Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume II — Page 197
197 Prepare y our Men f or Sacrifice As I have said, women know how to engage men in certain tasks as well. They can motivate men to make sacrifice and we have many examples of this amongst us where women convinced men to make sacrifice s. Just see how we have many missionaries who have spent ten to fifteen years preaching in foreign countries and they have left their newlywed wives back home. These women have now turned grey - haired, b ut they never taunted their husbands for staying abroad and leaving them alone f or a long period of time soon after their marriage. One of our missionaries is Maulawi Jalal - ud - D in Shams who went to Europe to do tabligh a short time after his marriage. Just listening to his stories makes one highly emotional. One day, his son returned from school and asked his mother, ‘Mother, what does ‘father’ mean? Children in my school always say, ‘father this’ and ‘father that’ and we don’t know where our father ha s gone. ’ Shams Sahib ’s children were three or four years old when he went to Europe for tabligh and had turned seventeen or eighteen when he returned. Now see, it was due to his wife’s courage that [Jalal - ud - D in Shams] could accomplish the task of tabligh for such a long time. Had she been writing to him all her sad stories, then either he would have come back of his own accord or he would have pressed the Jama'at to call him back. There is no doubt that a few women have also shown weaknesses in this regard. It ha s been just two years since their husbands had left when they started writing letters to the [ Jama'at ] office saying , ‘Either call them back or we will write to them to leave work and come back. However, this does not mean that all women are weak. If some women are weak, then some men are also weak. Women are not alone in showing weakness. In fact, a portion of the men also show weakness. Thus, if one looks at ‘weakness’, men and women are both equal a nd if one looks at ‘strength’, men and women are both equal. If you look at ‘love’ and ‘sacrifice’, they are both equal; look at them regarding ‘sense of honor,’ they are equal as well. Hence, any job which men can accomplish with courage; wom en