad is in hot now. When he comes back, we go to shadow together”.

Culture of bestowment
At the end of his speech, Mr. Vakkasoglu mentioned about how to have good relations with people. According to him, we must spread culture of bestowment.

One day, a lamb was slaughtered at the Prophet’s home. He asked His wife what she had done the lamb. His wife Aisha told that she left one leg for themselves and gifted the rest. Prophet Muhammad said, “Then you left the whole lamb except one leg to us”.

The Sultan loved and respected Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi very much. It was a time of scarcity. Sultan sent Rumi essential needs with seven camels. Rumi called everybody to take their need from what Sultan sent. While poor people were getting their needs, Rumi’s wife saw this through the window. She sent her son to Rumi to tell they were also in need of these stuff. Rumi said to his son, “Go and tell your mother she is right but nobody has taught us taking”.

During Canakkale war in 1915, Turkish soldiers gave fresh bread to enemy captives and they ate stale bread. Captives suspected that Muslims were planning to poison them because they were not eating fresh bread but giving to captives. They did not eat. Muslim soldiers were worried. They asked the army officer, who knew foreign language, to ask why they were not eating. Captives said, “You will kill us”. Every Muslim soldier ate a small piece of fresh bread so that captives believed that Muslims did not have such intention. Rather they respected even their enemy. Our ancestor established dialog even in the war.